politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
When only 2 parties take turns ruling the country, the checks and balances don't really work well when stressed. Because the party that needs to be checked, control half the apparatus, and can disrupt large parts of the other half.
Countries with maybe 10+ parties in parlament like many European countries have, will never have a single party with control of half the apparatus responsible for the checks and balances.
This is a huge reason first past the post is bad for democracy, apart from also not representing the population as fairly as is possible with numerous parties of influence.
This problem permeates throughout the entirety of the system, including the judicial, where judges belong to one or the other party, enabling an imbalance with total control for one party in for instance the supreme court.
With a multi party system, a single party would NOT be able to take control in the way we have seen happen in USA, which obviously shouldn't be possible, and also doesn't help to prevent corruption.
I would love to be able to vote for a true leftist party in America. They will never allow it though.
Four states don't use first-past-the-post for legislative elections. In particular:
If a third party wanted to succeed, they would put significant resources into winning legislative and congressional seats in those places. I don't see any of them actually doing that though.
Why don’t more states abandon first-past-the-post?
Massachusetts tried last time and the ballot initiative failed.
Rcv is "new and scary" peoples resistance to change will always make them shit on things they dont understand. The only solution is to have more of us then there are of them.
There were ads running against it and the arguments were nonsense, but there was nothing from the pro side. It was like they expected* the electorate to just know that it was better and didn't think a campaign was needed.
*Expected, not requested
Mostly because the progressives didn't control them in the early 1900s, so they don't have legislature-bypassing initiatives, and even in states where you do have that, it's expensive to get one through.
So disappointing. I feel like things will never change.
Political change tends to be like that — nothing at all for a long period when you don't have the power to act, and sudden rapid change when you do.
It feels like we’re on the cusp of something big happening, for better or for worse.
Something worse probably and I am an optimist.
On the upside they could change for the worse. Maybe instead of fair elections the chang is a god king
Because the parties with the power don't want to, because it might cost them power.
They're not designed to win, they're designed to offset whoever they're turned against.
Probably not, they have a nice cozy arrangement where they share the power. To allow multiple parties would mean to give that up, and most likely neither side is really interested in that.
Do you know how many parties had members in the parliament of the Weimar Republic when Hitler was named Chancellor?
I learned in school – not sure if this part is entirely accurate but its an interesting idea anyway – that this situation was precisely why there is a ~5% of votes, lower barrier for parties sending representatives in many modern European democracies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_threshold
No I didn't, that's very interesting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_political_parties
What I don't get is, how Hitler managed to take control with that many parties? He should not have been in a position with power to do that?
Trying to remember what i learned in history here, i hope i get at least most of it right:
Thanks that's a very nice summary.
It's interesting because I've always considered multiple parties to be an important way to protect democracy.
But I guess that ultimately it depends on the people being willing to protect it.
Still having 10 parties represented, makes for a better chance that minority views are represented. And I still believe it helps against corruption and strengthen democracy relative to only 2 parties.
Same way trump won the primary in 2016, everyone was disunited and a focused minority could overrule them all.
No it's not the same, Trump is obvious, that's because of the 2 party system, and first past the post.
And people moronically believed Trump was a vote against the political establishment, and for the minimal state.
I mean the GOP primary, the others divided the vote and let him walk away with it.
Sorry my bad, yes that's actually a good point. 👍