spaghetto that is not a "problem" that is a feature of first past the post (aka majoritarian) voting system.

there is no alternative in that system, because if you split the people in 4 (imagine far left, center left, center right, right), and one side splits equally, the other concentrate on one of the two, the second side ALWAYS WINS.

this creates incentives to have candidates very near the median actually, for that district.

unless, a district is already automatically one sided. then the real election is the primary not the general, and the candidate closer to the median primary voter wins.

you might prefer a system, the proportional one, where you have say 11 choices and you vote that which represents your viewpoint the best.

many European countries have that system or something similar to that.

in many cases nothing gets done (which you could consider a bonus tbh).

take the Netherlands: PURE proportional representation, if you get enough for one seat nation wide, you have a member of parliament.

they voted on November 22nd 2023. no party came even vaguely close to win. you need them to ally and so you need YOUR representative to agree with **** he HATES and vote for it on your behalf. THEY DONT HAVE A GOVERNMENT YET because the "wrong party" is the biggest one, and the others know that if they all ally and govern without it, next time the "evil party" will get even more votes.

you haven't solved anything! if your representative goes purist HE NEVER GOVERNS and the other side ALWAYS WINS. the other people compromise among themselves and they govern, every time forever, unless your people on your side are willing to do the same.

you can't get away from that dynamic

I don't think there are significant differences between the parties. This might be a minority position but it is steadily becoming apparent to more people, hence the growth of the "independent" category.

I'm not saying the current parties are as bad as the Nazis who obviously had different goals. But when reflecting on how our government treats us, I find myself thinking well, damn, at least the Nazis loved certain phenotypes while my government treats everyone outside the upper class like a hated enemy. I don't think people who are cool with what is going on, especially in light of the genocide, have any significant moral standards which could cause them to resist whatever power was in place as long as that power wasn't trying to kill them specifically. And if you vote for the people doing it that means you are cool with it. I really don't think expressions of sadness or solidarity mean all that much. If you vote for those who commit genocide then you are cool with it. And if you are cool with that then I don't think there is anything you won't accept (as long as it doesn't happen to you personally).

independents don't grow because there is no difference, rather because they both suck according to a growing number of people (which doesn't mean a growing number of people consider them both Nazis: the majority of independents are actually IN THE MIDDLE between the two parties, unlike you).

Everyone knows there are things in which democrats and republicans differ A LOT.

and many centrist independents don't give a **** at all about Palestinian civilians, which even if you care about human lives, aren't in the top20 of the groups needing help currently in the world, objectively (they already get more help than most weak groups ever did in human history)

Rank choice voting would allow people to do it without feeling like they are wasting their vote

You might be interested to learn that it's mathematically impossible to build such a system that satisfies all the criteria it intuitively should. For practical purposes most such systems perform well enough, though, so the impossibility is more of an intellectual curiosity than anything else.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%...bility_theorem

define well enough lol.

absolute majorities tend to be dissatisfied with government in most democracies most of the times.

The impossibility relates to ranking voting systems specifically, "well enough" being that the candidate who wins does satisfy all of the criteria most of the time. It's just mathematically impossible to design selection criteria which will guarantee that this will always be the case.

I have cited arrow in this very forum not so long ago so I know what you are talking about.

Fact is the impossibility is already there when you have a simple choice (where to put a bridge given 3 km of river banks to choose from, it's already impossible to claim you can come up with a perfect answer given individual preferences), and politics is a set of many complex choices, the "gap" is much much much much wider than you seem to imply.

but the main result of arrow is *there is no social utility function, there is no definable social welfare function*, you can never claim something is "better for society" in any objective sense unless it's pareto efficient

No. Because of the primary system put in place by politicians (it's legislative, not from the constitution) that assures a place on the general election ballot for a party's candidate. Add the fact that primaries are very lightly voted (fixing that is a different issue) and mostly party diehards participate, you end up with extreme candidates getting elected. AOC won her primary with less than 16,000 votes. I forget who - I believe it was someone from Alabama - won with less than 2,000 votes. They both won the general election because they were in "safe" districts for their party.

The 'mistake' of arrow theory is in any idea that the ideal system is siginificantly better than the best non-ideal ones. Considering single static elections is a huge mistake anyway when a large part of the value of voting is influencing future policies and elections. Democracy sucks, people desperately want to believe that changing the system of democracy will stop it sucking but it wont. They also want good results but dont want to do anything much about it - well tough.

I define what I think is best - so do you. So does everyone. That is what democracy is for.

While related, I believe that is a different result to the one I was referencing. I wasn't really commenting on the political side of it; as someone who enjoys mathematics and logic puzzles recreationally, I just found his impossibility theorem to be of particular interest.

Ranking is good providing there's a sizable cost to the lower preferences.

Better if people just stop making the mistake of thinking they are wasting their vote by voting for what they would quite like. The reverse is true. We have to combat much harder the nonsense about wasting votes - this 'lie' only serves the big parties

I enjoyed going down that rabbit hole
It clearly says that it still can work and that it doesn't take into account strategic and dishonest voting

I truly believe an RFK could win if we had rank choice voting

I think many dems who prefer rfk are afraid to vote him cause it will help Trump

There are also Republicans who want to vote him but not help biden

Ranked choice allows these voters to vote their conscience risk free

remember that in the USA, in state elections, when you win you can increase the chances you will win again (gerrymandering), so it's not like you just wait out a cycle to signal, you can lock in your enemy.

for nationals, your enemy can lock in SCOTUS judges for 30+ years if you vote third party and that costs an election.

I bet Jill Stein voters aren't happy with this court and it's literally all their fault lol.

i'm still not convinced that RFK even hurts biden. he's much more likely to steal the JoeRogan bros vote than any dem voters imo.

i'm sure neither party wants him on the ticket at all because why chance it. but you can see Trump taking him on on the socials today to try and paint him as left of Biden for a reason. they are scared RFK will steal from them.

to my knowledge republicans hate ranked choice voting. the RNC has an official resolution to oppose it.

i'm still unsure of what dems that would vote biden are going to be scammed by rfk? i dont understand the demographics that would prefer him if they weren't already not voting for biden.

RFK is famous recently for the antivaxxing stance, but he is a staunch environmental extremist as well as a war non interventionist, so he can steak some democrat voters.

i agree that in general he should steal more from republicans than from democrats but absolute numbers don't matter, what matter is the effect in purple states, and median undecided voters are a very peculiar small fraction of voters, so who knows?

I mean try to enter the mind of an obama-trump voter for example

It could be coincidence but then again the recent refusal of many to vote for biden over his gaza policy may well have contributed to the change of policy on a ceasefire. Nothing focuses their minds like the idea that might lose elections.

The only voters that really matter are those who can't be taken for granted but are there to be won. What's more - they really matter. True in the usa as anywehre else.

Good post. There were plenty of Bernie-Trump voters too.

He can theoretically, but he wont. This is because hes a deep right wing plant and only gets exposure through their channels. Nobody leaning Biden is getting swooned by RFK lol

Yes, there is always going to be a group of people who feel screwed by "the system" and want to elect the person that think is most likely to shake things up. I can't imagine that life got much better for any of them under Trump, but a lot of them seem to have forgotten that in the last four years. Trump's approval rating is higher now than it was when he was president. Makes sense, because he's definitely better at holding campaign rallies and complaining about things than he is at governing.

You can't imagine that some people got a better job in the four years Trump was president?

Obviously some did, but not enough to give him higher approval ratings while he was in office. Meant to say "many" instead of "any".

i dont think antivaxxing environmental activists were voting biden to begin with, they were likely voting green party. so if you're saying he could pull a russia-shill jill stein and throw the election to trump like she did, then maybe. but i doubt he pulls anymore than she did/would.

obama-trump voters are probably people that aged into wealth during that time turning standard white guy republican, or the first cycle were just misogynists who think women are too emotional to be president.

But yeah, to touch on the OP, put me in the camp that thinks voting is mostly an exercise in futility. I'm also from Oklahoma where its fully blood red from all the prison shanks Republicans have shiv'd us with.

The only way to protest the two party system, besides not voting, is to vote 3rd party.

As much of a buffoon as Trump is, I am not in the camp that he destroyed America. Maybe made us look silly to the international audience, but I think that happens naturally.