[nikitaga]

Because US election system does not reflect the will of the population, or even the voting population. FPTP is a highly deficient system that results in the same two parties staying in power indefinitely, which is only marginally better than a single party state. So, I find it hard to blame the population for the politicians they elect in this case. US elections are a lot more constrained by the ruling class and the laws passed by said ruling class than in many European countries for example. USSR had elections too, you know. Doesn't mean there was any freedom or democracy.

[noduerme]

Just my on-the-ground view as an American, I've seen both major parties in this country change radically in my lifetime to the point of being unrecognizable. In the case of the Republican party this has happened twice.

The USSR had only one Party, but intra-party politics were all the more fierce as a result. I'm not saying that a full or even reasonably varied spectrum of true, non-spectacular or intelligent alternatives are being presented to the American voter. Just that what a 2-party system lacks in superficial variety it may more than make up for in internecine disagreement.

The ideological spread between Joe Manchin and AOC covers most of the ground covered by center and left European parties.

[nikitaga]

> The ideological spread between Joe Manchin and AOC covers most of the ground covered by center and left European parties.

Most Americans don't have the option to vote for AOC or Joe Manchin (nor for their ideological equivalents). Neither for congress, nor for the President. They get shit candidates and still vote for them because the only viable alternative is an even worse candidate from a party you hate more than the other one. This is very much by design of FPTP, because it prevents third party competition from posing any threat to established parties. The two parties just pick their ideologies from a list of hot topics and never face any competition for the implementation of those ideologies.

This is very much not the case in more proportional voting systems, which provide true political competition across the political spectrum, not just superficial ideological posturing that isn't subject to competition. This is all very well known both practically and academically with tons of research to back it up. Youtube and wikipedia have all the mechanics, the references, and real world data, spelled out.

> Just that what a 2-party system lacks in superficial variety it may more than make up for in internecine disagreement

Sure, a political duopoly is better than a monopoly, but just like in other markets, only slightly so. Political power is a market like any other market, and needs significant competition from more than a couple actors to produce outcomes that are best for the consumers (voters). Even that AmEx case is a prime example, a direct result of shitty parties produced by this shitty election system. And that result will stay here for decades if not forever, regardless of which party is in power, because this election system is not going anywhere, and will keep producing such results.

[biztos]

I used to be really impressed with European-style proportional representation, until I spent a lot of time in Germany.

I still prefer it to two-party system, but the last German election ultimately came down to two wet-noodle candidates absolutely nobody liked nor respected, and one of the wet noodles won. Now the establishment lumbers on, having lacked anything like a political vision for generations now.

I really wish there were more of a market of systems in the world, so we could think bigger. Probably wouldn't matter to the US, but just in principle.

[noduerme]

>> Most Americans don't have the option to vote for AOC or Joe Manchin (nor for their ideological equivalents). Neither for congress, nor for the President.

But Americans do usually have a wide variety of choices in the primaries. It's the primaries where the actual policy ideological positions are fought out. There would be no AOC - or MTG, for that matter - but for some highly motivated sets of voters with various axes to grind. However, most Americans prefer political gridlock to any well-tuned agenda. The reason AOC and MTG are outliers is because most nominees are forced to run toward the center in general elections, and govern toward the center if they win. Yeah, this is why they mostly end up endorsing corporate handouts, and we can all decry it, but it's arguably a lot better than letting the more extreme left or right-wing agendas come in and flip the table.

Considering other presidential systems, look how close France was recently, to Marine Le Pen and genuine fascism. Or how quickly Venezuela turned into a one-party state under Chavez. Consider how close we were to Trump replacing the elected government.

The status quo in which corporations call the shots and banks rob everyone has been de rigeuer in America since the 18th C. This is an unfortunate but ultimately comprehensible state of Hobbesian chaos. The weakness of narrow-agenda political parties is the strength of that economic engine, and we are all - all of us with cars, houses, tech jobs, and money to blow on vacations and dinners - beneficiaries of a system that moves very, very incrementally and doesn't try to steer a tanker like a speedboat.

[nikitaga]

> how close France was recently, to Marine Le Pen and genuine fascism. Or how quickly Venezuela turned into a one-party state under Chavez.

People who have strong opinions against proportional representation invariably seem to be completely uninformed about its particulars, and love nothing more than to bring up random countries that they know nothing about and that have little to do with proportional representation, or blame all the country's problems on an election system for no reason.

1) Both French and Venezuelian presidential elections were held under a simple voting system that is a lot closer to FPTP than to proportional representation in its mechanics. The only difference from FPTP is that they have a second round between the two candidates who got the most votes. In the US two party system that second round wouldn't make any difference 99% of the time.

2) It takes some epic lack of self awareness to complain about some right wing loser in another country, when your own country's FPTP system elected Trump despite him losing the popular vote, and then almost elected him again. Whereas the French loser you're complaining about lost 66%-to-34%, and even worse than that the previous time she ran.

3) Venezuela's problems have nothing to do with their election system. Nor do presidential elections have anything to do with proportional representation. But if you like looking at random countries and assigning all their problems to their voting systems, why don't you look at this map and tell me how well those countries have been served by FPTP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting#/me...

> most Americans prefer political gridlock to any well-tuned agenda

You don't know what Americans prefer, because currently they are exhibiting their preferences under duress. The primaries only serve to choose a candidate who will be "electable" under a broken FPTP system come election time – it is a losing proposition from the very start. Americans are only given the illusion of choice, with all the fanfare to keep them happy. They never see any real choice the way people living in proportional representation countries do.

> a lot better than letting the more extreme left or right-wing agendas come in and flip the table.

Lol. US politics is disintegrating largely because of FPTP elections, UK did Brexit largely because of FPTP elections, you think other countries on that FPTP map are doing much better? Proportional representation systems are a lot better at keeping extremists out of power, because in FPTP extremists hijack mainstream parties who win elections and end up governing.

In proportional representation systems, extremists get elected in small quantities and then productive coalitions form to keep them out of power, so they end up just warming the seats in parliament instead of destroying the country. This isn't just my opinion, it's been studied, researched and proven. Look. It. Up.

[nl]

I don't think any of your points are wrong, but you neglected to address properly the substantial and useful point the person you are replying to made: That it's the primaries in the US system that provide citizen driven democracy.

That's a fair point, and a meaningful one too.

> The primaries only serve to choose a candidate who will be "electable" under a broken FPTP system come election time – it is a losing proposition from the very start. Americans are only given the illusion of choice, with all the fanfare to keep them happy.

Well there's clearly some evidence this isn't the case. 2 out of the last 3 presidents (Obama and Trump) were not the pre-ordained establishment candidate, and it was broad popularity by primary voters that caused them to become the candidate.

[nikitaga]

Their "broad popularity" only ever existed in the context of US FPTP election, in the context of a two-party system. If Americans had the option to vote for e.g. greens or labour or fiscal but-not-social conservatives, neither Obama nor Trump would be as popular. But Americans don't have such options, because even though some of them are right there on the ballot, voting for anyone but the two major parties under FPTP is literally throwing your vote away.

And it's not any different in primaries. Primaries are also FPTP, with all the same mechanics. The notion that you're better off voting your heart in primaries without consideration for all the standard FPTP mechanics making your vote useless is just another lie to make Americans feel better about their broken system, and is not backed by any math.

[refurb]

What evidence do you have that the politicians elected would be any different under a different system?

I mean, San Francisco uses ranked choice and they ended up through a fluke with some District Attorney who everyone hates.

You may just want to consider that although you may not like the outcome, many voters do?

[crooked-v]

Also, the basic structure of the Senate means that a clear majority of the country is represented by a clear minority of Senators.

[rsj_hn]

That's the purpose of the Senate. The Senate is there to represent states, not people.

The House is there to represent people.

Both need to agree in order to get something done. This ensures that something that is passed is approved by a majority of people and a majority of states.

Otherwise, without this proposition, the states might not have ratified the constitution - the states predate the nation, and the nation is a union of states. This method of government is called "Federalism".

[TulliusCicero]

You can have federalism without anti-democratic institutions like the Senate. If the Senate was abolished or starting apportioning senators by population, the US would remain federalist, because there'd still be plenty of powers devolved to the states. That's what makes it federalist.

[shapefrog]

> anti-democratic institutions like the Senate

Representitive democracy is anti-democratic, not allowing babies to vote is anti-deomcratic. Based on the role purpose of the Senate, its more democratic that those examples.

Its purpose is 2 votes per state, with representitives elected by the people of those states.

You may not like that that is its role, and that is fine, but you can not say it would be more democratic if some states had more votes in the same way it would not be more democratic for some people to have more votes.

[TulliusCicero]

Democracy is rule by the people, so yes, the current setup is anti-democratic, precisely because it gives greater representation and voting power to some people than others.

Each person's vote for a senator in Wyoming is worth 50x or more what it is in California. That's wrong, and it's anti-democratic. People ought to be on an even playing field.

[kortilla]

> Wyoming is worth 50x or more what it is in California.

No it’s not, they are different elections. The people in Wyoming are voting for who they want to represent their state’s power.

What you’re arguing is that the state should not have power on its own. There would be literally no purpose to the senate if it were proportional to the people.

[rsj_hn]

No, you can't. The only way you can truly prevent states from having their interests overriden by a majority of the nation is to give them a direct role in the legislative process.

Democracy is three wolves and two sheep voting on what to have for dinner. It's last thing we want. So when the three wolves invite the two sheep to join them in a democracy, the sheep wisely say "Not a democracy, but a federal union, with an upper house in which votes are allocated by species rather than population, then we will join your nation". Now the wolves may moan that this is anti-democratic, but they agreed to it, as that's the price paid for getting the sheep to join with the wolves. The sheep are the small states, and the wolves are the large states.

So anti-democratic structures are good. But at the same time, giving the population input is also good. We want popular pressures to have a veto, but not to be able to force legislation onto states without their consent.

Similarly, we want the states to have a veto but not to force their legislation onto the nation as a whole without the public's consent.

This is the balance -- a mechanism to limit mob rule while also requiring mob consent. Seriously this is not some strange thing I should have to explain -- these issues were all debated during the discussions surrounding the adoption of the constitution, as you can read in the Federalist Papers. See especially no. 10.

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-10-02-017...

It is why we do not live in a democracy, but in a Federal Republic. The house is the hotbed of populism, that's where all the crazy stuff happens, and the senate is the moderating force that can filter it out. The house then has to moderate its positions and pass something that the states also consent to.

And that's exactly how it's played out. The senate always moderates or blocks extremist measures coming out of the house. The founders were amazingly prescient.

Moreover this obviously leads to better and more stable government. Control of the house flips from red to blue to red every 5-8 years. Now imagine a nation's entire base of laws constantly flipping back and forth that often.

As an example, when the GOP controlled the house in 2017 they tried to pass a tax bill to completely eliminate the SALT deduction. The Senate moderated that to 10K max. Now the democrats control the house and they want to make it (effectively) unlimited again. The Senate will block that. In 2024, say when the GOP is back in control of the house, they will try to eliminate it again. The Senate will block that. The 2017 house eliminated Obama's ACA -- but the Senate blocked that. Just think of all the whipsaws in policy we would have if healthcare is massively reconfigured every 4 years. So you need to do more than just get 51% to redo healthcare in America. That's how it should be. Yes, it's anti-democratic, but thinking you can rewrite a nation's laws with 51% is foolishness. It's a recipe for secession and civil war.

In other words, going from 49% to 51% doesn't mean you go from 0 to 100% power, but rather you have to settle for 48% of what you want, and then 51% of what you want. The removal of that discontinuity creates stability in government.

It is intentionally, and wisely, anti-democratic, while also being intentionally, and wisely, anti-aristocratic. Both sides need to come to a compromise, and this stability is why our constitution has lasted as long as it has.

[notfromhere]

States don’t have interests, states are a pass through entity for the people they represent. The current structure disenfranchises the people actually living in those states. They’re semi autonomous provinces, not independent nations in a confederation (especially since we’ve settled the question of whether anyone can leave the union).

The voting blocs aren’t between small states and large states, those basically don’t and haven’t existed for a long time. The senate is not a moderating body; the founders entirely failed to account for political parties.

The constitution isn’t a suicide pact, the founders lived in a completely different world, and it’s very apparent that the US federal government system is dysfunctional and failing.

The US legislature is designed to not do much, especially with the filibuster. Which is a huge problem when there are a succession of crises that the legislature has failed to address.

[TulliusCicero]

States' interests matter and should be explicitly represented at the state level.

But we're not talking about the state level, we're talking about the federal level. Senators are there to represent the people of their state, and the fact that some people get vastly more representation than others is wrong. People should be as equal as possible for a given playing field.

Funny how the people arguing that it's okay to do this to protect 'minorities' are never, ever okay with doing this for any other minorities. Give extra voting power to people in low pop states to shield them from the majority? Great! Give extra votes to black people, or Asians, or Muslims, or Jews? Uhhhhhh, no, no thank you.

[cercatrova]

How do you deal with the problem of the US population becoming more urbanized such that eventually we might have 70% Republican states to 30% Democratic ones? The Senate then becomes a purely Republican controlled one.

[rsj_hn]

That's extremely unlikely, but let's hypothesize a situation in which 70% of the states are rural Republican and 30% are urban Democrat. So the GOP always controls the senate and Dems always control the House. Then you either form something like a coalitional government where both sides have a veto, which in your scenario would be just the status quo, or you negotiate some kind of split.

This would be like the scenario where Lebanon assigns fixed seats for christian/muslim votes.

The issue with geographic states as minorities - as opposed to other minority categories -- say bald men -- is the geographic group is a functioning community and it can secede, so you have to decide whether you want to keep them in the country or not.

This goes back to the original debates in the constitution, where the smaller population states weren't willing to be a part of the country unless they were given a veto.

Nothing about that has changed.

It's just like when you have a team -- 10 developers with 6 feeling strongly to do A and 4 feeling strongly to do not A. Well, you find some compromise where both sides agree, because you if force A, and you do that over and over where the same group of 4 keep having their ideas overriden, then you lose 4 developers from your team. They secede as there is no reason for them to be a part of a team that keeps overriding them, and they can walk.

So if the 70% of your states are constantly having policies shoved down their throats that are extremely hated, then you are going to lose those states.

Now you can say, "no if they try to secede we will crush them militarily" and now the mask comes off that this is about domination and the imposition of the will, which suddenly undermines the whole concern for fairness and democracy.

So you are back to requiring a compromise. If you have 51% of the population, you should get 51% of what you want. Not 100%. And this power discontinuity is a well understood defect of the democratic decison making process -- e.g. it's not representative, whereas a consensus decision making process is more representative. In the consensus process, you give a veto to the minority. Now which minority gets the veto? Well, the founders selected the small state to be the minority because they can actually walk. Not bald men. So due to the underlying dynamics to keep the nation together, we give the rural states disproportinately a bit more power.

[CRConrad]

> That's the purpose of the Senate. The Senate is there to represent states, not people.

But what are "states", if not the people in them? Land area? Then Texas and Alaska should have what, hundreds of senators for each of Rhode Island's?

[refurb]

That a feature, not a bug.

[nyokodo]

> FPTP is a highly deficient system that results in the same two parties staying in power indefinitely

New Zealand has used MMP for 25 years and yet it still dithers between two major parties. Minor parties do tend to have to be incorporated into coalitions with one or the other major party, which is something, however, they’re almost always the same minor parties falling along the left right divide. Electoral systems do have an effect and they are setup to make it hard to radically change the system, however, they strengthen they don’t create the two party dynamic. Two major parties aligned with common human biases always seem to spring up when people are free to choose.

[Jensson]

But MMP means that if people are really unhappy with the current system then a new party will appear. Trump wouldn't have been a republican, instead he would have been the leader of the new right, similar to how many such parties popped up like mushrooms all over Europe. They weren't old parties that got reformed, they were new parties created as a response to people demanding such parties.

You are right that such changes are rare, they certainly don't happen once every 25 years, but the fact that they can happen is really important. Otherwise you are left with situations like current USA where many wants to vote for lower taxes but don't want to support Trumps other political views, in Europe you just vote for another right wing party but what do you do in USA?

Similarly you have many people who wants to vote for higher taxes and more government programs, but don't want to vote for all the identity politics. What should they vote for? Now the entire left is associated with identity politics and the entire right is associated with opposition to identity politics, making it hard to distinguish between different views and probably making the whole political conversation way more toxic than it needs to be. It has gotten to the point that people often assume you are racist if you argue for lower taxes etc.

[nikitaga]

You really should look deeper into how New Zealand lawmaking and governance works if you think their situation is anywhere close to the US just because they also have big parties. The two systems (and outcomes) couldn't be further apart.

MMP in NZ has increased competition and brought effective collaborative governments, and it hasn't even been 30 years.

[thaumasiotes]

Using a different system to get the same outcome doesn't disprove your parent's claim. That claim is most definitely false though; Canada uses plurality voting.

(For reference, the Canadian House of Commons, according to Wikipedia's footer, divides into 158 Liberals, 119 Conservatives, 33 Québécois, 25 New Democrats, 2 Greens, and 1 Independent.

The Senate divides into 41 Independents, 20 Conservatives, 12 Canadians, 12 Progressives, and 8 non-affiliated, which last category raises interesting questions about the meaning of "Independent".)

It's worth noting that the American two-party system is explicitly protected by many laws that grant special privileges to "the two largest parties" or some similar category; it doesn't rely on the electoral system at all. If other parties got equal treatment before the law, you might see more of them around.

[nikitaga]

Canada has FPTP just like the US, the slight differences in implementation explain the slightly better outcomes, but that's about it. Don't know how that disproves anything.

The last time Canada had anyone other than conservatives or liberals govern the country was more than 100 years ago. [1] What kind of opposition is warming the rest of the parliament seats doesn't matter all that much, because just like in the US, there is no culture of inter-party collaboration in Canada, because there is no need for it: minority governments are rare (thanks to FPTP). This is very much unlike countries with proportional representation, where coalition governments are the norm, because when stupid voting mechanics are not protecting the duopoly, no single party is ever good enough to capture more than half of the vote.

The senate in Canada isn't even elected, senators are appointed by the Prime Minister. And it doesn't have the same prominent role as the US senate. So I've no idea what are you trying to say here.

FPTP favors the two biggest parties by a huge margin. It's damn math, it's been proven decades ago. Look it up.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_federal_gener...

[jklein11]

Okay - I'll be the one that asks. What does FPTP stand for?

[matthewsinclair]

As far as I know, it’s “first past the post” [0] isn’t it?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting

[humaniania]

Interesting vocabulary choices.