[LindeBuzoGray]

> try to disincentivize radical politics inside the parties

Average inflation-adjusted weekly earnings were higher in the 1970s then now. The average inflation adjusted hourly wage is lower than what it was a half century ago. A the growth in the past half century has been hoovered up by the heirs, by the aristocracy. This has a naturally radicalizing effect, and changing election laws will not change anything other than send that radicalization to the streets.

[chargingmarmot]

I don't disagree with you about the problems related to wealth distribution. (I just watched the documentary "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" about 2 days ago and so I'm feeling primed there.)

I do think you're being excessively cynical about electoral reform.

Ultimately, we live in a democracy, and voters have power. The parties putting forward these reforms are advocating for things like democracy vouchers:

https://democracypolicy.network/agenda/open-country/open-gov...

which is a very anti-oligarchic/anti-plutocratic measure.

Reforms like instant runoff voting make third parties more viable by eliminating spoiler effects. In our present system, if you run as (or vote for) (say) a socialist candidate, you end up helping the right-wing by preferentially stealing votes from the moderate left-wing candidate. In this scenario, it's not rational for you to participate in politics because you end up hurting your own interests. Electoral reform can eliminate the perverse incentives here. In this scenario you can imagine the socialist candidate would say, "Hi, I'm the socialist, I care about issue X; and make your option 2 the green party candidate because of issue Y; or your option 3 the democrat because of issue Z". There are incentives for politicians to act civilly (since transferable votes mean they no longer strictly compete) and to offer better options to voters.

See: "Electoral rules discourage problem-solving and reward conflict" in https://www.americanprogress.org/article/its-time-to-talk-ab...

[dragonwriter]

> Reforms like instant runoff voting make third parties more viable by eliminating spoiler effects.

IRV doesn't eliminate spoiler effects, it just makes them more complex by creating more points where they apply.

It also isn't at all good among single-winner ranked-ballots methods for making more parties viable, and in any case, the by-far best way to make more parties viable is to have legislative elections not run in winner-take-all races, but in multiseat races with an election method that has proportional results (STV in small multimember districts is the easiest candidate focussed system. Party List PR at the whole-legislature level is what most peoole think of when you hear “proportional” systems, and there are a large number of alternatives that are largely in-between those poles in some sense.)

[chargingmarmot]

I shouldn't have said "eliminate". I'll defer to:

https://electionscience.org/library/the-spoiler-effect/

or

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_electoral_system...

I don't really have a strong preference for IRV (over, say, approval or score voting), but it does seem to be widely accepted as an improvement over first-past-the-post and also an option that has a realistic chance of adoption (due to slotting into existing electoral schemes without giant overhauls).