[rich_sasha]

Interestingly, a similar issue befell UK politics in the small few last decades. It is basically two party - two parties get >90% of the seats, then there's a plethora of small parties.

What happened in the last election, for example, is that "small C" conservative voters had no one to vote for. The actual Conservative party was unelectable, mired by scandals and gross incompetence. Labour party, the other one of the two, was anathema. Taking smaller steps to the left or right, you have the Liberal party or Reform, neither of which had any chances of getting a significant number of seats in the parlament.

In a healthy multi-party system, some other "small c" Conservative party would spring up to hoover up the votes. As it is, people had the choice of voting for a party widely seen as incompetent (including by its own sympathisers), a party that wants the opposite of everything they like, or a fringe party with no chance of shaping UK politics.

I have some theories as to why these happen at the same time... But anyway, it's not a uniquely American phenomenon.

[defrost]

It's a consequence of voting systems and one that First Past the Post systems (such as the UK House of Commons) are prone to.

People who are (say) Left-ish but not full blown supportes of BigLeftParty have the choice of voting for the major Left Party or an alternative left faction .. which is a wasted vote in a tight FPtP contest.

Worse a not BigLeftParty vote is one that effectively supports the major Right Party as it lowers the count for BigLeft.

Preference systems, Ranked Systems (there are variations) allow for direct first preference votes for a variationLeft Party with secondary fallback BigLeft preferences.

The direct support for not the main platform shows and causes deals to be made, the votes that fail to elect a variation still fall through and support the LeftWing while allowing the growth of alternative views.

Ranked voting fosters a healthy ecosystem of alternative smaller parties which can then grow, take seats, and help better represent the population at large with a diverse range of views, not just the BigTwo which end up as slightly variations of things not many support.

[rich_sasha]

I suppose UK politics with a more representative voting system would actually be a multi-party system. Last election, Labour and Conservative got 60% of the vote, and neither would be close to a majority on its own. And that's already with some people voting tactically.

So I guess the two are inextricably linked.

[kayo_20211030]

Yes. The rules of the game are the rules of the game, or at least until some nutjob tears up the rule book. It's inextricably linked. So, we play by the rules.

In the UK, if a small-c Conservative has no one to vote for, that citizen should ask themselves whether there's someone they really should vote against and cast their vote accordingly, holding their nose if they must. In the last UK election, I didn't get the impressions that either side was particularly dangerous to democracy or order, so maybe an abstention is justified. I think that this upcoming US election is a little different.

Weimar Germany had a proportional system and the responsibility of actively voting against Hitler moved from the citizen to the citizen's representative in the Reichstag. The SPD just couldn't bring themselves to support the KPD and box the Nazi's out. They opted to temporize and accommodate. Then the rule book was torn up, and it all went to hell in a handbasket.

Both electoral systems can exhibit pathologies if the parties responsibly for saying "no", the citizen in a FPTP system, or their representative in a PR system fail in their responsibility.

[defrost]

While it feels complete to see a comment literally "both sides"'ing electoral voting systems in a full Godwin's law sense, the issue isn't whether "both electoral systems" can exhibit pathologies.

( Addressed in a peer comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41961834 )

The question is which systems have fewer pathologies, less often and with smaller consequences.

Iteratively spiralling open field non party demographics into a non representative two party stand off is not a desirable outcome.

[kayo_20211030]

I agree. The pathologies are strange though. At the extreme, one is a vacillating/occasional hegemony (FPTP) and the other is parliamentary paralysis (PR). I'm inclined to PR as a better system, but it has some weird outliers.