[PieTime]

When I see sub 40 percent approval rate for both parties in congress… we’ve almost reached the moment where a majority of people believe both democrats and republicans have a negative view yet the 3rd parties will remain elusive due to gerrymandering districts.

[danaris]

Third parties are nonviable in most of the US due to our voting system.

In order to make it mathematically possible for a third party to compete, we need to switch to something with more nuance than single vote, first-past-the-post winner-take-all elections. Ranked Choice Voting has some momentum right now, and AFAICT is no worse than any of the other options (they all fail in certain edge cases, I believe; it's just a matter of which ones).

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

RCV also has the advantage of being relatively understandable for the layperson unlike some of the more esoteric ones I’ve seen

[jfengel]

As I understand it, Ranked Choice Voting is still winner-take-all, and that's the real problem. There's still only one winner, and that person is rarely anybody's first choice.

People might appreciate having had the chance to express their first choice, but when they're forced to settle for their second, third... hundredth choice, I'm not sure they'll be any happier.

There are ways to do away with the single-winner system, such as party lists. They, too, have drawbacks, but they'd at least be different drawbacks.

[danaris]

Changing the voting method is much easier than changing to proportional representation, or any other means of avoiding a single winner. The former is something that's under control of the states. I...think the latter would require an amendment to the Constitution for Congress, and changing the nature of the Presidency definitely would.

Even just allowing people to provide more than one vote means that people can support third-party candidates without that vote effectively robbing their preferred major-party candidate of a vote. (eg, if you're broadly left-wing, and like the Green Party, you can rank their candidate first, then the Democratic candidate second—and then if the Green Party candidate doesn't win, your vote counts for the Democrat) That's a big, big change.

[JumpCrisscross]

> I...think the latter would require an amendment to the Constitution for Congress

I don’t think it does [1].

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlei#section4

[vcryan]

Yes, I have absolute disdain for both parties.

[cameldrv]

This is because very few people have even an extremely rough understanding of the difficulties our nation (and world) are facing. This is an very difficult situation for a democracy. When people are confused about important matters, the most reassuring thing is to be told that there is a fairly simple and understandable solution, and that they should just let the adults get in there and solve it. People will always vote for people who say these things. The reality is that we've gotten ourselves into knots upon knots upon knots.

[hkpack]

I don't know why downvotes but that statement is true.

Population is confused on what the actual problems are vote for politicians solving wrong problems making things worse.

[jfengel]

Congress' approval ratings are always under 40%, and have been for as long as they've been taking data.

And yet most actual Congressmen have a high approval rating within their district. Incumbents have an extremely high return rate.

The problem is never your Congressperson. It's always because Congress is filled with other districts' Congresspeople.

I don't think you'll fix that by un-gerrymandering. If anything, I bet you'll get even higher approval ratings for the incumbents, since you'll have fewer "cracked" districts (boundaries drawn to make a group a minority in two districts instead of the majority in one).

Ending gerrymandering might get a Congress that better reflects what people want. But mostly, what people want is for "the other guys" (whoever is not in your party) to win.