[AnthonyMouse]

> The problem is that the US constitution was written before people realized that the natural consequence of that type of constitution is a two party system.

The two party system is a consequence of using first past the post voting, which the US constitution doesn't even require. Use score voting instead, which can be done by ordinary legislation without any constitutional amendment, and you don't have a two party system anymore.

[kelseyfrog]

Are we reading the same constitution?

Article II, Section 1

> The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President

[AnthonyMouse]

A party is a thing where multiple elected officials band together in a persistent coalition. The section you're quoting from only applies to a single elected office in the whole country. Are only two parties are going to run candidates for President when there are five or more parties in the legislature?

On top of that, that section applies to how the votes of the electoral college delegates are counted. It doesn't specify how the electoral college delegates are chosen, which it leaves up to the states. There are plenty of interesting ways of choosing them that don't result in a structural incentive for a two-party race.

[thaumasiotes]

> The section you're quoting from only applies to a single elected office in the whole country. Are only two parties are going to run candidates for President when there are five or more parties in the legislature?

I don't think it's a coincidence that every US state is structured as a smaller mirror of the federal government.

[AnthonyMouse]

It's not a coincidence because they adopted their initial constitutions at around the same time or based them on the existing states that had. But we're talking about the electoral college and none of the states use something equivalent to that to choose their governor.

Using score voting instead of FPTP for state-level offices would be a straightforward legislative change in many states and still not require any change to the US Constitution even in the states where it would require a change to the state constitution, which is generally a much lower bar to overcome than a federal constitutional amendment.

[ZeroGravitas]

I'll tell Hillary Clinton, she'll be thrilled.

[IAmBroom]

And Al Gore, while you're at it.

[Amezarak]

US "parties" are giant coalitions compared to the "parties" in parliamentary democracies. You're solving a problem that doesn't exist.

Change the American voting system tomorrow and legislators will belong to different nominal parties that end up forming precisely the same coalitions.

Love him or hate him, Trump is a great example of this - in 2016, Trump effectively formed a new party focused on anti-immigration and protectionism, which rapidly grew to dominate the "conservative" coalition. But those other parties, ranging from libertarians to the Chamber of Commerce (highly pro immigration and highly pro free trade) parties are still there in the coalition.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Change the American voting system tomorrow and legislators will belong to different nominal parties that end up forming precisely the same coalitions.

The US is extremely partisan right now and the partisanship is strongly aligned with the two major parties, not the individual coalitions that make them up. And with two parties you get polarization, because then it's all about getting 51% for a single party rather than forming temporary coalitions between various parties none of which can do anything unilaterally.

A different voting system allows you to have more than two viable parties, which changes the dynamic considerably.

[Amezarak]

Coalitions are pretty static in most parliamentary democracies except sometimes when forming governments post-election.

The 51% is for the coalition, not the party. That’s what you’re missing. CoC Republicans for example have temporarily sacrificed their immigration policies to retain legislative influence - and they are a check on the Trumpist wing passing whatever anti-immigrant legislation they want, because they too cannot act without at least tacit support from the CoC wing.

The “major party” is from a systems perspective no different than a European parliamentary governing coalition.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Coalitions are pretty static in most parliamentary democracies except sometimes when forming governments post-election.

The "except when forming governments post-election" is a major difference. It also presumes that a coalition in the legislature is required to persist for an entire election cycle rather than being formed around any given individual piece of legislation. You don't have to use a system where an individual legislator or party can prevent any other from introducing a bill and taking a vote on it.

In less partisan periods in US history, bills would often pass with the partial support of both major parties.

Moreover, the US coalitions being tied to the major parties makes them too sticky. For example, the people who want lower taxes aren't necessarily the people who want subsidies for oil companies, or increased military spending, but they've been stuck in the same "coalition" together for decades.

Suppose you want to do a carbon tax. People who don't like taxes are going to be a major opponent, so an obvious compromise would be to pass it as part of a net reduction in total taxes, e.g. reduce the federal payroll tax by more than the amount of the carbon tax. But that doesn't happen because the coalition that wants lower taxes never overlaps with the coalition that wants to do something about climate change. Meanwhile the coalition that wants lower taxes wouldn't propose a carbon tax on their own, and the coalition that wants a carbon tax to increase overall government revenue gets shot down because that would be extremely unpopular, so instead it never happens.

[Amezarak]

All countries have these problems which vary by the local political environment and history. Multiple European countries are facing particularly absurd varieties of these dilemmas because of their refusal to form coalitions with the second or third largest party in their country.

[AnthonyMouse]

Again, it seems like the flaw is in trying to form a long-term coalition instead of just passing the bills that have enough support to pass when you put them up for a vote among all the people who were actually elected. Why should anyone have to give a crap what someone else's position is on immigration when the bill in question is on copyright reform or tax incentives for solar panels?