[mikeash]

Most of those elections, at least in the US, are arranged to be a choice between two bad candidates with relatively small (even if sometimes important) differences. That's not a real choice and the fact that one of them won shouldn't be construed as approval.

[MarcusVorenus]

There are primaries and third parties, you know? That the final choice comes down to two mediocre individuals says more about the intelligence of the average voter than any sort of corporate conspiracy.

I'll give you though that the first-past-the-post system is terrible and you would be better off with a proportional system.

[task_queue]

Until third parties get the funding and backing by powerful people that already run the nation, they aren't able to produce a truly viable candidate.

They won't get the exposure. They'll be pigeonholed as the joke candidate by the well-funded machines that have interest in making sure you don't consider leaving the two-party system that's worked well for them.

Needing excessive funding and backing by elites to really be considered a candidate implies that only those who promise to uphold their interests will be portrayed as being a legitimate choice.

The option for a third party is in the specification, but we've purposely implemented it in such a way that power remains in the hands of the few.

[mikeash]

Third parties do nothing useful. Primaries could be useful, but in practice aren't.

And sure, maybe it's voter intelligence or apathy rather than some conspiracy. Doesn't matter. I'm just saying the result isn't representative and shouldn't be framed as the will of the people. I'm not saying anything about the root cause.

[MarcusVorenus]

> I'm just saying the result isn't representative and shouldn't be framed as the will of the people.

Fine, but then you can't really frame anything as being or not the will of the people as there's no point of reference. You can't say that TTIP and TPP and TISA are not the will of the people just because Reddit and a bunch of news sites like to hate on them, for instance.

[mikeash]

Sure you can. You can go see what people actually want and see how it lines up with the actions of their elected officials.

Often the two do line up. Sometimes they don't. The fact that these officials were elected doesn't automatically indicate either way.

[Veratyr]

First past the post is actually an inherently two party system [0]. It would take a monumental amount of effort to overcome that bias and an intelligent voter knows that they can't beat the system and have to work with it. Thus, the final choice for all voters is still two mediocre individuals.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo

[thaumaturgy]

Yep. Those of us who voted for Kucinich in the primaries were impressed by his fair treatment of the televised debate system and the amount of support he was able to garner from the Democratic party. I'm very grateful that we have a political system in this country in which money isn't at all a factor, because I don't know how I could handle living in a country in which wealth was directed towards those candidates that would be most likely to serve the interests of that wealth.

I bet a country like that would fall victim to a two-party system virtually over night. I wouldn't even be surprised if it ended up being a single-party system where the two parties were only superficially different.