IRV

I have heard many people complaining that the two major political parties in the United States do not accurately represent their views.  It seems to me that if there were more parties to choose from, there would be more candidates to choose from, and people could pick from a greater selection, allowing the selection of a candidate whose viewpoints are more closely aligned with the voters in question. 

Consider this: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRV

What do you all think?

It's a good idea, but I have to wonder if it's just too damn complicated for America.  Yeah, amerikkans are dum lol, but honestly, voters in Florida couldn't handle a butterfly ballot.  Besides, IRV wouldn't fix the two-party system; the only thing IRV would accomplish right now is solve the problem of "wasting" your vote on a third party, or third parties "stealing" votes from one of the two big ones.

The way to fix the two party system is by abolishing the Electoral College.  Then we can consider IRV.

How would abolishing the Electoral College fix the two party system?

Well, it wouldn't fix it on its own, but removing the Electoral College is the first step to breaking down the two party system.  With the Electoral College, the two party system will never die.

a multi party system divides voters too much and you end up with a party winning with like 20% of the vote and bullshit like that

The reason why the US has a 2 party system is due to the coalition effect. Take equally libertarian Switzerland as an example.

It describes the balance between how much extremist views are permitted into mainstream politics and how much extremists are willing to sacrifice in order to get their view across. Small countries like Switzerland can afford to have direct democracy and many major parties since it has a population of just 7 million all in the same region who work in similiar economies with similiar culture. It has 4 major parties and any petition against a law passed which gets 50000 signatures (0.7% of the population, comparitively 2 million of the US population) within 100 days is turned into a referendum. They can afford this simply because people tend to agree with each other and it doesn't take long for everyone's views to be represented. As a result they can afford to give people with unpopular views more power without compromising the moderation of the government. Having 4 parties is better for political grou's interests than having 2 heavily moderated parties.

This just wouldn't be possible in the US with a population of 300 million seperated into 50 states and a huge variety of political views, different economies and cultures, and usually in the same regions. There must be more than 50000 each of hardcore racists, communists, criminal groups and religious whackos in the US of all different shapes and sizes, not to mention widely differring views on crime, social security, immigration, public safety, taxation etc etc.. If every group's interests were equally represented, central government would become completely chaotic and the result would be none of these groups would get any representation and the government would be incapable of moderation. As a result these groups combine their power and agree to support each other's issues, of course choosing to ally with groups who's ideas do not conflict with their own, allowing some moderation in order to achieve mutual benefit. Since competing political parties in a democracy tend to polarise into opposition and support against and for the current ruling party, political groups opposed to the ruling party will inevitably side with the most powerful opposing party. The less popular political groups who's support and conflicting views does not give an incentive to either of the 2 major parties to accept their admittance will find their way into a moderate 3rd party with very loose ideals, sometimes termed the waste basket party. This rarely occurs in 3 or more party systems since the amount of influencial parties tends to accomodate all popular political groups and the unpopular extremist views find their way into the many extremist parties that each country has in the closet somewhere. The result is an increase in the heavy hand of the government, since it is too hard to tailor laws to fit small regions and laws tend to be broad and sometimes over-bearing in certain areas and socio-economic sectors.

The weimar republic is an example of why a low number of political parties is more desirable in a large country, even if it slows down the admittance of good ideas. Major issues were capitalised on by the nazi and comunist extremists as all extremists do, except the weimar republic allowed them a legitimate position in the reichstag even if their support was small. They were not a small action group which shocks the major parties into action, they were actual powers with an effect on the country and your vote for them was not just a protest vote. The division between the many moderate parties also exacerbated the problem, since people believed that they were too distant from the extremist groups to take any notice of the issues they wanted resolved. Being extremists it only took a small proportion of the seats in the reichstag to begin to generate enough instability for Hitler's tyranny to have it's first effects. The communists lost support due to Stalin's reputation and Hitler won.

The 2 party system allows a popular opposition to the ruling party and countries of astronomical size can use it as both parties compete for more voters, but use their power to attract otherwise extremist voters without having to accept their extreme views.

Post #6, IRV would negate just about all the negatives of a multiple party system you had to list.  A multiple party system with IRV would be ideal, no?

>>7
As long as those who get places 3+ don't have any real political power.

>>7
Actually that wouldn't work since no one is going to put a competitive party in 2nd place and they may not put the wastebasket in it's place.

As long as those who get places =>2 don't have any real political power.*

>>9

So? The purpose of IRV is only partially to help out 3rd parties... Moreso, it's to get a more accurate depiction of the people's views.  If, for example, in the 2008 election(supposing IRV was instituted at that time):

Percentage of people        Party

1ST CHOICE

35%                          Democrat
35%                          Republican

2ND CHOICE
15%                          Libertarian
15%                          Green Party


If people voted this way, then it would be clear that the Democrats should, if they want to attract more Green/Libertarian votes when it comes to voting for your PRIMARY choice, introduce  some degree of green and or libertarian-leaning legislation or something.  The point is, under a system like this, it would give minority parties in the country SOME voice, rather than none..

Likewise, if the Republicans looked at this, they would realize, if they wanted to attract some green/libertarian votes, they may wish to follow a more libertarian/republican policy than the one they were doing previously. 

In other words, helping 3rd parties is only half of it.. the extra benefit is that it gives smaller parties some influence, rather than none, in policy.  (And they should have /some/ influence, not none, as people deserve to be represented, no?)

Likewise, since it is a democratic system, the amount of influence they would have over the PRIMARY parties would be dependent upon the number of secondary votes the corresponding secondary parties recieved.

Oh, by the way, I just happen to know of the Green/Libertarian parties.... you could insert whatever other 3rd parties you want into those categories if you prefer... the point remains the same.  Those parties were simply the ones that came to mind at the time I wrote that up.. and I only used two for the sake of simplicity.

It would institute a sort of 'competition' among the parties, moreso than it is now, where if you are a 'liberal' you vote dem, and if you are a 'conservative', you vote republican, even though both terms could mean any number of things from libertarian to statist...

>>1

It seems like this would be a good idea.  If I'm not mistaken, we already have IRV in some counties of the United States.  We should work to spread it. 

"voters preferred IRV to the old system by a 4:1 margin."

http://rankedchoice.blogspot.com/2006/04/voters-can-handle-instant-runoff.html

Join the campaign for spoiler-free voting. 

http://www.fairvote.org/irv/

This would blast away the whole democrat bullshit:  "zomg vote green=stealing our votes!!!!"

Or, for that matter, demos or repubs who vote any other 3rd party... libertarian or any other.