Our broken electoral system put us in this position, and the drawbacks of first past the post voting positioned Donald Trump to win through that broken electoral process. Only 45% of Republican Primary voters voted for Donald Trump to be the nominee of the Republican Party. The other 55% split the vote between sixteen other competitors. However, all those competitors lost because they ran against each other, and instead of that 55% settling on a candidate a large minority (still a minority) gamed the Party and put the least qualified man in charge of their movement because he was the loudest.
So while I appreciate that you have all-caps passion defending our current system, the voting system you are defending as necessary has put a fringe candidate with no qualifications into the White House. I despise the outcome First Past the Post has given us, the majority of Americans are not happy with what first past the post voting spat out of the Republican Primary, and while some others may think we should just put better people into that system, I feel that's a good reason to examine a new system.
I'm confused as to why you're condemning our system for this result and advocating a multiparty system instead when it is routine for presidents/prime ministers in multiparty systems to enter office with much smaller percentages of the vote than that. Yes, first-past-the-post elected a demagogue this time around, but there is nothing in first-past-the-post that makes it more vulnerable to demagogues and nothing in a multiparty system that insulates it from them. A multiparty system elected Hitler, after all, and with just 33% of the vote. If you had been a German in 1934, would you be condemning the multiparty system for the result and advocating for a switch to first-past-the-post? But fast-forward to today: the Federal Republic of Germany still uses a multiparty system, but instead of Hitler they've got the humane and highly competent Angela Merkel (who took office with 35% of the vote, by the way). And looking back at our own system, out of forty-five presidents, we've only elected one Trump. Empirically, both systems seem to have pretty good track records, but nevertheless are still capable of occasionally failing in the face of demagoguery and a populace willing to fall for it.
So maybe take a step back and take an examination of your own reasoning here. Because, bluntly, all I see is sour grapes.
I'm going to need you to give me more specifics here because Hitler didn't enter power because he was elected as head of state. From what I'm reading, he was appointed Chancellor by the man that actually won the election with 53% of the vote in the second round of voting, and then Hitler snuck power to himself and the Nazis through parliamentary acts rather than gaining a majority.
And since I'm on a time crunch at a moment, I'm not picking up on how parliamentarian selection of the chancellor works beyond secret ballot, so citizens technically didn't elect Angela Merkel, they elected the people that elected her, and I think that even then that requires a majority of Parliament in to be declared the victor. I'm not entirely sure because Wikipedia only has this vague statement on that process:
Quote from Wikipedia article »
Every four years, after national elections and the convocation of the newly elected members of the Bundestag ("Federal Diet", the lower house of the German Federal Parliament), the Federal Chancellor is elected by a majority of the members of the Bundestag upon the proposal of the President (Bundespräsident, literally "Federal President"). This vote is one of the few cases in which a decision requires a favoring majority of all elected members of the Bundestag, not just a majority of those assembled at the time. This is referred to as the Kanzlermehrheit (chancellor's majority), and is intended to ensure the establishment of a stable government. It has in the past occasionally forced ill or pregnant members to have to attend parliament when a party's majority was only slim.
Edit: upon further reading I found the link I'm editing in below explains the current German Chancellor process better than Wikipedia. Essentially there must be a majority (half +1) for a chancellor to be named. A plurality of the vote is not accepted except as a last resort. If that majority fails on the first try, there is one more attempt before their government will settle for a plurality of the vote instead. It should be noted that Chancellor voting has so far not ever needed to go to the second round accordingly because either the winning party received a mandate or negotiated the votes with parties that are entering the Parliament.
I feel like your comparisons, well at least the Hitler one, don't survive under scrutiny. I'm going to need to know more about German modern elections, but my first impression is that they select by majority selection rather than plurality of the vote like that exists in the United States.
This is actually a little off topic from ranked choice voting, but funneling Greens (and other left political positions) into the Democrat Party while the Republicans funnel Libertarians, Constitution Party, and other definitely at best adjacent right wing issues (and at worst extremist) is it amplifies societal echo chambers/political polarization/split.
Walk me through the logic behind saying that big tent parties are worse echo chambers than small special-interest parties. Certainly the Communists I know who are willing to work with the Democrats are not nearly as batty as the Communists who only hang out with other Communists. Ditto Libertarians et al.
From what I'm reading, big tent parties have more trouble adjusting to major changes than a coalition of smaller parties. There's also that the discussion of ideas is either limited by both big tent parties having blind spots to the issue or by the issue being whittled down to two different viewpoints, cutting off discussion of other ways (ie. the environment is being addressed right now by not being addressed because it cuts into big business, but during the election in addition to that there was gradual change as proposed by Clinton and making the shifts an emergency priority as proposed by Jill Stein. Two people are not likely going to discuss three different viewpoints when one of their viewpoints is not either of their own. And even though Bernie took a more Green Party approach to the environment, his viewpoint never crossed the Republican path). This also means that two system parties can win over one issue voters. That example is that abortion is a complex issue, and if you take the pro-life choice, it has also been historically bundled with trickle-down economics. Those issues have nothing to do with each other, and until the rise and fall of Gary Johnson (who I think may have been pro-choice and trickle down economics... libertarians are a blind spot to me), there was no other option. This either 1. results in compromise (acceptable because in a multi-party system you're essentially electing someone to compromise on your behalf rather than making the compromise yourself) or 2. results in lower voter turnout because people don't want to compromise (not something I would find acceptable).
Those are just a few points I like from googling the subject really quick. The point that's always drawn me even before this moment is the last point regarding the likelihood that downward voter turnout being a strong possibility outcome.
Multi-party generally makes it a requirement for political parties to cooperate in order to operate the government, which requires politicans to run on willingness to cross party lines before entering office. The thought of doing that in the United States right now is a liability for being kicked out of office by a primary challenger.
Yes, small parties have to form coalitions. Big parties are coalitions. And lest you complain that the coalitions are calcified by the two-party system, remember that Trump won by flipping traditionally Democratic states and demographics. It is as if, in a multiparty system, the Blue Collar White Guy Party defected from their traditional left-leaning coalition to form a government with the rightists. Only the decision was made at the individual level rather than the party level. Which actually seems more democratic to me.
There is no rule that registering to a party or assuming the label of a party requires that person to vote for that party in a two-party system, and that rule doesn't exist in 3rd Parties or multi-party systems either. I fail to see the impact this observation.
Also, let's follow this rabbit down the rabbit hole (more tangents, YAY!) Trump didn't win because he flipped enough Obama voters. The estimated number of voters turned away because they failed to meet ID requirements outnumbers them. The downward trend of Clinton's voters to non-voters because of Comey's announcement he was investigating more Clinton emails has been documented by Nate Silver as a strong possibility for crippling Clinton's finish. Hillary Clinton was burdened by a psy-ops campaign by Wikileaks and likely Russia as well as subjected to a propaganda campaign that dates back well before the primaries even began. Then there's the fact she was mediocre candidate trying to follow Obama's in hindsight lukewarm second term.
Just because some people defected to the right does not demonstrate that calcification is not taking place. Combined with everything else, it means that the Democrats are a weaker party than they thought. Even then, a strong Clinton cry in 2016 was it's Clinton or split the vote to Donald Trump. That's not a policy battle, that's weaponizing partisanship (which by the way in our current system is rewarding politics). By contrast, Donald Trump shored up his base despite being a terrible candidate with so much more baggage than Hillary Clinton. He had three 3rd Party challengers in his orbit, two of which that got mass media attention and more political experience (the third by the way was Constitution Party... which... yeah...but McMullin was probably a better candidate than Trump or Gary Johnson combined), yet both 3rd Party candidates support collapsed because putting Hillary Clinton in the White House was more terrifying than voting for everything that had been revealed about Trump (also, Gary Johnson demonstrated such ineptitude that he invented a new gaffe). So... yeah, it's blurry around the edges, but partisanship is what held Donald Trump together when Hillary Clinton didn't notice how wounded was in her final weeks of her candidacy, not Donald Trump's personality. I'd say that Donald Trump victory demonstrates calcification quite well.
I'm going to need you to give me more specifics here because Hitler didn't enter power because he was elected as head of state. From what I'm reading, he was appointed Chancellor by the man that actually won the election with 53% of the vote in the second round of voting, and then Hitler snuck power to himself and the Nazis through parliamentary acts rather than gaining a majority.
Okay, the leadership situation in the Weimar Republic was weird. The man who appointed Hitler Chancellor, Paul von Hindenburg, was the President of Germany. The President was elected in a separate election by direct majority vote, and occupied a position roughly comparable to the monarchs of parliamentary monarchies. Like a monarch, his duties included formally appointing the Chancellor, equivalent to a Prime Minister. But, again like a monarch, the expectation seems to have been that his appointment would be a formality in recognition of whoever won the parliamentary elections and successfully formed a government. (Even today, formally speaking, Teresa May is Prime Minister of Great Britain because she was appointed to that office by Queen Elizabeth II -- it's just that the Queen always appoints the leader of the winning party.) Now, the Weimar Republic was young and had a very unstable political situation, and Hindenburg seems to have been deeply ambivalent about Hitler on a personal level, so there was some question as to whether he would appoint the Nazi Chancellor or actually use his discretion. But in the end, apparently out of a desire to mitigate the instability, he did appoint Hitler, to the world's sorrow.
And since I'm on a time crunch at a moment, I'm not picking up on how parliamentarian selection of the chancellor works beyond secret ballot, so citizens technically didn't elect Angela Merkel, they elected the people that elected her, and I think that even then that requires a majority of Parliament in to be declared the victor.
We technically didn't elect Donald Trump, we elected the people that elected him, and he required a majority of the Electoral College to be declared the victor.
Furthermore, had Trump not gotten a majority of the Electoral College, the Presidency would have been decided in the House of Representatives, where he would again have needed a majority to be declared the victor (which he would have gotten).
But you're right, the citizens didn't directly elect Merkel. They elected representatives from various parties who negotiated to create a majority coalition in Parliament. This coalition then elected Merkel. That doesn't mean as much as you seem to think, though. Like the monarch in a parliamentary monarchy, the coalition is always going to vote into the Chancellorship the leader of the plurality party. It's how that system works in practice. And the bare fact remains that of the ballots cast, only 35% were for Merkel's CDU/CSU party, which makes Trump's 46% look pretty good by comparison.
I feel like your comparisons, well at least the Hitler one, don't survive under scrutiny. I'm going to need to know more about German modern elections, but my first impression is that they select by majority selection rather than plurality of the vote like that exists in the United States.
Again: the United States does not and has not ever selected the President based on the plurality of the vote. If no candidate gets an absolute majority of the Electoral College, we go to the House.
From what I'm reading, big tent parties have more trouble adjusting to major changes than a coalition of smaller parties. There's also that the discussion of ideas is either limited by both big tent parties having blind spots to the issue or by the issue being whittled down to two different viewpoints, cutting off discussion of other ways (ie. the environment is being addressed right now by not being addressed because it cuts into big business, but during the election in addition to that there was gradual change as proposed by Clinton and making the shifts an emergency priority as proposed by Jill Stein. Two people are not likely going to discuss three different viewpoints when one of their viewpoints is not either of their own. And even though Bernie took a more Green Party approach to the environment, his viewpoint never crossed the Republican path).
This just means the primaries are really important for determining the direction of the party. Which this election cycle ought to have amply demonstrated.
This also means that two system parties can win over one issue voters. That example is that abortion is a complex issue, and if you take the pro-life choice, it has also been historically bundled with trickle-down economics. Those issues have nothing to do with each other, and until the rise and fall of Gary Johnson (who I think may have been pro-choice and trickle down economics... libertarians are a blind spot to me), there was no other option.
What's different if you're a single issue voter in a multiparty system? Say you vote religiously for the Pro-Life Party. Well, they're not going to get an absolute majority in parliament, so they're gonna be forming a coalition with somebody. And politics being what they are they're probably only going to be forming coalitions with parties on the right. So a vote for the Pro-Life Party is essentially a vote for a right-wing coalition that has "bundled" laissez-faire economics, nationalism, social conservatism, and other issues. Now, the relative strengths of those issues may wax and wane with the fortunes of the parties pushing them, but the same thing happens in the Republican primaries as well. This time around, for instance, the GOP decided it wasn't too interested in social conservatism or laissez-faire economics.
This either 1. results in compromise (acceptable because in a multi-party system you're essentially electing someone to compromise on your behalf rather than making the compromise yourself) or 2. results in lower voter turnout because people don't want to compromise (not something I would find acceptable).
There is no rule that registering to a party or assuming the label of a party requires that person to vote for that party in a two-party system, and that rule doesn't exist in 3rd Parties or multi-party systems either. I fail to see the impact this observation.
In a multiparty system, you can cast your vote for a party and then see that party form a coalition with the side you did not expect. It's rare in practice, but it's possible. Imagine voting for a Green candidate and then watching the Greens join Trump's coalition. Very different situation than you yourself deciding to vote for Trump, isn't it?
Also, let's follow this rabbit down the rabbit hole (more tangents, YAY!) Trump didn't win because he flipped enough Obama voters. The estimated number of voters turned away because they failed to meet ID requirements outnumbers them.
The downward trend of Clinton's voters to non-voters because of Comey's announcement he was investigating more Clinton emails has been documented by Nate Silver as a strong possibility for crippling Clinton's finish. Hillary Clinton was burdened by a psy-ops campaign by Wikileaks and likely Russia as well as subjected to a propaganda campaign that dates back well before the primaries even began. Then there's the fact she was mediocre candidate trying to follow Obama's in hindsight lukewarm second term.
Just because some people defected to the right does not demonstrate that calcification is not taking place. Combined with everything else, it means that the Democrats are a weaker party than they thought. Even then, a strong Clinton cry in 2016 was it's Clinton or split the vote to Donald Trump. That's not a policy battle, that's weaponizing partisanship (which by the way in our current system is rewarding politics). By contrast, Donald Trump shored up his base despite being a terrible candidate with so much more baggage than Hillary Clinton. He had three 3rd Party challengers in his orbit, two of which that got mass media attention and more political experience (the third by the way was Constitution Party... which... yeah...but McMullin was probably a better candidate than Trump or Gary Johnson combined), yet both 3rd Party candidates support collapsed because putting Hillary Clinton in the White House was more terrifying than voting for everything that had been revealed about Trump (also, Gary Johnson demonstrated such ineptitude that he invented a new gaffe). So... yeah, it's blurry around the edges, but partisanship is what held Donald Trump together when Hillary Clinton didn't notice how wounded was in her final weeks of her candidacy, not Donald Trump's personality. I'd say that Donald Trump victory demonstrates calcification quite well.
And in a multiparty system, Johnson and McMullin get more votes, but Trump still probably wins the plurality because he's a charismatic demagogue who can attract a lot of votes, and then forms a majority coalition with Johnson and McMullin. Yes, there are a lot of factors that contributed to Trump's win. You have yet to demonstrate how the first-past-the-post system was one of them in any predictable or systematic way.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Even today, formally speaking, Teresa May is Prime Minister of Great Britain because she was appointed to that office by Queen Elizabeth II -- it's just that the Queen always appoints the leader of the winning party.
Not always. Most of the time she will ask the leader of the largest party to form a government. But if there is another hung parliament and no one will form a coalition with the largest party she will then look to see who can command the 'Confidence of the House' to form a parliament.
The same thing happens in Germany. Each of the leaders of the largest parties try to see if they can get enough extra seats to make a majority with the other parties and if the largest party can't do so then again they move down to the next largest party, and then the leader of that party is going to become Chancellor.
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Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag and start slitting throats.
- H.L Mencken
I Became insane with long Intervals of horrible Sanity
All Religion, my friend is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
- Edgar Allan Poe
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Edit: I just realized we're drastically oversimplifing "multiparty system". Our entire back and forth has worked under the assumption that there's only one way to establish a multiparty system. There isn't. Germany is a parliamentarian system now, which is drastically different than either First Past the post or runoff elections (either Ranked Choice voting or two round runoffs). It's also important because both the 1932 election that eventually produced Hitler and Merkel's rise to Chancellorship actually happened in two different voting systems.
It's relevant to bring this up because reaching "multiparty system" is considerable broader, and the result is we're jumbling together two different debates:
1. How elections should be run.
2. Multiparty vs. two party
The two debates interlock because how we settle the first debate will determine the nature of the second debate, but they still are still separate debates. At this moment, I see no reason edit my post any further than pointing out this out.
I'm going to need you to give me more specifics here because Hitler didn't enter power because he was elected as head of state. From what I'm reading, he was appointed Chancellor by the man that actually won the election with 53% of the vote in the second round of voting, and then Hitler snuck power to himself and the Nazis through parliamentary acts rather than gaining a majority.
Okay, the leadership situation in the Weimar Republic was weird. The man who appointed Hitler Chancellor, Paul von Hindenburg, was the President of Germany. The President was elected in a separate election by direct majority vote, and occupied a position roughly comparable to the monarchs of parliamentary monarchies. Like a monarch, his duties included formally appointing the Chancellor, equivalent to a Prime Minister. But, again like a monarch, the expectation seems to have been that his appointment would be a formality in recognition of whoever won the parliamentary elections and successfully formed a government. (Even today, formally speaking, Teresa May is Prime Minister of Great Britain because she was appointed to that office by Queen Elizabeth II -- it's just that the Queen always appoints the leader of the winning party.) Now, the Weimar Republic was young and had a very unstable political situation, and Hindenburg seems to have been deeply ambivalent about Hitler on a personal level, so there was some question as to whether he would appoint the Nazi Chancellor or actually use his discretion. But in the end, apparently out of a desire to mitigate the instability, he did appoint Hitler, to the world's sorrow.
That's a far cry from the least popular major party candidate winning less than half the vote in a primary and then in the general election but skirting by on a winner take all system with no runoffs. Hitler doesn't look to be a failure of a multiparty system; that looks to be the failure of one guy (and those that pressured him into granting Hilter power). That could go a ways to explain why German Parliament now elects the Chancellor instead of being appointed by a president.
And since I'm on a time crunch at a moment, I'm not picking up on how parliamentarian selection of the chancellor works beyond secret ballot, so citizens technically didn't elect Angela Merkel, they elected the people that elected her, and I think that even then that requires a majority of Parliament in to be declared the victor.
We technically didn't elect Donald Trump, we elected the people that elected him, and he required a majority of the Electoral College to be declared the victor.
Furthermore, had Trump not gotten a majority of the Electoral College, the Presidency would have been decided in the House of Representatives, where he would again have needed a majority to be declared the victor (which he would have gotten).
But you're right, the citizens didn't directly elect Merkel. They elected representatives from various parties who negotiated to create a majority coalition in Parliament. This coalition then elected Merkel. That doesn't mean as much as you seem to think, though. Like the monarch in a parliamentary monarchy, the coalition is always going to vote into the Chancellorship the leader of the plurality party. It's how that system works in practice. And the bare fact remains that of the ballots cast, only 35% were for Merkel's CDU/CSU party, which makes Trump's 46% look pretty good by comparison.
Yeah, but not when we put it next to Hillary Clinton's 48%, although that's because of the electoral college and a geographic disadvantage, which has little to do with whether or not the United State should adopt runoff elections in the event a candidate fails to capture a majority of the vote instead of a plurality of the vote beyond if we got rid of the Electoral College beyond the question "what should take its place?"
Even then, should less than 50%+1 vote be enough to take power? If you think not, then runoff elections are the best way to avoid them. I just so happen to like Ranked Choice/Instant Runoff more than two round because it's less of a logistics nightmare in terms because round 2 requires a lot more printing, Ranked Choice gets it out of the way faster, and I'll admit, it does have to do with promoting a Green Party idea as well.
Also, I technically didn't elect Donald Trump because I didn't vote for him
From what I'm reading, big tent parties have more trouble adjusting to major changes than a coalition of smaller parties. There's also that the discussion of ideas is either limited by both big tent parties having blind spots to the issue or by the issue being whittled down to two different viewpoints, cutting off discussion of other ways (ie. the environment is being addressed right now by not being addressed because it cuts into big business, but during the election in addition to that there was gradual change as proposed by Clinton and making the shifts an emergency priority as proposed by Jill Stein. Two people are not likely going to discuss three different viewpoints when one of their viewpoints is not either of their own. And even though Bernie took a more Green Party approach to the environment, his viewpoint never crossed the Republican path).
This just means the primaries are really important for determining the direction of the party. Which this election cycle ought to have amply demonstrated.
Except that generally makes for a less informed public on policy options. I mean essentially we're arguing over a single elimination bracket of policies as opposed to them all be presented at the same time. In talking about it, there's no apparent issue. People can view the brackets all at once. In practice, that's not what happens. Here's an example: this Republican Primary debate set a ratings record because of Donald Trump at about 13.2 million viewers. This Democrat Debate around the same time pulled in about 5.5 million views (and then there's the allegations that Debbie Wasserman Schultz stacked the debates to suppress viewership). The first general election debate pulled around 84 million viewers. While both good and bad ideas get discarded before reaching this wider audience, even if Greens and Libertarians made it to the stage under either party system, it gives the public a chance to sort through more policy ideas than just the two and against each other at the same time. Also, if Jill Stein and Gary Johnson had made it to the debate stage, I am confident Hillary Clinton would have won the election because 1) debate dynamics change and 2) not enough people knew just how bad they were in nominees because they didn't get enough screen time.
One thing to note, the lack of other viewpoints getting out there does go into a wider issue than voting structure: namely everything 3rd Parties have been suing the Presidential Debate Commission for a long time alleging discrimination against minor party. Those lawsuits are making headway but even then there's not 3rd Parties generally either don't (Greens) or can't fully (Libertarians) take advantage of a post Citizens' United campaign finance ruling that has driven up the cost of running a campaign election to one billion dollars, and that's just to come in second place (even though Donald Trump only spent a third of that to win, it's still a far ahead of what 3rd Parties/Independents paid out, like hundreds of millions of dollars ahead).
This also means that two system parties can win over one issue voters. That example is that abortion is a complex issue, and if you take the pro-life choice, it has also been historically bundled with trickle-down economics. Those issues have nothing to do with each other, and until the rise and fall of Gary Johnson (who I think may have been pro-choice and trickle down economics... libertarians are a blind spot to me), there was no other option.
What's different if you're a single issue voter in a multiparty system? Say you vote religiously for the Pro-Life Party. Well, they're not going to get an absolute majority in parliament, so they're gonna be forming a coalition with somebody. And politics being what they are they're probably only going to be forming coalitions with parties on the right. So a vote for the Pro-Life Party is essentially a vote for a right-wing coalition that has "bundled" laissez-faire economics, nationalism, social conservatism, and other issues. Now, the relative strengths of those issues may wax and wane with the fortunes of the parties pushing them, but the same thing happens in the Republican primaries as well. This time around, for instance, the GOP decided it wasn't too interested in social conservatism or laissez-faire economics.
Emphasis: mine. I'm highlighting this because anti-abortion is not a forgone conclusion to be a right leaning issue; the Republican Party has just ingrained it into their ideology and therefore our national psyche when this hypothetical Anti-Abortion Party could easily form a coalition with a left leaning party, an up-leaning party, and a north by northwest leaning party to make a diagonal majority coalition. By the way, I made up all those other directions because I personally think left-right is too rigid. The current Libertarian Party is the best illustration of this because it leans right on economics and left on social issues or so I've been led to believe, so even if I did just break it down in terms with right or left 1. That does not speak to the whole and 2. it's still not a forgone conclusion that issues we label right leaning issues will always congregate with other issues we labeled right leaning. 3. I doubt many people would label the Libertarian Party centrist as a way to balance out the mix of ideologies.
Furthermore, this whole thing demonstrates the limitations of a big tent party that I was talking about: it's difficult for issues to move around in nonpartisan ways. I.e. a left coalition negotiating cooperation from a smaller party so the coalition operates with a majority. I could easily see an anti-abortion party negotiating its way into a... I'll say Democratic Socialist/Green Coalition as an example just to make how jarring the possibility could be... and only because they all need the small bump to take the reigns. Hell, Republicans, Greens, and a handful of moral oriented Democrats in Pennsylvania right now have formed a temporary coalition to overturn a state special election because of allegations of Democratic electioneering.
How would a coalition like these play out? I dunno. Best case, comparable to the One China Policy results where no one is happy but tolerates the balance in ways that looks weird to everyone else. Worst case, dead by end of week.
There is no rule that registering to a party or assuming the label of a party requires that person to vote for that party in a two-party system, and that rule doesn't exist in 3rd Parties or multi-party systems either. I fail to see the impact this observation.
In a multiparty system, you can cast your vote for a party and then see that party form a coalition with the side you did not expect. It's rare in practice, but it's possible. Imagine voting for a Green candidate and then watching the Greens join Trump's coalition. Very different situation than you yourself deciding to vote for Trump, isn't it?
Uncertainty is part of the process. What you describe is not as rare as you expect, even in our system. In the State of Arkansas, three of my state elected officials defected from the Democrat Party to the Republican Party post election to give the Republican Party the Supermajority it needed in both Chambers, which I know those voters did not intend for their candidate to do. Then there's the defections that a Party take without defecting the party. Few people expected Barack Obama to take on Healthcare as early as he did in his first term or to not prosecute Wall Street bankers. I think zero people expected Donald Trump's budget to be so draconian to the point the administration's defending proposing to cut all funding to Meals on Wheels.
Also, let's follow this rabbit down the rabbit hole (more tangents, YAY!) Trump didn't win because he flipped enough Obama voters. The estimated number of voters turned away because they failed to meet ID requirements outnumbers them.
[citation needed]
Yeah, I'm going to have to water down this claim. It turns out that Snopes and Politifact both shot it down when I went to hunt it down, and I can't find the other one where it was estimated that 600,000...ish people total were turned away (I think it was on ThinkProgress, but no finding means no certainty with the claim).
So instead, I'm just going to have to ask, "Are you sure?"
Donald Trump and the Republicans had quite a few defections as well, just not enough and in places where Clinton did not need to see them. It's such a shame that it basically amounted to them that they may as well have set their votes on fire.
The downward trend of Clinton's voters to non-voters because of Comey's announcement he was investigating more Clinton emails has been documented by Nate Silver as a strong possibility for crippling Clinton's finish. Hillary Clinton was burdened by a psy-ops campaign by Wikileaks and likely Russia as well as subjected to a propaganda campaign that dates back well before the primaries even began. Then there's the fact she was mediocre candidate trying to follow Obama's in hindsight lukewarm second term.
You have yet to demonstrate how the first-past-the-post system was one of them in any predictable or systematic way.
When I parentheticaled the (YAY! More tangents), I should have been more clear: I was going off topic. First past the post voting had little to nothing to do with Trump's victory in the General election as far as I've been able to find so far; in the Primary there's a stronger possibility, but for the particular post you are quoting, I was going down that rabbit hole to go after the claim of calcification, not defending my claims.
*Also, there's a list of pros and cons in there that haven't come up yet.
Essentially, I think you are misreading where I'm attacking first past the post voting. It's not the general election. Donald Trump only got out of the Republican Primary with 45% of the vote. While I am willing to concede that I'm overextending my certainty, I'd like to point out that Donald Trump would have needed to get roughly 6% more of the primary vote to win a majority (by the way, to stick an actually number to that looking at this chart I think that Trump would have needed around 4 million more votes) ... this also goes into the oddity of winner take all because Trump won some states in the primaries with less than 40% of the vote. I feel if someone is going to get everything in a voting contest and wins with well less than half the vote, runoffs are called for. Donald Trump could have gotten it in runoffs, but I am skeptical.
Why is it important to get a vote from someone who does not want to vote? Or to make them drive out to a potentially out of the way location to prove that they don't wish to vote? What of absentee ballots?
Their are many pages to this debate and most of them are well thought out. I am not sure if this has been addressed or not but I would like to throw in my two cents. It is important to get people who don't want to vote to vote because it forces political party's to get their act together. If the majority of people feel this way, it says "Wow I am WAY off target and need to change to better serve the needs of the public" This forces them to do it since no one can win if a majority of the population or winning vote is no vote, they have to put out new people to try again.
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I'm going to need you to give me more specifics here because Hitler didn't enter power because he was elected as head of state. From what I'm reading, he was appointed Chancellor by the man that actually won the election with 53% of the vote in the second round of voting, and then Hitler snuck power to himself and the Nazis through parliamentary acts rather than gaining a majority.
And since I'm on a time crunch at a moment, I'm not picking up on how parliamentarian selection of the chancellor works beyond secret ballot, so citizens technically didn't elect Angela Merkel, they elected the people that elected her, and I think that even then that requires a majority of Parliament in to be declared the victor. I'm not entirely sure because Wikipedia only has this vague statement on that process:
Edit: upon further reading I found the link I'm editing in below explains the current German Chancellor process better than Wikipedia. Essentially there must be a majority (half +1) for a chancellor to be named. A plurality of the vote is not accepted except as a last resort. If that majority fails on the first try, there is one more attempt before their government will settle for a plurality of the vote instead. It should be noted that Chancellor voting has so far not ever needed to go to the second round accordingly because either the winning party received a mandate or negotiated the votes with parties that are entering the Parliament.
http://www.thegermanprofessor.com/how-is-the-german-chancellor-elected/
I feel like your comparisons, well at least the Hitler one, don't survive under scrutiny. I'm going to need to know more about German modern elections, but my first impression is that they select by majority selection rather than plurality of the vote like that exists in the United States.
From what I'm reading, big tent parties have more trouble adjusting to major changes than a coalition of smaller parties. There's also that the discussion of ideas is either limited by both big tent parties having blind spots to the issue or by the issue being whittled down to two different viewpoints, cutting off discussion of other ways (ie. the environment is being addressed right now by not being addressed because it cuts into big business, but during the election in addition to that there was gradual change as proposed by Clinton and making the shifts an emergency priority as proposed by Jill Stein. Two people are not likely going to discuss three different viewpoints when one of their viewpoints is not either of their own. And even though Bernie took a more Green Party approach to the environment, his viewpoint never crossed the Republican path). This also means that two system parties can win over one issue voters. That example is that abortion is a complex issue, and if you take the pro-life choice, it has also been historically bundled with trickle-down economics. Those issues have nothing to do with each other, and until the rise and fall of Gary Johnson (who I think may have been pro-choice and trickle down economics... libertarians are a blind spot to me), there was no other option. This either 1. results in compromise (acceptable because in a multi-party system you're essentially electing someone to compromise on your behalf rather than making the compromise yourself) or 2. results in lower voter turnout because people don't want to compromise (not something I would find acceptable).
Those are just a few points I like from googling the subject really quick. The point that's always drawn me even before this moment is the last point regarding the likelihood that downward voter turnout being a strong possibility outcome.
There is no rule that registering to a party or assuming the label of a party requires that person to vote for that party in a two-party system, and that rule doesn't exist in 3rd Parties or multi-party systems either. I fail to see the impact this observation.
Also, let's follow this rabbit down the rabbit hole (more tangents, YAY!) Trump didn't win because he flipped enough Obama voters. The estimated number of voters turned away because they failed to meet ID requirements outnumbers them. The downward trend of Clinton's voters to non-voters because of Comey's announcement he was investigating more Clinton emails has been documented by Nate Silver as a strong possibility for crippling Clinton's finish. Hillary Clinton was burdened by a psy-ops campaign by Wikileaks and likely Russia as well as subjected to a propaganda campaign that dates back well before the primaries even began. Then there's the fact she was mediocre candidate trying to follow Obama's in hindsight lukewarm second term.
Just because some people defected to the right does not demonstrate that calcification is not taking place. Combined with everything else, it means that the Democrats are a weaker party than they thought. Even then, a strong Clinton cry in 2016 was it's Clinton or split the vote to Donald Trump. That's not a policy battle, that's weaponizing partisanship (which by the way in our current system is rewarding politics). By contrast, Donald Trump shored up his base despite being a terrible candidate with so much more baggage than Hillary Clinton. He had three 3rd Party challengers in his orbit, two of which that got mass media attention and more political experience (the third by the way was Constitution Party... which... yeah...but McMullin was probably a better candidate than Trump or Gary Johnson combined), yet both 3rd Party candidates support collapsed because putting Hillary Clinton in the White House was more terrifying than voting for everything that had been revealed about Trump (also, Gary Johnson demonstrated such ineptitude that he invented a new gaffe). So... yeah, it's blurry around the edges, but partisanship is what held Donald Trump together when Hillary Clinton didn't notice how wounded was in her final weeks of her candidacy, not Donald Trump's personality. I'd say that Donald Trump victory demonstrates calcification quite well.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
We technically didn't elect Donald Trump, we elected the people that elected him, and he required a majority of the Electoral College to be declared the victor.
Furthermore, had Trump not gotten a majority of the Electoral College, the Presidency would have been decided in the House of Representatives, where he would again have needed a majority to be declared the victor (which he would have gotten).
But you're right, the citizens didn't directly elect Merkel. They elected representatives from various parties who negotiated to create a majority coalition in Parliament. This coalition then elected Merkel. That doesn't mean as much as you seem to think, though. Like the monarch in a parliamentary monarchy, the coalition is always going to vote into the Chancellorship the leader of the plurality party. It's how that system works in practice. And the bare fact remains that of the ballots cast, only 35% were for Merkel's CDU/CSU party, which makes Trump's 46% look pretty good by comparison.
Again: the United States does not and has not ever selected the President based on the plurality of the vote. If no candidate gets an absolute majority of the Electoral College, we go to the House.
This just means the primaries are really important for determining the direction of the party. Which this election cycle ought to have amply demonstrated.
What's different if you're a single issue voter in a multiparty system? Say you vote religiously for the Pro-Life Party. Well, they're not going to get an absolute majority in parliament, so they're gonna be forming a coalition with somebody. And politics being what they are they're probably only going to be forming coalitions with parties on the right. So a vote for the Pro-Life Party is essentially a vote for a right-wing coalition that has "bundled" laissez-faire economics, nationalism, social conservatism, and other issues. Now, the relative strengths of those issues may wax and wane with the fortunes of the parties pushing them, but the same thing happens in the Republican primaries as well. This time around, for instance, the GOP decided it wasn't too interested in social conservatism or laissez-faire economics.
Sometimes parties refuse to compromise too.
In a multiparty system, you can cast your vote for a party and then see that party form a coalition with the side you did not expect. It's rare in practice, but it's possible. Imagine voting for a Green candidate and then watching the Greens join Trump's coalition. Very different situation than you yourself deciding to vote for Trump, isn't it?
[citation needed]
And in a multiparty system, Johnson and McMullin get more votes, but Trump still probably wins the plurality because he's a charismatic demagogue who can attract a lot of votes, and then forms a majority coalition with Johnson and McMullin. Yes, there are a lot of factors that contributed to Trump's win. You have yet to demonstrate how the first-past-the-post system was one of them in any predictable or systematic way.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Not always. Most of the time she will ask the leader of the largest party to form a government. But if there is another hung parliament and no one will form a coalition with the largest party she will then look to see who can command the 'Confidence of the House' to form a parliament.
The same thing happens in Germany. Each of the leaders of the largest parties try to see if they can get enough extra seats to make a majority with the other parties and if the largest party can't do so then again they move down to the next largest party, and then the leader of that party is going to become Chancellor.
- H.L Mencken
I Became insane with long Intervals of horrible Sanity
All Religion, my friend is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
- Edgar Allan Poe
The Crafters' Rules Guru
Edit: I just realized we're drastically oversimplifing "multiparty system". Our entire back and forth has worked under the assumption that there's only one way to establish a multiparty system. There isn't. Germany is a parliamentarian system now, which is drastically different than either First Past the post or runoff elections (either Ranked Choice voting or two round runoffs). It's also important because both the 1932 election that eventually produced Hitler and Merkel's rise to Chancellorship actually happened in two different voting systems.
It's relevant to bring this up because reaching "multiparty system" is considerable broader, and the result is we're jumbling together two different debates:
1. How elections should be run.
2. Multiparty vs. two party
The two debates interlock because how we settle the first debate will determine the nature of the second debate, but they still are still separate debates. At this moment, I see no reason edit my post any further than pointing out this out.
---
That's a far cry from the least popular major party candidate winning less than half the vote in a primary and then in the general election but skirting by on a winner take all system with no runoffs. Hitler doesn't look to be a failure of a multiparty system; that looks to be the failure of one guy (and those that pressured him into granting Hilter power). That could go a ways to explain why German Parliament now elects the Chancellor instead of being appointed by a president.
Yeah, but not when we put it next to Hillary Clinton's 48%, although that's because of the electoral college and a geographic disadvantage, which has little to do with whether or not the United State should adopt runoff elections in the event a candidate fails to capture a majority of the vote instead of a plurality of the vote beyond if we got rid of the Electoral College beyond the question "what should take its place?"
Even then, should less than 50%+1 vote be enough to take power? If you think not, then runoff elections are the best way to avoid them. I just so happen to like Ranked Choice/Instant Runoff more than two round because it's less of a logistics nightmare in terms because round 2 requires a lot more printing, Ranked Choice gets it out of the way faster, and I'll admit, it does have to do with promoting a Green Party idea as well.
Also, I technically didn't elect Donald Trump because I didn't vote for him
Except that generally makes for a less informed public on policy options. I mean essentially we're arguing over a single elimination bracket of policies as opposed to them all be presented at the same time. In talking about it, there's no apparent issue. People can view the brackets all at once. In practice, that's not what happens. Here's an example: this Republican Primary debate set a ratings record because of Donald Trump at about 13.2 million viewers. This Democrat Debate around the same time pulled in about 5.5 million views (and then there's the allegations that Debbie Wasserman Schultz stacked the debates to suppress viewership). The first general election debate pulled around 84 million viewers. While both good and bad ideas get discarded before reaching this wider audience, even if Greens and Libertarians made it to the stage under either party system, it gives the public a chance to sort through more policy ideas than just the two and against each other at the same time. Also, if Jill Stein and Gary Johnson had made it to the debate stage, I am confident Hillary Clinton would have won the election because 1) debate dynamics change and 2) not enough people knew just how bad they were in nominees because they didn't get enough screen time.
One thing to note, the lack of other viewpoints getting out there does go into a wider issue than voting structure: namely everything 3rd Parties have been suing the Presidential Debate Commission for a long time alleging discrimination against minor party. Those lawsuits are making headway but even then there's not 3rd Parties generally either don't (Greens) or can't fully (Libertarians) take advantage of a post Citizens' United campaign finance ruling that has driven up the cost of running a campaign election to one billion dollars, and that's just to come in second place (even though Donald Trump only spent a third of that to win, it's still a far ahead of what 3rd Parties/Independents paid out, like hundreds of millions of dollars ahead).
Emphasis: mine. I'm highlighting this because anti-abortion is not a forgone conclusion to be a right leaning issue; the Republican Party has just ingrained it into their ideology and therefore our national psyche when this hypothetical Anti-Abortion Party could easily form a coalition with a left leaning party, an up-leaning party, and a north by northwest leaning party to make a diagonal majority coalition. By the way, I made up all those other directions because I personally think left-right is too rigid. The current Libertarian Party is the best illustration of this because it leans right on economics and left on social issues or so I've been led to believe, so even if I did just break it down in terms with right or left 1. That does not speak to the whole and 2. it's still not a forgone conclusion that issues we label right leaning issues will always congregate with other issues we labeled right leaning. 3. I doubt many people would label the Libertarian Party centrist as a way to balance out the mix of ideologies.
Furthermore, this whole thing demonstrates the limitations of a big tent party that I was talking about: it's difficult for issues to move around in nonpartisan ways. I.e. a left coalition negotiating cooperation from a smaller party so the coalition operates with a majority. I could easily see an anti-abortion party negotiating its way into a... I'll say Democratic Socialist/Green Coalition as an example just to make how jarring the possibility could be... and only because they all need the small bump to take the reigns. Hell, Republicans, Greens, and a handful of moral oriented Democrats in Pennsylvania right now have formed a temporary coalition to overturn a state special election because of allegations of Democratic electioneering.
How would a coalition like these play out? I dunno. Best case, comparable to the One China Policy results where no one is happy but tolerates the balance in ways that looks weird to everyone else. Worst case, dead by end of week.
Uncertainty is part of the process. What you describe is not as rare as you expect, even in our system. In the State of Arkansas, three of my state elected officials defected from the Democrat Party to the Republican Party post election to give the Republican Party the Supermajority it needed in both Chambers, which I know those voters did not intend for their candidate to do. Then there's the defections that a Party take without defecting the party. Few people expected Barack Obama to take on Healthcare as early as he did in his first term or to not prosecute Wall Street bankers. I think zero people expected Donald Trump's budget to be so draconian to the point the administration's defending proposing to cut all funding to Meals on Wheels.
Once again, I still fail to see the impact.
Yeah, I'm going to have to water down this claim. It turns out that Snopes and Politifact both shot it down when I went to hunt it down, and I can't find the other one where it was estimated that 600,000...ish people total were turned away (I think it was on ThinkProgress, but no finding means no certainty with the claim).
So instead, I'm just going to have to ask, "Are you sure?"
Donald Trump and the Republicans had quite a few defections as well, just not enough and in places where Clinton did not need to see them. It's such a shame that it basically amounted to them that they may as well have set their votes on fire.
When I parentheticaled the (YAY! More tangents), I should have been more clear: I was going off topic. First past the post voting had little to nothing to do with Trump's victory in the General election as far as I've been able to find so far; in the Primary there's a stronger possibility, but for the particular post you are quoting, I was going down that rabbit hole to go after the claim of calcification, not defending my claims.
However, if you want a systematic demonstration of First Past the Post voting being a problem, just look at why Maine just instituted Ranked Choice Voting*.
*Also, there's a list of pros and cons in there that haven't come up yet.
Essentially, I think you are misreading where I'm attacking first past the post voting. It's not the general election. Donald Trump only got out of the Republican Primary with 45% of the vote. While I am willing to concede that I'm overextending my certainty, I'd like to point out that Donald Trump would have needed to get roughly 6% more of the primary vote to win a majority (by the way, to stick an actually number to that looking at this chart I think that Trump would have needed around 4 million more votes) ... this also goes into the oddity of winner take all because Trump won some states in the primaries with less than 40% of the vote. I feel if someone is going to get everything in a voting contest and wins with well less than half the vote, runoffs are called for. Donald Trump could have gotten it in runoffs, but I am skeptical.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
Their are many pages to this debate and most of them are well thought out. I am not sure if this has been addressed or not but I would like to throw in my two cents. It is important to get people who don't want to vote to vote because it forces political party's to get their act together. If the majority of people feel this way, it says "Wow I am WAY off target and need to change to better serve the needs of the public" This forces them to do it since no one can win if a majority of the population or winning vote is no vote, they have to put out new people to try again.