I found this video on the mathematics of democracy fascinating. It’s not some accident that third parties hurt the party they’re more aligned with: it’s inevitable under first-past-the-post. Really, the only reason to start a third party is to influence one of the other parties, and even then it’s a dangerous game because your spoiler effect may create backlash, drawing people away from the ideas you want to promote. The older I get, the more I see that you can’t win the game without playing it.
This is why I’ve been thinking we should focus on changing the voting system within primaries rather than in the general to start with. The general election is going to require massive amounts of effort and political will to change, but primaries could be changed more easily since it’s mainly up to the party itself (still could require some legal changes to update voting machines, etc)
I found this video on the mathematics of democracy fascinating. It’s not some accident that third parties hurt the party they’re more aligned with: it’s inevitable under first-past-the-post. Really, the only reason to start a third party is to influence one of the other parties, and even then it’s a dangerous game because your spoiler effect may create backlash, drawing people away from the ideas you want to promote. The older I get, the more I see that you can’t win the game without playing it.
This is why I’ve been thinking we should focus on changing the voting system within primaries rather than in the general to start with. The general election is going to require massive amounts of effort and political will to change, but primaries could be changed more easily since it’s mainly up to the party itself (still could require some legal changes to update voting machines, etc)