• Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Hard to elect good people when you don’t get good options.

    Neither of the main parties have transparent and tamperproof primaries and one of the few things they consistently agree on is keeping third parties and independent candidates out of power whenever possible.

    • Goldmage263
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      11 months ago

      It does provide good cringe content watching the senate chamber questioning about anything modern tech.

      • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        The American parties don’t need to spend any effort suppressing third parties, the constitution does that for them

        They still legislate to make their advantage even greater.

        For example, they set eligibility requirements that are trivial to multi billion dollar private corporations such as themselves, but difficult to insurmountable to anyone running for a third party or as independents.

        Hell, some states including California, Colorado and Illinois may even make ballot access for third parties and independent candidates contingent on approval from establishment party members!

        I completely agree with you on eliminating fptp voting, but I much prefer STAR voting to instant runoff.

          • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            With the 0-5 star ranking that lets you rank more than one candidate the same if you want to, results are much more likely to accurately reflect the priorities of voters than straight ranking that doesn’t.

            If for example I give the far left candidate 5 stars, the center-left candidate 3 stars and both the centrist and the center-right candidate 2 stars, then the result of that round will more accurately reflect my priorities than if I had to rank two choices I (dis)like equally differently.

              • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                Yeah, that’s not actually how it works… You don’t get to see and react to everyone else’s ballots and if you’re not voting honestly, you’re fucking yourself and others like you.

                Which is something you can do on purpose with eqaul ease in instant runoff and run a greater risk of the spoiler effect happening without you meaning to. Much smaller than with fptp, but still greater than with STAR.