I'm not sure I'd completely classify these as myths, but it's some interesting information.
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8 Election Myths You Probably Believe
Some of what we hate most about the American democratic process aren’t flaws at all — they’re actually what make the whole thing tick.
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Cracked is like XKCD: usually funny, often right, and occasionally very, very wrong.
The one about the two-party system is plumb wrong. Sure, some people will be … exactly as extreme as they are now. But people will be able to elect someone who isn't crazy. Now they have two choices: One or both might be crazy, because that's how party organizations work: the crazies have some clout and the parties have to place them on ballots somewhere.
But if there are ten parties, odds are that all the crazies will gravitate towards a couple of those. And voters will suddenly be free to not vote for crazy.
There will be conservatives with or without crazy, liberals with or without crazy, greens with or without crazy, libertarians with or without crazy.
The problem with that idea, +Andreas Geisler, is they don't appear to be working from a theory, or from a Cartesian graph, as much as from observation of historical data. Italy comes to mind (I don't just mean today — over the last century-and-a-quarter, or so). As does France. As does Israel. And I was pleased to see they didn't violate Godwin, even though it's probably the most a propros example.
I see your extremely limited amount of anecdotal evidence against… and I reiterate : Not having first-past-the-post elections allow people to not vote for crazy. First-past-the-post guarantees that crazies will get elected.
So… In the face of what you describe as anecdotal evidence your response is… to double down on the assertion you've already presented without any evidence at all, either now or then?
If my examples are "extremely limited" (rising not at all, I'm sure, from the limited universe of multiparty democracies in the first place), then presumably it should be trivial for you to present the volumes of double-blind studies demonstrating I'm in error. I'll wait.
There's barely a handful of systems with first-past-the-post that even qualify as democracies… ALL OTHER DEMOCRACIES ARE MULTI-PARTY.
If you want to discuss, do your bloody homework first.
I'm sure that would be relevant if the discussion involved "first past the post." However, aside from your own comments, it hasn't. Certainly none of the examples I've previously cited are first past the post.
Still waiting on a citation for the vast double-blind peer-reviewed trove of literature I haven't been able to find. Three posts of assertions without evidence don't count.
You don't even bother do you? Heard of Google?
First-past-the-post, do you know what it is?
If you didn't, let me stoop to informing you: it is the election system that, by default, dictates your two-party system. It was originally invented by the British and is used in most formerly British Empire nations. It is a system that theoretically allows 51% of the votes given to receive 100% of the representation. It always strongly favors two-party systems.
I suggest you go study these matters for a while before you parade your lack of sense in public.
I'm aware what first past the post the post is. Again, and from your writing it appears you don't want to address this (I have nothing other than your writing to know what you actually believe), first past the post doesn't appear to be germane to Cracked's point at all — the same one you say is "plumb wrong."
I've tried Google, both the general search and Scholar. Your point was, "Not having first-past-the-post elections allow people to not vote for crazy." Cracked's point appears to be (at least to this reader) that multiple parties allow people to vote for crazies, first past the post or not. (I'd go further and say a sufficiently fractured parliament most commonly leads one to make a coalition with the crazies, or not be able to form a government, unless things are so dire a "national unity government" is needed. Again, that has nothing to do with first past the post.) Nowhere can I find evidence that supports your point, or refutes Cracked's. Further, you've now obstinately refused to provide supporting evidence for your own assertions four times, even while denigrating the evidence and efforts provided by others. This makes it extremely difficult to judge the validity of your assertions, given you don't appear confident enough in them to provide anything to support them.
If you want to see someone who refuses to bother, and then chides others who do bother, I suggest finding a mirror. If you lack enough self-awareness to recognize you have a problem, I suggest reading this thread, where you've thoughtfully provided at least that much evidence we may all read.
Ok, so you don't understand how first-past-the-post relates to the two-party system?
You also don't understand that a fundamental of democracy is trusting the people to make informed choices, if they have been informed?
And, finally, you don't understand how including all the extremists with the moderates in two mammoth bloc parties will lead to the election of extremists, simply because that's how organizations work?
Putting the crazies in boxes by themselves will leave them to compete on their own crazy merits, rather than competing on their placement within the hierarchy of a party.
If your people aren't idiots (italians, russians and the like) then your people won't vote for the crazies.
If your people are idiots or are crazy, you're screwed no matter what.
First, that's five.
Secondly, I'd say that first past the post is helpful to a two party system, but not necessary.
Third, I'd say that's very optimistic, and I admire you for it, but… how is this not unsupported assertion yet again, admirable though it may be?
Your comments are also unsupported assertions. Go ahead, call that six. Your counting is pointless.
And no, there's nothing optimistic about it. I am a pragmatist through and through. First-past-the-post is not necessary for a two-party system. In soviet Russia only two parties (Workers' and Agrarian, same difference) were allowed; that's another way to achieve it.
However, when you use first-past-the-post, a two-party system is so much favored that it is to be expected.
There is no legislation in the USA that dictates a two-party system. There are plenty of people who are fed up with the two-party system, but they have little hope of getting anywhere with it, because First-past-the-post strongly favors the largest parties.
Without first-past-the-post 10% of a state vote would more or less translate into a 10% representation in the legislative.
With first-past-the-post 10% of a state vote will always translate into a 0% representation in the legislature.
I agree, +Andreas Geisler, that a first-past-the-post system will tend toward a two-party system.
However, I tend to lean more to +Hal O'Brien's position that having a multi-party system not only encourages the crazies to surface in their own party, but tends to force ruling coalitions to explicitly include them.
I would say that a two-party system should, over time, keep the fringe crazies more managed, as they end up (except for the quixotic ones that start their own parties) submerged within a more moderate larger party. And, over time, the two parties will end up, though not in the center, in shouting distance of it, assuming that's where the population bell curves. They are forced, to at least some degree, to be bigger tents, or else be relegated to oblivion.
I would say a more dangerous aspect to the two-party setup in terms of promoting extremism and crazies is the primary system, which encourages plays from the more active extremes. That doesn't necessarily give you an extremist candidate (see: Mitt Romney), but it does force some candidates to run in primaries to the extreme, then try and backtrack to the middle in the general election (see: Mitt Romney).
I think your present Republican party speaks against your argument. In two-party systems the problem is that, since people clump together along rough lines of opposition, people will tend to "put up" with people they'd rather not associate with: conservatives put up with religious nuts and neoconservatives because the main divide puts them on what they see as "our side". This means that all the people who want to vote for careful fiscal policies also inadvertently vote for religious crazies and hack-and-slash opportunists.
The two-party system would work better if people were unattached to the parties they vote for, but that is counteracted by the paucity of parties itself: When it's "either A or B" people tend to put more value to A-ness or B-ness, building whole dynasties about an affiliation, or at least following a party more than individual candidates. When people vote Republican or Democrat regardless of the merits of the candidates, then the problem deepens.
If you look at how things work in places with plural parties, what you fear just doesn't occur. Yes, sometimes a small party of crazies starts to gather a following, but then invariably, as they come closer to power, they also mellow out and grow moderate. When every decision is a quilt of mandates from several little parties, nobody puts in outrageous riders or excessive pork… because the other parties involved in the decision won't feel a need to underwrite that. Everything is more moderate when no party can ever rule alone, and when each party is a potential partner as well as a rival.
Except that, for coalition purposes, ruling parties almost inevitably have to "put up with" other zanies, in order to get a majority. And they have a lot less control over them (though they don't run the risk of being controlled in return).
I do agree that the GOP show this is not an automatic panacea. But that's a temporary state, I believe — demographics make the "Older White Christian Guy" voter strategy a loser in the mid-term (even the GOP leadership realizes they have only an election or two at most to start changing that course).
Nope. Sometimes you get a situation where the parties are lined up like your two parties, unable to find partners except from the fringes. It can happen, sure.
But it's not inevitable or even likely.
Usually a center-left or center-right coalition will form, all zany-free. Sometimes you even get mod-right-mod-left coalitions. Power gravitates to the middle when there are little parties.
With the big parties, power follows the veto, not necessarily the formal veto. If a fringe group says "our way or no way", then the rest of that party may be forced to give in.
I don't think I agree, Andreas, but I can see how that could work. I suspect both systems have their opportunities and their flaws (being human institutions). I don't expect, though, to see either significant change in the two-party system or (for the most part) the first-past-the-post winner-takes-all kind of system any time soon in the US, if ever.
It would take a concerted effort to break down the two-party system.
I think some theoretical scientists have said that there's no outright best system; however, the system which lets a minority of the population theoretically control 100% of the legislative (as if a 100% control would even be necessary) is something I have to see as deeply flawed. Just do the maths to see how small a percentage of the population you'd need to have a two-thirds majority, effectively disinheriting the rest of the population?
If half the people vote, and all you'd need is more than half of two thirds of the constituencies, all you'd need is 34% of the people. For complete legislative domination. That ain't right.