• olafurp@lemmy.world
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    25 days ago

    That’s not really viable in the US voting system. You need a third party that concentrates on a smaller number of voters to get some seats. The president is a single winner first past the post so voting in primaries is the only way to vote for something you want.

    There’s still a case where forcing republicans to take a more centrist approach by beating them consistently is good. Then dems would need to diversify with better policies.

    Voting system in the US is pure garbage. You’ll need a lot of independents to get ranked choice, then proportional voting system to have any real choice.

    • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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      25 days ago

      That’s not true unless you only consider the effects of winning a race to be viable under the us election system.

      Even if a third party candidate doesn’t win, their ballot showing gives them access to funding, event presence, media coverage, public awareness and of course shows other parties exactly what votes they’re leaving on the table.

      Republicans have not moved to the center due to pressure from democrats in 40 years. The idea is the other way around, that the ratchet effect is a constant movement to the right and democrats only keep the policy from “slipping” back to the left.

      I agree that the voting system is garbage, but we don’t need to wait for election reform that will never come to support parties, platforms and candidates that we actually support. As I said earlier, that choice gets results, those results just might not be the ones you want.