“Third-party” in the context of US politics (I think that’s where it comes from and is most widely used, owing to its major structural problems that almost inherently create only two major parties federally) is an abstract term referring to any minor political party, not specifically the third-most-popular. There’s no such thing as “voting fourth-party”, so an nth level of abstraction beyond that becomes absurdist.
Yeah I live in Australia where we have preferential voting.
I have always voted left of our major parties, because like the rest of the world, our major “left wing” party is centre right and our right wing is way too far to the right. Everyone right if that is extremely racist or a billionaire. Usually both.
But we have options, and even if the major party wins they have to negotiate with the smaller parties if we’ve won them seats in parliament. Voting for the minor parties and independents first based on policy sends a message that these are the things that matter to us. If they want to win the next election they’ll have to support them or we’ll continue voting for the minor parties.
The liberals (our right wing party) handled covid and the following months so poorly that they were essentially ousted in western Australia. They are so small now that they hold the same amount of power as the minor parties. Labor (the “left wing” major party) won 46 of the possible 59 seats and the liberals only got 7. They’ve had to form a coalition with the slightly more right wing minor party to have any voting power. Which has caused them to slip even further right and lose even more votes in the following local elections.
This one would require more reworking of our Legislative Branch. There are 435? Representatives currently, so the country is broken up into 435 house districts, with each district/ community voting for a single person to represent them. So you have a quantization problem; you can’t really split a single person.
I’m not saying I can’t imagine a world where we do it (whole states vote for all the Representatives from their state?), only that meaningful change is an uphill battle against 250 years of coagulated inertia + notably bad actors now diffuse through the system.
here voting for a representative is optional. you vote separately for what party you want to govern locally and nationally, and they get that percentage of the seats (with a lower bound of 4%) to assign members to. if you want a specific person in a seat, you mark their name, and they’ll get a guaranteed seat if a certain number of people mark them (and there’s enough seats).
we’re actually in the middle of an election fraud investigation right now because a relatively unknown member of a party got enough personal votes to get a national seat, and all of them came from the area where he lives. it sounds less serious when you learn that the total number of votes needed for him to get in was about 800, and that was split over three districts.
*nervously looks around for people who would shoot me for having magnificent horns or voting ninth party*
“Voting ninth-party” sounds like a level of abstraction that describes writing in a termite mound in the Gondswana Rainforests.
All the candidates are Johnny Depp’s characters
Why so abstract? We have 5 parties that have seats in parliament and 9 other registered parties that don’t.
“Third-party” in the context of US politics (I think that’s where it comes from and is most widely used, owing to its major structural problems that almost inherently create only two major parties federally) is an abstract term referring to any minor political party, not specifically the third-most-popular. There’s no such thing as “voting fourth-party”, so an nth level of abstraction beyond that becomes absurdist.
We know and disapprove
with the coalition-building and last-minute allegiance changes that goes on in this country it might as well be
America is fucked and voting for anything other than the big two is throwing away your vote.
Or we could have rank choice voting! Some places do!
Yeah I live in Australia where we have preferential voting.
I have always voted left of our major parties, because like the rest of the world, our major “left wing” party is centre right and our right wing is way too far to the right. Everyone right if that is extremely racist or a billionaire. Usually both.
But we have options, and even if the major party wins they have to negotiate with the smaller parties if we’ve won them seats in parliament. Voting for the minor parties and independents first based on policy sends a message that these are the things that matter to us. If they want to win the next election they’ll have to support them or we’ll continue voting for the minor parties.
The liberals (our right wing party) handled covid and the following months so poorly that they were essentially ousted in western Australia. They are so small now that they hold the same amount of power as the minor parties. Labor (the “left wing” major party) won 46 of the possible 59 seats and the liberals only got 7. They’ve had to form a coalition with the slightly more right wing minor party to have any voting power. Which has caused them to slip even further right and lose even more votes in the following local elections.
or… representative democracy. where nobody “wins”, and the percentage of votes decides the percentage of representatives in parliament.
This one would require more reworking of our Legislative Branch. There are 435? Representatives currently, so the country is broken up into 435 house districts, with each district/ community voting for a single person to represent them. So you have a quantization problem; you can’t really split a single person.
I’m not saying I can’t imagine a world where we do it (whole states vote for all the Representatives from their state?), only that meaningful change is an uphill battle against 250 years of coagulated inertia + notably bad actors now diffuse through the system.
here voting for a representative is optional. you vote separately for what party you want to govern locally and nationally, and they get that percentage of the seats (with a lower bound of 4%) to assign members to. if you want a specific person in a seat, you mark their name, and they’ll get a guaranteed seat if a certain number of people mark them (and there’s enough seats).
we’re actually in the middle of an election fraud investigation right now because a relatively unknown member of a party got enough personal votes to get a national seat, and all of them came from the area where he lives. it sounds less serious when you learn that the total number of votes needed for him to get in was about 800, and that was split over three districts.