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So what you’re saying is America sucks at democracy.
Signed, a European whose government is still forming after elections because 27 parties
bitterballen
So this doesn’t work as a simple math equation because you have to understand a lot of key concepts first. This has basically nothing to do with the electoral college system so we will put that aside and start with the “first past the post” system of determining elections.
On it’s face the First Past the Post (FPP) seems fair. Highest percentage of votes for a candidate wins. But imagine a system where we have a lot of parties. Say there are five- The red, blue, yellow, green and purple parties. So you have an election and maybe the spread looks like this :
- RED 20%
- PURPLE 25%
- BLUE 15%
- YELLOW 10%
- GREEN 30%
So Green takes the election… However this doesn’t actually represent the will of a majority as only 30% actually voted for green. So in our little Rainbow country, as generally happens the encumbant party makes mistakes or compromises and becomes less popular. So next time the election comes around you get some party consolidation. Blue maybe has enough ideological cross over with purple to merge into a new party. Yellow is say kind of an extreme outlier and Red and Green are close on the political spectrum but they really believe they got this. Let’s say maybe some of the compromises in the new Blue/Purple merger turns off some of their base and Red snags some of their vote share this time.
The new spread looks like this
- RED 25%
- BLUE/PURPLE 32%
- YELLOW 15%
- GREEN 28%
So the problem remains. Only around 1/3 of voters actually chose the “majority” who takes all.
So next election let’s say Green, seeking to snag votes does the same thing Blue and Purple did. They change their platform to be more like Red to court the votes of Red party people. The problem being is they are too similar. The next election happens and they end up tying with red because the two parties split the votes but that razor thin line of preference between the parties splits the share. This is called a spoiler. If RED and GREEN are decently acceptable policy wise to the voting pools of both voters then you have a group of 52% that represents what a majority desires policy wise…but that 32% Purple/Blue party is still in control.
So over time Red and Green merge. They win an election. Blue/Purple changes their policies and the two start trading back and forth. Yellow eventually dissolves from never winning and you end up with a two party system. Almost all FFP systems devolve into two party systems through histories that look like this.
Now say we end up in the situation we are in now. The two parties over time sort of naturally drift further and further apart as a branding initiative deepens.
Now imagine one has sown incredible brand loyalty. They are marketing experts, they have been hammering everyone’s fear buttons for so long that they could run the literal devil and the party would still vote for them because to do otherwise is heresy.
On the other side you have what could be best described as the lesser of two evils. They don’t have to be paragons, their entire strategy has been to be good enough while maintaining a status quo that benefits people like them but they treading water. They aren’t fixing anything just adding time to the clock. Not great but probably also not going to sink the ship.
The two go head to head.
Under normal circumstances the voting share between them is pretty evenly split. But it will be a frozen day in hell before those carefully indoctrinated into the marketing strategy of the Right wing will vote differently. If they did they would have to admit they were wrong and well… Everything that’s been piped to them for years has painted the other side as decadent, subhumans who are “UnAmerican”.
The lesser evil has basically just run on being the lesser evil. Nobody was excited about voting them in last time…
So the votes happen.
- 38% Democrat
- 40 % Republican And the remaining 22% split between a series of independants.
If 3% of that 22% those people thought Trump was the greater evil but didn’t vote for the lesser evil then their abstention to participate in voting for a lesser evil , or even just not voting at all basically enables the Republican win. It’s not a vote for vote pledge to support Trump, it’s a more complicated series of value judgements. A FFP system over times demands gaming of the system. That’s why many places have ditched FFP and has these more complicated multiple voting systems to make governance more representive of the actual will of the people to stop this from happening.
America is stuck until that kind of reform happens.
Situation A you vote for 3rd party
- candidate T gets t votes
- candidate B gets b-1 votes
- candidate 3 gets 1 vote
candidate 3 loses for sure winner is biggest of ‘t’ and ‘b-1’. Which we can rewrite as biggest of ‘t+1’ and ‘b’
Where is my money?!
In the smoke these vote suppressionist’s are blowing up your arse.
Spoiler votes are hardly smoke or even a controversial concept. They are a natural consequence of first past the post elections.
Star voting would solve almost all of these issues.
Flowery way to put it. Vote suppression is fine for me.
I’d more likely agree that it’s a cold way to put it. Hardly flowery, and hardly is someone trying to convince you to vote a certain way voter suppression. That’s just called politics. That’s like, the core conceit of an election, no less.
If you’re going to protest vote at least be honest about what it is, “it’s not a spoiler vote, I’m just intentionally not voting for the candidate I [most likely] prefer on this candidate I know won’t win.”
If you think OP can understand a proof…
The insane fact that you genuinely thought his math worked out correctly.
Although, the US is generically the worst “first” world country in maths so I guess this is to be expected…
The argument is quite simple while it carries an assumption.
If you have 3 options, and depending on how you want to frame it, one is outlandish or the other 2 are simplify more similar. You have following issue.
In this example A and B are similar and C is the outlandish one.
Let’s say: A has 15 votes, B has 3 and C has 17 votes.
Then C wins while it would be reasonable to assume that B voters would have chosen A over C, as A is more similar to B than C. So now the A and B voters get together and talk about the situation. A voters argue that A had historically far better results than B and B voters should have expected A to get more votes than B, and as B voters prefer A over C, B voters risk that C wins as A is missing the votes from B voters. So while not voting for C, B voters voted in a way that is unlikely to result in B winning, while hurting A winning chances as they didn’t vote for A, which results in C requiring less votes to win and could help C in winning
So in other words, if not C, is a shared interest of A and B, voting B is expected to reduce the amount of required votes for C.
If C needs 18 votes and a “not C” voter votes B, A cann’t reach 18 anymore, ofc B can reach 18 but historically B never got close, so effectively C requires 1 less additional vote to win, just like when someone would have voted c.
You seem to not understand that assumptions are not how math proofs work mate.
Again, where is his total +1 exactly?
Math works with assumptions all the time. Math itself is based on assumptions. Logic is based on assumptions.
And I have explained that going from 10/20 to 11/20 or 10/19 is functionally the same as in both cases, the person only needs 9 more. If you don’t understand that, I can’t help you
In percentage/fractions, yes. As you asked about absolute numbers, it is a difference of 9 missing votes for both. I am sorry that you don’t understand that. No one taught you that, I guess.
But let’s say that your ridiculous goal post move is a fair critic, then let’s talk about details in the American election system. It is not a popular vote, as the electoral college decides who will be the president and the vote of the elector in the electoral college doesn’t have to follow the popular vote held in the state, while some states require them to. How many electors each state has, is based on a system that is a bit too complicated to explain here but you can Google Huntington hill method. But the result of that system is that 1 elector in Wyoming is 193.000 votes but over 700.000 in Texas and California. Which means that a single Wyoming vote is 3 times as valuable as a Texas vote. So in other words, the whole percentage thing is more complicated than just a popular vote. But you didn’t actually want to have a conversation about how valuable a vote is (assuming that the elector doesn’t ignore your popular vote which they might can) otherwise you would have pointed that out in my response.
And you would have known all of this, if you would actually care about the question and the elections. Like I am not even American, but even I know that little.
Edit: why are you dming me? You asked a public question. Why move into private one now?
Also in case, someone doesn’t know how he doesn’t understand how voting work and how the whole .05, .02 is moving the goal post, basically if people always case whole votes, so in a normal popular vote, if you need 9 votes, you need 9 votes. There is no practical difference between 0.5 and 0.02 in this case. People cast whole votes. Now in my response, I make clear that Wyoming are more valuable but that is only the case if you treat the system as if it was a popular vote as commonly done, both in these comments and the general public discussion. If you look on the election on a state level which is a totally reasonable thing to do as generally speaking, the statement that he asked you to prove, could have been state between to people from the same state. If you do so, then my point about the value of the vote is irrelevant but then we can talk about votes are a static value and then a vote is always a whole vote and my point about people cast whole votes apply, then we have to realize that if we save he needs 20 votes to win, that technically he doesn’t need 20 votes to win but only 19.0000000000001 votes to win but as people cast whole votes, you “can’t” get e.g. 19.32 votes. So we say 20. By reducing the required votes to win, we morph the value of a singular vote. Because A and B still needs the 20 votes to win but C only needs 19. So 1/20 is .05 but 1/19 is .052… So now we can take the .052 can create a fraction for it, that would be 1.04/20. Oh look, trump can win with 19.04 now. The difference between 0.05 and .052 is irrelevant for this situation.
That’s only true if one assumes the vote would have gone to Biden in the absence of third parties.
What is the leftist alternative then? To not vote?
Please tell me you’re not one of those people who believes not voting will make neither candidate win?
Please let me know when you’ve read the original post my guy. Enjoy your day.
Oh, pardon me. My bad. I was engaging with your hypothetical about who you would vote for in the absence of third parties.
Would you care to answer that?
How many fucking times do I have to explain it?
No one knows your chosen third party candidate exists, and unless you want to become their campaign manager that will still be true in November. Even if you did, they still wouldn’t win.
In the last election, Biden got 50% of the popular vote, and Trump got 45%. Say for the sake of argument that if nothing else happens, 2024 will have the exact same spread. Suppose you’re the best campaign manager ever and manage to convince 2/3 of the people who would have voted for Biden, plus everyone who was going to vote third party, to vote for your candidate instead. (Given the current state of money in politics I should not need to explain why this is infeasible, but suppose it is.) Congratulations! Your candidate now has 37% of the nationwide vote. Unfortunately, that’s not good enough, because Trump’s voter base, who care not for your leftist policies, still gave 45% of the vote to him, and he wins the election.
All voting third party instead of Biden does is make it more likely that Trump will win.
Where’s my $100?
Completely irrelevant point my guy. There ARE 3rd parties lmao.
The math I am asking for does not include a binary choice.
Why b-1 instead of just b votes? “because the vote could’ve otherwise went to B” well it could’ve also went to T, but I don’t see you accounting for it as t-1.
This math has a double standard.
The assumption is OP isn’t a Trump supporter.
they are also clearly not a Biden supporter. They do not support either candidate, so the two options should be treated equally.
This is that “enlightened centrism” false equivalence.
I honestly can’t believe that in good faith you can compare Biden and Trump as equals.
One is a president whos platform is making minimal change.
The other is a president whos platform is to tear down democracy and human rights.
If you honestly can look at these two and say they are equal than I have to conclude you are at least indifferent to maintaining democracy and human rights.
I know the “counter argument” is about Biden and Israel/Gaza, but the thing is, that’s not really up for debate because I don’t believe there’s any chance Trump would be better about Gaza.
There are 2 options:
- death in Gaza and status quo in the US
- death in Gaza and loss of human rights and possibly our democracy in the US
maintaining democracy
What definition of democracy are we using here? Just so we’re on the same page.
I do not think trump was making a meaningful change on that level, in any case. The US never had a true people’s rule it that’s what you mean, for trump to take it away.
Gaza is not the only issue.
maintaining democracy
What definition of democracy are we using here? Just so we’re on the same page.
I do not think trump was making a meaningful change on that level, in any case. The US never had a true people’s rule it that’s what you mean, for trump to take it away.
Gaza is not the only issue.
Define your variables. Wtf is “b,” the number of votes candidate B would have, plus one for no reason? Why is candidate T getting t votes and not t-1 votes? Terrible math, try again.
wrong. a cast vote for candidate 3 is not a lost vote for candidate B. Furthermore variable b decreasing doesn’t increase the total of variable t so no you can’t “rewrite” it like that with magic math. This is how it works, it’s actually very simple:
candidate T gets t votes
candidate B gets b votes
candidate X gets x votes
Dems say they’re the “good pro democracy guys” but they love rewriting reality and demonizing others just as much as Republicans.
I don’t think I’ve seen a single dem so far call a third party vote a third party vote unless they’re saying “A third party vote is a vote for Trump.” Otherwise, they ONLY use the terms protest vote or spoiler vote. Whatever they do, they CAN’T let people know it’s possible to vote for what you believe in instead of doing what you’re told. So, they have to control the narrative so people believe 3rd party voters just hate America instead of being the only ones not voting for people actively trying to engage in genocide.
Same with how they pay the “right” lip service for 5 seconds then dedicate their day to pissing on leftists, then blaming leftists when they lose.
Democrats are just as fascist as Republicans.
Here is the nuance that is missing:
First-past-the-post voting systems inevitably trend to two-party systems over time. We see it play out in election models and we see it play out in real life.
One reason this happens is because, in this sort of system, voting for a third party candidate that aligns more closely with your views rather than the best choice of the major party candidates statistically increases the likelihood that the candidate furthest from your views will win. A significant, sustained third party that is more to your liking than the Democratic Party would ensure easy GOP victories for as long as all three parties ran their own candidates, even if the GOP never won an actual majority of votes. (We saw Bill Clinton win both elections in the 90s with much less than 50% and no candidate getting 50% due to a major third party candidate).
Another reason is that even if societal circumstances lead to a third party doing well enough to win it all, what you would end up with is having one of the existing major parties collapse, you’d be back to two parties, and the new third party would become watered down into ultimately the same thing it replaced. We’ve also seen this in American history.
In summary, there is tremendous systemic pressure that causes the two-party system. It’s not that our politicians are tricking us and politicians in Europe under different election systems can’t or won’t do the same. If we changed our voting system to e.g. Ranked Choice, not only would third parties be possible, they would be inevitable. But if we don’t change the system, then voting third party is like forcing two strong magnets together that are trying to repel. Even if you’re able to do it briefly, it’s completely unstable and will correct itself as soon as possible.
The oversimplified version of all this is “voting third party is voting for Trump”. I can see why it’s frustrating because it’s not literally true — however, anyone who is interested in maximizing their best interests, i.e. by having the winner be someone as good as possible, is statistically increasing the chances of the worst candidate winning by voting third party over preferred major party, while our voting system remains in place.
So ultimately, a slight rephrase to “voting third party instead of Democrat helps Trump win” is true.
First-past-the-post voting systems inevitably trend to two-party systems over time. We see it play out in election models and we see it play out in real life.
this claim is not falsifiable. it’s a tautology with no genuine predictive power. it’s not science, it is storytelling.
everything you said after this was also wrong
You can excuse your “yeah Biden does it but Trump will do it worse” narrative all you want, the truth is that if somebody can’t vote for what they believe in because your “only choice is blue no matter who” your "democracy and even the illusion of choice is already dead - and I still won’t be voting for Blue MAGA.
Thank you for your prime example thereof though, in using such a bloated write up - not to decry a broken system that needs to be dismantled and reworked to include more than far right and mid right “parties”, of course, but to blame Trump on anybody left of genocide Joe who won’t vote for genocide regardless of whose doing it.
Blue MAGA.
My post exactly decried a broken system. I called it a systemic problem! And in fact, it is the people who try to solve it by voting third party who are not realizing the system is broken such that doing so only hurts themselves. The only way to fix it is to figure out a way to have a new voting system. I even gave an example of an alternative one!
I think your response really underscores how we got to the situation where everything in politics is just soundbites and insults and pithy slogans. Actual reality can be wordy to talk about, but people like you can’t be bothered to read it! And then you reply with a new pithy insult like “Blue MAGA”. Take a second to think before you react!
Blue maga will be our next great challenge :/…
Do you have $1 million dollars?
Depends, you got that game-changing math equation?
Proof of funds first.
Can’t wait for this game-breaking math equation 🥰🥰🥰
Oh good, another conservative reveals themself so I can block them.
You promise? “Anybody not voting for my candidate is the OTHER side” is such a dumb hill to die on.
Anyone not voting for Biden is, at best, announcing that they’re okay with a Trump presidency. Anyone okay with a Trump presidency should be shamed.
Simple as!
So simple minded. Straight up CHUGGING the american prop koolaid mate.
Wake tf up.
Projection and buzzwords.
🥱 boring divisionist propaganda
Enjoy the fall comrade. The orange is gunna hella suck for yall.
Only because you lot are pushing an agenda to keep people from voting against that.
They ARE voting against that you dense fuck. God damnit the libs are so far gone it’s not worth my time.
Enjoy the fall comrade.
The comment you’re responding to is indeed a stupid reaction.
Blue MAGA
Nice false premise.
“False”
Yes, good job.
Libs gunna lib
What does that have to do with your false premise?
If you can’t find the magical math equation, why even engage w/ the post mate? Just fuck off and move on with your life lol.
There’s no magical math equation to find. The math is quite simple.
You know that, of course.
If you can write it out, you will be the first :)!
deleted by creator
I think the issue is that constantly virtue signaling about it online has the risk of swaying other voters or making other voters check out completely
It’s less a vote for Trump and more a lack of a vote for the party that can realistically defeat him. I wish 3rd parties were a viable federal election option. But they aren’t yet to a point where they can realistically win in the US.
So the sentiment that not voting, or voting for a guaranteed loss is a vote for the worse of the two parties with a chance to win isn’t entirely without merit, it’s just poorly phrased. It means that if you fail to vote for the person that can win over the worse candidate, you have given the worse candidate a better opportunity to win.
Changing that mindset is how you solve this fucking problem, by creating opinion divisions between the parties. If some cunt doesn’t represent your opinions not even half the way, why the fuck would you vote for them?
I mean to really change whether third parties work in the US we need systemic changes and regulations to the voting structure because getting a populist movement stateside is nigh impossible. The only reason to vote for someone that doesn’t represent you halfway is to hopefully prevent the person who doesn’t represent you at all from getting in.
I wish 3rd parties were a viable federal election option. But they aren’t yet to a point where they can realistically win in the US.
Here’s the thing: as long as nobody votes 3rd party, that’s going to continue to be the case indefinitely. Wishing won’t change that.
Where I’m from we actually have a viable alternative to the centre / centre-right duopoly, and we still hear this sort of rhetoric, even when the outcome is nowhere near predetermined to be one of two options like it is for you guys.
The crux is, that voting for harm reduction cements you in a local maximum when there are better potential solutions out there.
Now I’m not saying that justifies voting 3rd party. There are a lot of unknowns. If more and more people started voting 3rd party, how long would it feasibly take to enact change? 2 election cycles? 4? 10? Does it ever even happen? And if so, is the harm caused in that period justified by the outcome? I’m dubious of that proposition.
Regardless, I think the rhetoric about this issue from both the pro and anti-3rd-partyists tends to be a overly reductive and/or myopic. I think both sides have valid concerns, and the answer isn’t as straightforward as it seems.
That said, pragmatically, it sucks, but I feel like I do have to discourage voting for a 3rd party.
We would really need changes to how voting is done on a regulation level to see the viability of federal 3rd parties. Some States do ranked choice which has really boosted 3rd party viability. I’d like to see that or something similar to it on a federal level.
This part of your post is interesting to me
If more and more people started voting 3rd party, how long would it feasibly take to enact change? 2 election cycles? 4? 10? Does it ever even happen?
Mathematically as long as the system is first-past-the-post, it always tends towards 2 major parties. Let’s say we could solve the prisoners dilemma we find ourselves caught in, it’s interesting sometimes to consider what the results of outlier scenarios would be.
So let’s imagine a world in which you could convince voters to embrace 3rd parties. Pew Research has some voter statistics that are useful https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/07/12/voter-turnout-2018-2022/
Only 37% of Americans reliably voted in the last 3 elections with a roughly even split between the two major parties. So let’s use 40% with an even split to make the numbers more convenient.
So we have an America where 20% of eligible voters vote for the Democratic Party, 20% vote for the Republican Party, and 60% stay home. Let’s imagine a best case scenario for 3rd party voting where a quarter of the democrats, a quarter of the republicans, and an additional 10% of the population that would sit it out are activated by the new choices these parties represent. This america now looks like. 15% reliably vote for democrats, 15% reliably vote for republicans, 20% are willing to vote for a 3rd party and now only 50% sit out.
Because it’s first past the post voting, there are many ways that the 20% can split amongst multiple parties such that the incumbent major parties still win the plurality. It actually doesn’t take much, 2 third parties splitting as unevenly as 14% of the population and 6% of the population ends up still letting the majority party with 15% of the population win. So we come to find that even with a larger population of possible voters than the 2 major parties, they still have to work together quite a bit to win.
Now let’s further imagine that the third parties are able to hold together they form a new independent party that get at least 16% of the population to vote for them and beat the incumbent majority parties.
Have we freed ourselves from being dominated by 2 parties? No, we just switched who does the dominating. The voters in the democratic and Republican parties will see which way the wind is blowing and shuffle around until there are two parties competing again, because in fptp there is a serious penalty to spoiler votes.
Now maybe it would be worthwhile just to put new people in charge. But the most likely outcome is whoever you elect ends up bowing to the same pressures that make the current 2 parties such trash fires and the donors that wrote checks with elephants or donkeys on them to have their way will be just as capable of writing out those donations to a bullmouse.
I’m all for electoral reform and reform in the government. But make no mistake, people posting on Lemmy that you shouldn’t vote because both options suck aren’t doing it out of a serious concern about legitimizing the process. The process is flawed but there’s no outcome of the election where they go “brave patriots all over this nation sat at home and so it doesn’t count.”
Real reform would require sustained and substantial action from the populace and even if you were to prefer that method of action, it would obviously still be advantageous to vote for the candidate that you think would create policies and laws under which that grassroots action would have the highest probability of success.
