Time to break free of traditional political ideological labeling and divisions. Time to abandon old, divisive sociopolitical labels like "liberal" and "conservative".
A new political party based on a vastly, commonly held virtures lends itself to embrace over 66% of Americans, and it clearly embraces progressive principled thinking. In the most ideal American sense of unity, a political party should not be able to be defined or placed as "to the left" or "to the right" of where the Democratic or Republican parties currently are. Just let it exist organically based on present-day principled thinking. The American Progressive Majority.
Originally Posted By u/Atlanticbboy At 2025-03-23 04:38:18 AM | Source
Our entire US system is set up to make it so that it is essentially (literally) impossible for a third party to win. This article gives a decent basic overview of why: https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4947662-why-a-third-party-presidential-candidate-can-never-win/
I am glad my state somewhat backs is claim of being independent by keeping RCV. Still voted for trump though, but at least that's something besides laying down for the party that tells us we are to stupid for ranked choice
How we vote is controlled at the state level. We don't need federal reform to change how we count votes to make 3rd parties able to participate without a spoiler effect.
Alaska has passed these reforms, so can your state. Unless of course your state representatives don't support democracy.
Electoral Reform Videos
First Past The Post voting (What most states use now)
Videos on alternative electoral systems
STAR voting
Alternative vote
Ranked Choice voting
Range Voting
Single Transferable Vote
Mixed Member Proportional representation
as long as you don't start passing anti FPTP voting laws in democratic states first, you'll be fine, you do it in democratic states and you lose votes, overwhelmingly.
Alaska is better than the rest of the country in that regard for sure. Not sure it is good enough to fix the problem entirely but definitely definitely better than how the rest of the country does it and certainly worth watching to see how it impacts things. Article did not mention more 3rd party representation but even just the racial/ gender balancing is a big improvement
It's set up so that three parties can't be viable simultaneously, but which two are viable does change periodically.
Not really. Looking at the presidential races, we have:
There has been a couple of strong showings by third parties since then, but for the most part, US politics has been Democrats vs Republicans since 1856.
Congress followed a very simmilar tragectory.
In short, of today's current 2 political parties, one of them goes all the way back to Washington stepping down, and the other one showed up in the first 70 years. Both parties survived the Civil War.
During the time since 1856, there has been several massive political realignments, but the two parties remain dominant.
I mean, last time there was a a President or control of a house of Congress from a different party was in the 1850's so I wouldn't say periodically. It has happened but it is very rare and hasn't happened in a very very long time. At this point those people saying that primaries of the current two parties are the only real way to invoke change are correct. It is far far far more effective to try to take over a primary and get a Republican or Democrat that are RINO or DINO than it is to get enough support for a third party candidate. For that to work you basically have to find someone that is more appealing to conservatives than a Republican, more appealing to Democrats than a democrat AND you have to overcome the massive funding/ name recognition/ trust (this part is getting way easier lately) in the old two.
Yeah fair points, it's possible but unlikely. Totally agree that primarying the corpos is the more realistic thing to think might actually work.