#First Past The Post

[mostlysignssomeportents]

During the Obama years, some of the Republican Party’s leading finance wing bosses started playing with fire. The Koch Brothers poured a fortune into the creation of the Tea Party, a hardline group that made it clear that the would rather lose elections than lose the culture war. They primaried career GOP politicians and replaced them with swivel-eyed loons (and normie politicians who were willing to vote like swivel-eyed loons).

These hardliners changed the conservative coalition’s balance of power. By making it clear that they would rather see Democrats in office than Republicans who reneged on their culture war promises, they put the fear of (an evangelical) God into their leaders.The Tea Party marked a turning point for the US conservative movement and then conservative movements around the world.

Hardline conservative policies — total abortion bans, groomer panics, institutionalized racism, historical revisionism, support for white nationalist — are not popular.

Ideas like universal medical care, expanded transit, humane immigration policies and infrastructure spending enjoy commanding majority support among both Republicans and Democrats.But the hardliners threw the steering-wheel out the window. They’ve made it clear to GOP party bosses that they would rather lose elections than lose the culture war.

- The Right's Hardliners Would Rather Lose Elections Than Culture Wars: and the finance wing knows it

[probablyasocialecologist]

Just 35 per cent voted Labour. That is the smallest share of the Britain-wide vote ever obtained by any party winning an outright majority, however small. It must be one of the weirdest landslides that any mature democracy has ever served up.

[...]

Labour’s majority this time is close to that enjoyed by Tony Blair in 1997. Yet its 35 per cent share yesterday was nine points lower than Blair’s 44 per cent—and six points lower than under Corbyn in 2017. The most dramatic result of the night illustrates what happened. In South West Norfolk, Liz Truss was defeated by Labour’s Terry Jermy. Socialism sweeps the Fens? Not exactly. Jermy won just 26.7 per cent of the vote. But in a crowded field, first-past-the-post does odd things. Truss, with 25.3 per cent, was followed closely by Reform’s Toby McKenzie, on 22.5 per cent. Had just one in 10 Reform voters backed Truss, she would have held her seat. Sunak, then, was right to say that, by taking votes from the Tories, they would help Labour win seat after seat. Sunak’s problem was that these voters, having lost their fear of a Starmer government, had no reason to hold back on their animus towards the Conservatives. So, rather than saying the electorate divided 65-35 per cent against Labour, the larger truth—both arithmetically and politically—is that the electorate divided 75-25 per cent against the Tories. And that 75 per cent vote has given us a parliament in which 80 per cent of British MPs are non-Conservative. 

July 5 2024

[interested-pig]

Consider this case study. 1.8 is the ratio of seats/per vote for Labour’s ‘landslide’ victory in the UK election. Labour received less votes than Corbyn’s tenure as Labour leader, where he was unable to win a majority of seats at an election. Irrespective of your political leaning, in light of the evidence, can the first-past-the-post system be seen as democratic? I can only see it as a pernicious, polarising and ultimately disempowering process.

[secretagentsagainstwhatever]

Fuck first past the post. All my homies hate first past the post

[titleknown]

Hot take, but if you're sick of voting for the lesser evil in the US, you gotta look into the movement to push for ranked choice voting.

Like, legit, "first past the post" as a concept is one of the big reason most major elections in the US have no viable alternatives beyond "the fascist party" and "everyone else, but headed up by corrupt neoliberal weenies" in most main elections, and if that were to change in a major way, it would be so much better on all levels.

Like, legit, look up the efforts in your state and see what you can do, especially if they're trying to get this issue on the ballot in 2024 like this group in my state is, it's an underrated issue but one I think is vital.

[bawkbawkmoose]

Ramin Djawadi won this year on a technicality.

[thewinter22]

The American voting system is so stupid. It feels like every year, president from side A spends like most of their time "cleaning up" and undoing ehat the other president has set up. Every four years, the country's politics completely changes. Because it's either Republican or Democrat, instead of literally having any kind of other voting which would be better.

I looked this up and like. Since George fucking Bush, every year has been a shift back and forth. Bush was Republican, Clinton was Democrat, then Bush came back, then Obama was Democrat. Then Trump, then Biden, and now fucking Trump again

[cherryblossomshadow]

How to Think About Politics Without Wanting to Kill Yourself

Hamilton Nolan

There are Enemies, and then there are Cowards.

Some people expect politicians to be heroes, and treat them as such. They pick a team, and they embrace a candidate, and they fawn over them, and idealize them, and treat them in the way that fans treat celebrities, or that medieval peasants treated kings. Not only is this unhealthy for the fabric of our civic society; it is unrealistic. You cannot be a fully moral person and be elected president of the United States.

.

I am bringing this up because, every election year, millions of politically concerned Americans struggle with this cognitive dissonance.

People want heroes as leaders, but you must swallow an enormous dose of bullshit in order to fawn over a major party presidential candidate.

Typically, the way that we deal with this is to ignore and wave away the bad things that our preferred candidates do.

People have a hard time accepting the fact that they will be voting for someone who will certainly do evil things.

What does that say about us, the voters?

Others deal with this by deciding not to vote or to voting for purist protest candidates, which, in our unfortunate two party system, effectively helps the candidate furthest from their own preferences.

“Everything is fine!” some say, putting on blinders.

“I can’t possibly support this candidate’s position on XYZ,” others say, maintaining their own sense of morality while, in the material world, helping to elect the worst possible person.

Both of these choices are flawed. Yet we all find ourselves here, over and over. What to do?

.

Untangling this ethical knot is, I think, a matter of perspective. It comes down to the way that you think of what politics is. For the most part, it is wrong to think of elections as contests between “good” and “bad” candidates. With few exceptions, it is more accurate to divide most politicians into two broad categories:

Enemies

and

Cowards

.

The enemies are those politicians who are legitimately opposed to your policy goals.

The cowards are those politicians who may agree with your policy goals, but will sell you out if they must in order to protect their own interests.

Embrace the idea that we are simply pushing to elect the cowards, rather than the enemies. Why? Because the true work of political action is not to identify idealized superheroes to run for office. It is, instead, to create the conditions in the world that make it safe for the cowards to vote the right way.

Under this framework, you can set aside the tedious feelings of disappointment that come with holding moral views while also supporting any politician. Will your favorite candidate do something bad? Almost certainly. After all, they are cowards.

The onus is on us to give the cowards a soft path to the moral choice.

.

The willingness to overlook certain morally indefensible things is something that most people accept, in their own hearts, when they go into electoral politics. If there is a hell, I expect that many well-liked and popular Democratic politicians will end up there.

But here in the material world, we are trying to achieve tangible things.

The cowards, unlike the enemies, can be moved into the right place.

That is why we vote for them, when faced with the choice of the two.

.

In general, it is better to think of even the politicians on your own side not as role models to be admired but rather as basically disreputable figures who are necessary to deal with but who should always be looked down upon and forced to prove, through action, that they are not pieces of shit.

.

So cease your valorization of political candidates, and cease also your tortured moral struggle over “supporting” a candidate who has done something awful.

Accept that all we will get from the next election is someone who can be made to do the right thing under pressure, rather than someone committed to doing the wrong thing no matter what.

.

There are many heroes in this world, and very few of them are politicians.

Our job is to get so strong and organized that the cowards will have no choice but to come along with us. The real action in politics is not in Washington. It is right where you are.

[maeinthekinning]

I want people to know. Because u.s.a. is a first pass the vote system with gerry mandering and electorals

Only 38% of registered voters are democrats.

30% are republicans

But honestly, this is the case with any first past the vote country, most people will not only not like who wins, but because 3rd parties have no chance of winning in first pass the vote and all the parties have to do is play on the "look at the other party, they are bad, so vote for me" instead of "i want to push x y and z"

Any country with a focus on first past the vote the people should focus on changing to an alternative, like alternative voting. No matter what party you more align with.

[dont-lick-my-vote]

have you ever wondered why many people tell you not to vote for third parties?

it's because of something known as the "spoiler effect." in a two-party system, this refers to when a third party/independent candidate is on the ballot and ends up losing but also affects the outcome of the election by splitting the votes.

this is something people have particularly expressed concern about with rfk jr running for president as an independent alongside the nominees for the republican and democratic parties. the idea is that rfk jr would split the vote by gaining some of the votes that would have gone to the major party candidate that was closest to him ideologically, causing the candidate his voters would have wanted to win least to end up winning the election. that is why it is often said that in our current system, a vote for a third party/independent candidate is a vote for the opposite party from the one you would otherwise support out of the main two.

people who tell you it isn't worth it to vote for a third party are essentially telling you to cast a strategic vote, which is basically where you choose not to vote for your preferred (third party/independent) candidate in an attempt to keep the republican or democratic candidate you like least from winning. you end up voting for the candidate you dislike less between the two. a sort of "lesser of two evils" thing we have seen people mention especially during the current election cycle.

below is a video we watched way back in my intro to political science class that explains the spoiler effect, the first past the post system (which is the system the US has), strategic voting, how a two party system keeps reinforcing itself under a fptp system, and how "minority rule" happens:

[evilelitest2]

USA's two-party system is an abomination.

Consider Republican party. The fact that there are only two parties forces all of these to band together in support of it:

-Evangelical Christians

-Proud ideological sucessors of Nazis

-Rich assholes and wannabe rich assholes (libertarians)

-Professional con men (also libertarians)

-Incels

-Paranoid uneducated rural people who both feel underrepresented at the federal level and buy into "the Left wants to legalise pedophilia!1!" bullshit

-Cultured, intelligent, kind Catholics who love their neighbors no matter their race or income, and may even be weakly supportive of LGBT; who would have been otherwise stauch enemies of the GOP and all of the groups above... if they weren't brainwashed into feeling they have a moral obligation to protect the lives of the fetuses more than the actual human beings

The latter two groups are the most disgusting to me precisely because I can see they are not entirely bad people deep down, and seeing them destroy their potential for goodness like that is... The two-party system must be destroyed just so these people could have a better choice than to team up with neo-Nazis.

So its important to understand that the US has always had a two party system, starting right after George Washington's election our politics have been dominated by two major political groups. Federalists vs. AntiFederalists, Federalists vs. Democratic Republicans, Democratic Republicans vs. Democrats, Democrats vs Whigs, Democrats vs. Republicans, and then the two parties changing what Democrat and republican meant for about 150 years. And its due to our voting method, we have a First Past the Post Voting system, which means that to win an election you don't need a majority of the votes, just a pluroality.

So lets say that the 2024 presidental election comes down to AOC, Biden, and Trump (ignoring the electoral college) The people who would vote for AOC are likely people who would have otherwise voted for Biden, which splits the vote. So Trump wins lets say 40% of the vote, while Biden wins 38, and AOC wins 20%. Despite the fact that only 40% of the nation voted for him, Trump because the president, nevermind the fact that literally 60% of the nation voted against him. So in that scenerio, it would be stupid to vote for AOC, even though she is objectively the better choice. Its basic mathematics, voting third party in a First Past the Post System is self destructive.

So all that being said, I think that the Gop has been losing the last group for awhile now, anybody who is still with them at this point I don't think are really kind

[mostlysignssomeportents]

It’s true that the Democrats’ finance wing is just as invested in not paying taxes or workers and just as committed to despoiling the Earth as their Republican counterparts.

Sure, they pay lip service to social progressivism, but it’s the anemic form of progressivism that promises to replace a world where everything is run by 150 white, male CEOs with a world where half of those CEOs are people of color, queer, and/or women.

But there is a crucial difference between Republicans and Democrats: Republican party bosses hate their base, but also fear them. They know that the base would rather give an election to Dems than elect Republicans who sell them out.By contrast, the Democratic Party’s grandees have zero fear of the base or the party’s left wing.

For decades, they simply assumed that union members, people of color and progressives would Vote Blue No Matter Who. They sold us out and told us they had no choice, and we just ate shit.

- The Right's Hardliners Would Rather Lose Elections Than Culture Wars: and the finance wing knows it

[breithenua]

Some thoughts on our voting system, 3rd party voters, and my internal struggle between my understanding of 3rd party voters frustration, and my red-hot anger at them for splitting the Democratic vote when we have literal *FASCISTS* running within the other party:

Going to start this by saying I literally do despise people that ignore the dangers of the spoiler effect. But I also understand being frustrsted with both parties. I don't like Biden *that much*. I don't hate him, but I'm constantly frustrated by his refusal to be harder on the other side, and play hardball. I'm tired of him doing things that don't work when the other party is literal fascists, and right now we do not need a compromiser, we need a *fighter*. But that being said, we don't have any choice other than him atm, because either Trump or DeSantis will be the Republican nominee in 2024. And a similar situation of milktoast Democrats versus literal Fascist Republicans will be the case in future elections as well. That's just the reality of things. But that doesn't mean I don't have an idea for a solution to the problem. It just means my solution isn't something that we can accomplish by voting 3rd party in the short term.

To start with, while I hate that we have to vote for the lesser of 2 evils, the solution to that is (just to stress that earlier point even more) a bit more complicated than just voting for a 3rd party. Unfortunately it's very hard to overcome the 2 parties in a First Past the Post voting system. There's a lot we need to change, our voting system included (and not just the Electoral College, but *fuck* does that need to go). We need to adopt a Ranked Choice voting system to make it more competitive for 3rd parties, without such a massive risk of creating a spoiler effect.

Problem is, neither of the 2 major parties wants to do so, and voting for a 3rd party has that spoiler effect risk. So what's the solution that's most likely to work? You build support for Ranked Choice inside not just 3rd parties, but even more so inside both major parties, til even the politicians running in said parties can't ignore it. It's a solution that takes longer, but it's a much safer option that's more likely to work, without people risking an Election of 1912 scenario in which someone wins the Presidency that nearly 60 percent of the population doesn't want them to win. People don't want a plan that takes patience, and they want something right now, but that's the only real way to get rid of the 2-party system.

Sure, it's possible for a 3rd party to win elections on a massive scale and end up winning the Presidency, but that always comes after one of the 2 major parties becomes so badly divided that it offshoots into a 3rd party that most of that said major party joins, and also enough of the other major party, and it results in the dissolution and replacement of the first major party. And then the cycle of the 2-party system repeats.

In conclusion: You can't get rid of First Past The Post *permanently* just by voting 3rd party, and more often than not that tactic just backfires in your face. Build support for Ranked Choice within the entire populace on both sides of the aisle and within both major parties til politicians on both sides have no choice but to support it to win their primaries and the parties themselves have to add the adoption of ranked choice to their overall platforms, and it's much more likely to change our voting system to one which favors 3rd parties in the long run. The "lesser of 2 evils" voting will never cease to be a thing unless we get rid of our First Past The Post voting system itself, and what I described above is what I believe to be an actually viable solution.

P.S. I am really not looking to be ganged up on by 3rd party voters and people that *really support* one of the 2 major parties, and will probably turn off notifications on this post (if Tumblr has that feature). This is just a solution that I believe is the only viable one available to us. I realize my wording on despising people that ignore the spoiler effect will make some of you angry, but try to look past that part and think about the logic of my solution itself. Call me an asshole if you want, that's fine, just consider the idea itself too.

[lunamann]

I would like to add that this phenomenon has a name.

It is referred to as Arrow's Paradox, and also, as the Spoiler Effect.

How well third party candidates do has a marked and drastic negative effect on how well any other candidate does, especially candidates similar to them in ideology. The more votes Jill Stein or RFK or any other third party candidate get, the worse off the 'main party' candidate closest to them on the political spectrum.

The more votes you give to third party, the closer we will be to Trump winning.

NEVER VOTE THIRD PARTY.

With Kamala/Walz going up DAILY, I've seen more people talking about voting third party/Jill Stein (EW) and I believe the above screencaps from @three--rings can explain WHY Third Party votes NEVER work NOR is this the election to screw around in.

Everyone....like she says above.....PLEASE LEARN FROM HISTORY!!!

(Because if Trump gets in, he's NEVER LEAVING).

[seosamhh]

What are you guys's plans to reform past the post voting system into an alt one?

[thetimehorse]

The Green Pill Secret: Voting

In the United States of America, on 5 November, 2024, you have your last chance, as a citizen, to vote for your next President. But, did you know there are also down-ballot elections? Do you know who your Congressperson is? Do you know your Governor? Do you know your state Senator and Representative or Delegate? Because, believe me, fixing the flaws in the system starts in the grass roots and all…