Multi-Party United States

I think this could definately happen if libertarians could shed their image among the chattering classes as being crackpots. Lots of yuppies who like gay marriage and low taxes...

It would also help if the libertarians stopped being crackpots.
 
Woodrow Wilson suggested it, actually. In the pre-revolutionary part of Reds! he actually gets it passed due to deadlock between Congress and the Presidency.

Well, then this would be a good PoD to have stronger 3rd parties. Because of the need to stablish parlamentarian majorities to chose the president and to pass laws, the smaller third parties actually earn a lot of power becoming hinge parties. They can force the president of the larger party to accept part of their own program if they want to get in the office.

This way, libertarians for example could get more of their program done by voting libertarian and having the libertarian party support a democrat majority in need of extra votes to obtain half+1 seats, than by voting republican (which would be the majority party closer to their ideas).
 
Indeed. Supporting lower taxes and increased social freedoms is freakin' insane.

That's not the problem, the problem is the associations with owning crazy weapons, the gold standard, Austrian economics, etc... in the popular mind.

A less radical "classical liberal" party could do well IMO. Just like the democrats, you'll have to sell out and moderate to get elected :p
 
I think even under the existing system and existing constitution, multiple small parties could emerge with one simple change.

Do away with First Past the Post (FPTP) for all elections; Presidential and Congressional.

FPTP more or less guarantees that political constituencies will coalesce into just two sides, "Left and Right" or "liberal" and "conservative" (whichever labels you prefer).

The reason is that a split vote on one side of politics delivers victory by default to the other side.
e.g. You might have 40% of the electorate "left-wing" and 60% "right-wing".
So the right wing candidate should win.
BUT if a second right wing candidate decides to run for a different party, the result could now be 40%, 31% & 29% so the "left-wing" candidate wins.

In Australia we have a system of "compulsory preferential voting" that works rather well and solves this problem.
In a nut shell, if you have three candidates on the ballot paper, voters must number the candidates in the order that they prefer them.

So in the above example, most of the "right-wing" voters will give their second preference to the other "right-wing" candidate.
Under this system, the candidate with the lowest number of votes on the first count has his/her ballot papers re-examined and reallocated according to the second preference.
So in this example, the third candidate with 29% drops out of the race, his ballot papers are re-examined.
Most of the second preferences are for the second candidate and so her count now goes from 31% to 60%.

It might sound a bit complicated at first but it actually works extremely well and has a certain logic to it.
In effect, voters are being asked "if you can't have your first choice as winner, who is your second choice" so the winner does end up with a plurality of electoral legitimacy.

What it ALSO means from a party point of view is that multiple "splinter" parties can emerge on the "right" or "left" of politics without handing an electoral victory to the other side because second, third, fourth preferences and so on will all flow to the candidates with similar policies.

Britain had a referendum on introducing a hybrid version of this called the "Alternative Vote" where the voter can optionally choose second or third preferences.
It was soundly defeated because neither of the major parties (for misguided and arguably selfish reasons) bothered to explain or sell the concept to the electorate.

If you believe that a political system with multiple parties is a good thing (I do) then that was a terrible waste of an opportunity.
 
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That's not the problem, the problem is the associations with owning crazy weapons, the gold standard, Austrian economics, etc... in the popular mind.

A less radical "classical liberal" party could do well IMO. Just like the democrats, you'll have to sell out and moderate to get elected :p

Yup, just take the more right-wing European Liberal parties compare them to the American Libertarian Party and the difference is a bunch of crack pot shit like the gold standard.
 
Britain had a referendum on introducing a hybrid version of this called the "Alternative Vote" where the voter can optionally choose second or third preferences.
It was soundly defeated because neither of the major parties (for misguided and arguably selfish reasons) bothered to explain or sell the concept to the electorate.

In all probability the reasons were selfish... and not at all misguided, as it would work in their detriment :D

But really, that Australian system sounds very good!
 
FPTP is not the problem. Canada and Britain have thriving third parties, and they have FPTP systems.

No, the problem IS the Electoral College, and, in particular, the way it's run. When you need an absolute majority, third parties don't stand a chance. The fact that 48 states are 'winner take all' makes it worse, far worse.

Then, because you have a 2 party system for the Presidency, those two parties are nation-wide and will run congressmen and senators. Why elect a congressman if you know he CAN'T be part of the government? Well, you might for a local issue or something, but it does make it harder to gain traction.

Mind you, any electoral system that can elect someone with less than 25% of the popular vote, theoretically (in a 2 party race) is massively flawed, IMO.
 
No. There were serious discussions about that way back in the 1910s.

Other than Wilson's 1880's Doctoral thesis (IIRC entitled "Congressional government" -cabinet to be selected from the House), I've seen no references to that particular reform effort. The 'discussions' must have involved proposed constitutional amendments. Reducing the threshold to override presidential vetoes from two-thirds in the House and Senate to three fifths in both or two thirds in the House only seems like the most obvious first step toward a parliamentary system.
Any useful sources or suggestions for further reading?
 
Apparently, I'm one of the few who's skeptical about the merits of a multiple party system. Neither system is perfect. The two party system does tend to squelch small parties... but multi-party systems get into the problems of coalition building, which isn't any fun either. I've always regarded the biggest political problem of the USA as not the two-party system or the EC, but the fact that our population has a crappy turnout rate for elections; basically, the 'will of the people' isn't being seen because they don't vote. The 'will of the people' would be reflected in the two party system just fine if we had 90+% voter turnout. When you get down into 50-60%, you got problems. People who decry the conservatives in our system overlook the fact that the conservatives are superb at getting out the vote for their side, and the moderates and liberals are bad at it. Instead of looking at changing our system, we should look at increasing voter turnout....
 
Apparently, I'm one of the few who's skeptical about the merits of a multiple party system. Neither system is perfect. The two party system does tend to squelch small parties... but multi-party systems get into the problems of coalition building, which isn't any fun either. I've always regarded the biggest political problem of the USA as not the two-party system or the EC, but the fact that our population has a crappy turnout rate for elections; basically, the 'will of the people' isn't being seen because they don't vote. The 'will of the people' would be reflected in the two party system just fine if we had 90+% voter turnout. When you get down into 50-60%, you got problems. People who decry the conservatives in our system overlook the fact that the conservatives are superb at getting out the vote for their side, and the moderates and liberals are bad at it. Instead of looking at changing our system, we should look at increasing voter turnout....
This isn't a thread to debate modern-day political reform, this is a thread to determine how the US could have, for better or worse, become a multi-party state.
 

JRScott

Banned
Prior to the 20th Century and the 'Progressive' Era the USA generally had 3-4 parties in the House, Senate and other areas.

Changes in 1911 to 1913 is what locked in the 2 party system.

The first of these was moving US Senators from being elected by state legislatures to popular vote through the 17th Amendment.

The second is the fact the US House has not passed a new apportionment bill since 1911.

These two events led to a climate where only two parties emerged after they used their political muscle to create ballot laws that overly restrict access and limit voter choice. It is purposeful and exists in some fashion in all 50 states. The whole point is to make sure you have no other viable options by making it so difficult to qualify for the ballot you've exhausted whatever feeble resources you had. They then use the fact that you have no chance to exclude you from debates supposedly held by nonpartisan media sources so that you can't ever possibly get a showing.

How do you fix this?

There are a few ways but they are difficult.

The one with the best chance of success is that the third parties need to stop running for President like its the Holy Grail. Its like me entering the Boston Marathon, having never run a marathon in my life. Most likely I'm going to hurt myself or possibly die because of it. You have to do the work to get into the most prestigious marathon's and politics is the same way.

Instead start targeting state legislatures. Make the Democrats and Republicans spend money to defend them. Your goal is to take enough seats in the State Legislature of each state so that you can change the ballot access laws. This will not be easy but should cost significantly less than actually trying to run for President.

Once you are able to change ballot access laws then it will open up the doors to additional parties. As they get their footholds in state governments then naturally it will fall in time they will gather sufficient support to gain federal footholds.

You could try amending the Constitution as well, if the Federal Government will not make the changes necessary, once you have control of enough state legislatures (and keep in mind this doesn't mean one third party controlling enough they could all work together to a common goal) you can then pass in each state legislature a call for a United States Constitutional Convention for the express purpose of repealing the 17th Amendment and revisiting the Amendment One (the only part of the Bill of Rights that is still before the states but not passed yet). Once you pass the amendments and whatever others are discussed you send it back to the states which you control in their legislatures easily passing them into law with no input from the US Congress or US President.

Repealing the 17th Amendment which since you control the state legislatures means that you now elect the Senators. Sides the reasons that it was passed have been proven false, the Senate today is far more corrupt than it was 100 years ago. It is also far more ineffective as it is more concerned with its image than in doing its job.

A modified Amendment One would fix the error that got through Congress making it clear that there shall not be less than 1 Representative per 50,000 citizens. It would also modernize the US House by having them telecommute to Washington rather than going in personally (though they could still make the trip for swearing in). This safeguards the US House from any single terrorist attack while at the same time ensuring they always have a local connection as their office would be in their district and easily all comings and goings could be monitored by local media. At present population this means the House has around 6400 members.

The last Amendment that I would consider important would be a slight change to the Electoral College. In this Amendment the Electoral vote would be divided by how the districts voted, with the winner of a state getting the 2 at large electoral votes. You don't want to completely do away with it because if you do then the major parties will only campaign in the 7 most populous states and are virtually guaranteed to win. However by making it proportional distribution of electoral votes then you make every vote really count.

Such a Convention could also tackle the long needed Amendment limiting time in Congress. Term limits is important here more so than the presidency. I'd limit it to those who have served 9 or more years in the US Congress are ineligible to run or be appointed in the future. Talk about cleaning house when added with the above.
 
I think you'd probably have to get rid of FPTP for this to work, at least on a national scale. Something like IRV would probably be good.

Nah. IRV would allow prominent third-parties to exist, but none could be elected President, realistically. Though FPTP means that everyone who thinks an NPV would allow a multi-party system is wrong.
 
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