this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
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Politics
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I'm not American, so maybe I shouldn't comment, but I think Americans wanting change should pursue Single Transferable Vote (STV).
It's basically a ranked ballot in multi-seat ridings. This is the most surefire way to dismantle a two-party system, give roughly proportional representation, maintain geographical representation, keep extreme fringe parties from gaining wedge power, and allow for choice within a party to eliminate "safe" seats.
I really wish Canada would adopt this system to prevent our descent into American political tribalism.
Ireland has used this system since independence a century ago which suggests it would work pretty well in countries like the UK and Canada too which share a fairly similar machinery of government.
I'm British and I'd genuinely vote for this on a single-issue basis! Unfortunately FPTP means we have a duopoly of two Frankenstein's monster UK-wide parties that in a reasonable electoral system would really be two or three each and will never abolish FPTP on their own as a result, the only chance would be as part of a coalition agreement with a regional party and thanks to FPTP coalitions are rare in the UK system. In 2015 the SNP (Scottish independence party, long-term incumbents there) got 56 seats off 1.4 million votes while UKIP (right wing populist party, very Brexity and went the way of the dodo soon after) got one seat off 8.3 million votes. UKIP were awful in my opinion but that was downright undemocratic.
That will not happen in America ever, because neither of the two parties are interested in real democracy beyond the bipartisan status quo.