this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
485 points (82.4% liked)

Solarpunk

5496 readers
68 users here now

The space to discuss Solarpunk itself and Solarpunk related stuff that doesn't fit elsewhere.

What is Solarpunk?

Join our chat: Movim or XMPP client.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I am so so divided on if I should vote for biden or not. I wanna vote third party to at least do something or should I just stay home and protest and advocate where I can? Thoughts?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Mister_Rogers@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

America (and alot of countries to be fair) need ranked choice voting systems so damn badly for this exact reason (if you're unfamiliar with it, a simple version is that basically you rank your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd pick, your first pick gets 3 points, 2nd pick 2 points, 3rd pick 1 point. At the end they tally up the points, and the party with the most wins).

Singular vote systems trend naturally towards 2 party systems often, whereas with a ranked choice system, far right people would vote for far-right-person that loads of people hate, far left people would vote for far-left-person that loads of people hate, but since almost everyone would put moderate-person as their 2nd choice that everyone kind of doesn't like, they would be the one to get elected in this case. It's like the old saying, a good compromise is when nobody is happy. That's what's needed to move away from extremist politics, but without a ranked choice system, it's not going to happen any time soon.

*this is grossly simplified, and there are examples of multi-party systems that don't use ranked choice, and there's many many caveats besides when talking so simply about something as complex as electoral politics, but the fundamental point stands.