this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
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I think in my country that's called "Stemmespild"
which basically means wasted-vote.
if a political party wants to enter the parliament, they gotta get at least 2% of the votes. so if you vote for one of the very unpopular parties and they only get ~1.5% you've effectively wasted your vote completely (This is how it works in my country - of course things are different in the US)
Things are even worse in the US. For president you need to get a plurality of the votes (more than any other candidate) nationally (let's ignore the EC for now) which means that any vote not for the two candidates who stand a chance is wasted.
But also in their congressional elections they set up the system so to get in you have to get a plurality in some district where only one representative will be sent each time (FPTP). So even if your party has 15% nationally, unless they can win a plurality in some districts, they won't get any representation.
Thats why 3rd parties are pure vote wasters in presidential elections and in Congress you only have a handful of independent reps who somehow win their districts without party backing.
Cobtrast that with most of Europe (including Denmark(?)) where you have proportional voting for a parliament and then parliament forms a government. You can vote for your green party and while they might not get to be Prime Minister, they might be needed for the parliamentary majority to form a government and get the environment ministry. Win! Or they might just exert slight pressure in parliament directly, which is where laws are made. Not a loss!
The poor 'Mericans, meanwhile, are screwed. The only reasonable choice is between the two major parties at the elections. To turn that oil tanker they have to get involved in those parties and try to affect which candidates are put forth and then the party even skips that step entirely if they happened to have won the last presidential elections.