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Ted Cruz

7 (6.5%)

Rick Santorum

16 (14.8%)

Michelle Bachmann

13 (12%)

Chris Christie

23 (21.3%)

Rand Paul

49 (45.4%)

Total Members Voted: 107

[Mictlantecuhtli]

You mean the enforced shutdowns of electricity to tell people 'our current electrical system is bad and we need a privatized electrical system'? On the hottest day of the year? That they had plenty of time to prepare for?

Hint: That wasn't the first time Detroit has been hot as fuck. It's the first time it's been that hot under the local dictator who has a vested interest in switching all public services to corporations that are friends of the governor's cabal..

Also, do you really think *now* is when the Detroit power grid would be overwhelmed by 'too many people using electricity'? When their population is at similar levels to that of the 1920's? That would be one of the most rapidly decaying power systems in the entire world to fall below capacity for their current population despite a swan-dive of population/manufacturing/business power consumption..

[toto]

(removed)

[Mictlantecuhtli]

That's a spambot, and an eerily specific kind. Does it spider the internet for discussions about the electoral college or something?

[Mephansteras]

Well, beats Kitchenbots, I guess.

[LordSlowpoke]

i personally would not support a thing that has spambots working to "help" it but yeah

[stabbymcstabstab]

It's creepy I've never seen a useful spambot before. but if they just make it so the college vote actually represent the popular vote instead of "runner A has two more votes in New York! He get every single vote from the College!"

[GavJ]

Mine:
Take a list of every member of the state (roughly)

Randomly assign them to districts.

Done. :V

1) You need to actually have physical places to vote, and different districts need different ballots, etc. This would be an absolute logistical nightmare.
2) This undermines the entire purpose of local representation. Why would you bother at all to have districts if you're doing it like this? You may as well just have everybody in the state vote for their top favorite 20 representatives or however many the state has. (which is not as good as local representation, but better than having arbitrary scrambled logistics for no reason).

[Sheb]

If FPTP is what prevent the US from having a true multi-party system, how come the UK got more than 2 parties?

[GlyphGryph]

Mine:
Take a list of every member of the state (roughly)

Randomly assign them to districts.

Done. :V

1) You need to actually have physical places to vote, and different districts need different ballots, etc. This would be an absolute logistical nightmare.
2) This undermines the entire purpose of local representation. Why would you bother at all to have districts if you're doing it like this? You may as well just have everybody in the state vote for their top favorite 20 representatives or however many the state has. (which is not as good as local representation, but better than having arbitrary scrambled logistics for no reason).

Mail your votes in, duh. Some states already do it thhat way even.

Also, your way would make things messy and weird. Theres value in reps representing a certain number of people directly as their, specific, constituents. Theres less geopgraphic favoritism possible, sure, for obvious reasons, but it still results in significantly more "local" representation.

[GavJ]

If FPTP is what prevent the US from having a true multi-party system, how come the UK got more than 2 parties?

Because FPTP tends to result in a two party system given enough time.

It's not like implementing one suddenly, magically makes third parties poof out of existence. Also, even in an already two party system, there would be expected transitions where parties "flip" or bifurcate into new identities relatively reapidly, which might allow ingress by third parties more than usual for a bit. This has happened several times in U.S. history. The FPTP is only supposed to be a loose influence pushing you gently toward 2 parties, not ironclad law.

Diagram nicely showing a 2 party trend, but by no means law, over a very short period of time:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Theres value in reps representing a certain number of people directly as their, specific, constituents.

Can you be more specific as to what that value might be, if they aren't in the same location? Traditionally, the value comes from things like "There's a steel plant in my district, I'm gonna look out for steel workers" etc. So local communities get their voices heard. But that falls apart if every rep has 35 steelworkers split up from the same plant in random scatter, as they become a tiny minority in every district, and get ignored completely. Only STATE-scale communities get attention from each representative, so you might as well just have everybody vote for all state representatives.

[RedKing]

I'd argue that you would see a far more monolithic 2-party system if you looked at the same length period in the latter 20th century. Over time, the capacity for third parties to emerge and have any effectiveness has diminished as the two major parties have become entrenched.

[Leafsnail]

The UK/GB/English parliament has been operating under a FPTP system for hundreds of years, though.  It's not a recent change.

I think the real factor that locks the US into two parties is the all-or-nothing nature of a presidential election (and the fact that the president has a very important role, unlike in many other countries).  It's gonna be very difficult for a third party candidate to achieve anything except split the vote of one of the other two parties.

[GreatJustice]

Another factor is the fact that the Republicans and Democrats, besides having perceived legitimacy from having been around so long, also have vast campaign budgets to fund their campaigns. When Ross Perot ran, he very nearly won the election (until he stupidly abandoned his campaign and then came back again later) as he was able to match the Democrats and Republicans in terms of money. So the moral of the story is that a third party candidate can do just fine under FTTP so long as they are billionaires willing to devote lots of resources and their own name to the campaign.

[FearfulJesuit]

The UK/GB/English parliament has been operating under a FPTP system for hundreds of years, though.  It's not a recent change.

I think the real factor that locks the US into two parties is the all-or-nothing nature of a presidential election (and the fact that the president has a very important role, unlike in many other countries).  It's gonna be very difficult for a third party candidate to achieve anything except split the vote of one of the other two parties.

Exactly. The only thing that keeps (say) the Tea Party together with the establishment GOP is that a split guarantees a Democratic victory for the White House. The executive of parliamentary systems is just the top dog in its legislature, so parties can split and get their guy in anyways with the right coalition.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

The UK very nearly is a two-party system, to be honest. Conservative and Labour are pretty predominant (and if my history serves me, replace a similar arrangement by the Tories and Liberals in the past), and the Liberal Democrats just seem to be dying more and more all the time. The other parties are still barely around even though they can win a few seats*.

*Applies only to UK national Parliament.