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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

[smjjames]

Exactly angle, 'third party' in the political context just means any party that isn't the main two. Be it the Greens, Libertarians Socialists, or even the Prohibitionist party.

Yes the Prohibitionist party is a thing that exists.

Basically, it would be great if we had alternatives, but the two main parties aren't going to do anything that would reduce their power.

[Darvi]

Don't patronize, I understand your arguments and what they refer to.

People have already given their answers to your demands. Either you do not, evidently, understand them, or I'll have to patronise you for ignoring what they said. Choose your poison.

[Angle]

Eh, I for one am having a hard time following the conversation - I wonder if we could make things more intelligible somehow? Break them into nested bullet points or something?

[Darvi]

It would help not to have obtrusive wall of texts.

[SalmonGod]

Nothing is wrong with that at all! Not one damn thing! Except it doesn't tell me I want a third party, it tells me I want a democratic Tea Party (which I am divided on). The discussion is three-parties! And even if all that was true, the only example of a third party you seem to want is one that will get absorbed by the real parties after accomplishing its task.

I don't care if it happens through the rise of a third party or not, but something needs to happen.  I don't see what's wrong with discussing the possibility of increasing the viability of another party on the left, either for blowing off steam or for finding an actual means.  As far as I'm aware, no one here has said they'd be opposed to other means of bringing about equal change, or posited that a third party is the only possible way.  So I'm not sure why you're so worked up.

If the percentage of Americans who are so incredibly fed up with politicians that they don't vote bother voting at all actually voted, they could do whatever they damn well pleased. Politicians spring up to support damn-well-anything. It seems that you are demanding a party representing your interests appear, and then you will support them, but that seems pretty backwards.

I partially agree with you.  I think if people would stop giving in to the good cop/bad cop routine by the two major parties, that we could make a lot of things happen.  I do vote for third party candidates where they are actually present and I have the opportunity to be informed enough to be confident in them, but that's incredibly rare.  And I think it would be significant if others would do the same. 

This is more directed at SalmonGod, but this: America is divided, and more fundamentally then by just party right now.

You guys want, and let me be really blunt here, a more left-wing (Green? Socialist? whatever) government, not a more democratic government. A government that allows more room for your own viewpoint. I don't really know what happens in your vision to the 20% who are on the opposite fringe and dramatically disagree, but I imagine you don't think about them often; perhaps you deny their existence, importance or relevance, although they have all three. I often hear variations on "They will see the light" or an accusation of brainwashing, not explaining how anyone intends to fix them with politics while they have political weight. The other side thinks the exact same as the left does, for the exact same reasons. You (by which I mean America, but also Bay12) are just as divided as the parties, and the systems you've shown me would just lead to a congress dominated by the interests of the radicals both left and right, because that is where America is now, and that America is what a more democratic government will need to copy. And I don't think that America is one anyone wants to be in, especially not you guys.

No, it's not the same.  The Tea Party fringe on the right doesn't have the problem of being near-completely unrepresented.  I don't want congress dominated by radicals.  For one thing, most of the issues I list as being unrepresented are not even radical.  There is a huge portion of the voting population that wants tougher regulations on business, more progressive taxation, toning down of the police and military, stronger social programs and funding for infrastructure, etc.  These may not be majority, but they are widely held stances that should not be considered radical.  But there are almost no politicians representing those interests, and I that's a huge problem and dysfunction according to the way our government is supposed to operate, no matter how I look at it.

So I want to know what you suggest someone like me should do?  I have to give up sleep just to get a couple hours a day to myself.  I most certainly don't have the time to be actively engaged in campaigning for change.  I don't have money to throw at supporting my political interests.  I don't see any other way to engage in politics besides voting.  But politicians need to be supported by wealthy interests in order to be competitive with other politicians who are supported by wealthy interests (note that the Tea Party had this on their side).  The full spectrum of political thought that wealthy interests are willing to support is represented in the two major parties.  My political interests fall outside of that spectrum.  Reform is needed in order to change the laws that allow wealthy interests to control politics in this manner.  But the control of politics by wealthy interests prevents politicians from being elected who can enact such reform.

So what are these opportunities that you see?  Because I see nothing but a choice between continual slide into ruin or bitter conflict.

[Angle]

I will also note, IRV tends heavily towards promoting centrist parties, cause those are usually the fastest to get 50% of the vote. Remember, under IRV, you have to get 50% of the vote at some point, including after the people who only listed a couple candidates have all been eliminated. So it's very unlikely to have a fringe party get elected. But they can at least run, and even if they won't get elected, they allow you to vote the way you want and communicate your displeasure. And over time, they can come to be major competitors to the big parties, and even force them to change their politics or be replaced. For example, if the democrats find themselves barely beating the greens, they'll adopt some of their policies in order to beat them.

[Descan]

Isn't IRV usually used for one-person offices, like Presidents? The House should probably stay area-representative (but un-gerrymandered :V) and use IRV too, but I think the Senate should probably just be overhauled into a parlimentary/percentage based system, i.e. a party gets 1% of the vote, they get 1 Senator. (Who that senator is should be up to the parties to decide, and voters can act accordingly. I.E. if a party wants to, they can just have the leader say "Okay, you get in," to some Senator, leader fiat. Or they can have party members vote for who they want in the senate for each seat, like a primary. Or whatever else, a coin toss?)

I get the idea of the senate having two senators from each state, make it a balance against the House of Reps. so that each state gets an equal voice. I just don't see the point/agree with that ideal.

[Angle]

Yeah, I've been considering how to move our congress more towards a parliament, and that would be a huge effort, and probably bitterly contested. I'd actually lean towards having the house of representatives be elected in the parliamentary fashion on a state by state basis, as that would eliminate the majority of gerrymandering.

[Rez]

This talk is all well and good, but pointless.  Does anyone reading think anyone can reform the federal government?

How does giving the national party total say over who sits in Senate weaken it?  The Democrats and Republicans will still play the same games they play now: "if you vote for Greens, Libertarians, Constitutionalists, the other team will win!".  It would allow them to eliminate dissent.  Would Rand Paul have a Senate seat if the Republican leadership got to choose who served them for Kentucky?

As a sort of aside, the Green Party's energy policy is blue-sky in the extreme and that alone means it will never shave many votes.

[smjjames]

What do you mean blue sky? Is that like overoptimistic hopes?

I like to vote green when I can because environment and because its something else than the main two. Doesn't work for presidential elections though.

[Lord Shonus]

"Blue Sky" means "idiotically optimistic to the point of impossibility". It's used to refer to treating plans like space elevators or infinite cheap fusion like day-after-tomorrow developments when in reality we don't have the technology to develop the technology to do it yet.

[Rez]

Overly optimistic is the straightest way to say it.  They're opposed to any form of energy production that affects the environment. I guess it's representative of a more long term goal, but they also don't mention a single variable-production method of renewable energy in their platform.  The fact that they are opposed to nuclear technology, full stop, is a sticking point, as well.  We do not have the technology to do these things.  We probably won't have the technology to do these things in 5 or 10 years. 

Also, the way they talk about affecting the changes to society make me think 'environment gestapo'.    Saying things like "Re-localize the food system" sound nice, but what I read is "Forced migration out of cities" when a group aspiring to State power says it.

[SalmonGod]

There is a lot of stupidity among environmentalists.  It's frustrating.  And I don't doubt it's a major factor preventing cultural support for political activism on the environment.

But we are in desperate need of really major changes in order to prevent environmental collapse.  I'm not the anarcho-primitivist type who believes we have to abandon all technology and become a whole society of organic farmers.  But it will come to worse than that if we don't do some serious stuff very soon.  We need an intense focus on researching and refining energy alternatives and migrating our infrastructure over to them, which isn't happening.  And we need a huge crackdown on regulations targeting the environmental impacts of industry, coupled with incentives to do things properly to buy us time while we're doing that. 

One example of a thing that desperately needs to stop, which I have to deal with in my day-to-day life as a freight forwarder:  Logistics planners at large companies are measured on how little inventory of parts they keep in stock to keep production running, because that inventory costs money to warehouse and damages profitability metrics if it isn't all used up before the end of a billing cycle. 

So let's say a company starts producing a widget that is made from several different parts all produced in different countries that are shipped in to be assembled as a finished product in their plant.  The logistics planner in charge of scheduling orders for those components is ideally expected to have a separate shipment arriving for every component with enough stock to cover production for exactly two weeks, so that they can report zero overstocking at the end of that two-week billing cycle.  It doesn't matter if the business has been making this widget for years and can safely plan to continue producing them identically for many more years.  Their performance will still be measured by their ability to never plan more or less material than is needed for exactly two weeks of production.

I see the same stuff flown into the country week after week.  Any given single product made by the customer account I work for amounts to hundreds, if not thousands of flights containing very small quantities of component zipping repeatedly all over the world through the course of a year.  Because it looks good on paper.  How fucking stupid and wasteful is that.  Now think about what a small part of the production process that is for a consumer product, and how there is just as much wastefulness involved every other step in the way for business reasons.  Now multiply that by just about everything you own.  There is a fucking monumental amount of room for us to cut emissions by regulating and altering the incentives of industry.  Encouraging the average consumer to drive a more fuel-efficient vehicle and recycle their plastics is nice and all, but it isn't shit compared to that.  That's the kind of environmentalism that any green political platform needs to put forth.

And I'm sure many green politicians are completely aware of this, and would do that kind of stuff with their time in office.  But they have to campaign like anyone else.  They have to appeal to the principles of their core base on an emotional level.

[alway]

Meanwhile, MPAA lawyers have coddled up with state attorney generals to try and take on Google: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/12/how-hollywood-spurned-by-congress-pressures-states-to-attack-google/
Going so far as to pay them to start investigations.

[mainiac]

And I'm sure many green politicians are completely aware of this, and would do that kind of stuff with their time in office.  But they have to campaign like anyone else.  They have to appeal to the principles of their core base on an emotional level.

Um, why are you so confident they are aware of it?  This sounds to me like exactly the sort of thing they leap to tackle because it's no pain.  If it's actually a big deal you could probably solve it by just doing a study and getting people's attention.