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[smjjames]

Hillary is quite salty about her ratings.

Don't despair, First Woman President™, even if every voter leaves you, you'll still have the loyal media, the establishment, the big business, and mainiac at your side! With allies like these, no one can ever stand against you!

I would like the context on both sides of that statement honestly. But yeah, that seems really, I dunno the word, facetous or something.

[RedKing]

Spite. Yes. Only reason for any sort of protest against the establishment. Obviously.

Interestingly enough that's not what I said.

I would appreciate if someone wants to come along and translate what I've said because that seems to be the only way my points every get across.

That is in fact literally what you said.

I'm salty?  Between the two of us I'm like 90% sure that I'm the one with the more left wing views but I am not the one saying I'm going to sit out an election out of spite.

Spite has nothing to do with it. A serious lack of confidence in Clinton's suitability as President does. And as I pointed out, her one saving grace is that I have even higher mistrust of one Donald J. Trump.

[Dorsidwarf]

Spite. Yes. Only reason for any sort of protest against the establishment. Obviously.

Interestingly enough that's not what I said.

I would appreciate if someone wants to come along and translate what I've said because that seems to be the only way my points every get across.

That is in fact literally what you said.

I'm salty?  Between the two of us I'm like 90% sure that I'm the one with the more left wing views but I am not the one saying I'm going to sit out an election out of spite.

Spite has nothing to do with it. A serious lack of confidence in Clinton's suitability as President does. And as I pointed out, her one saving grace is that I have even higher mistrust of one Donald J. Trump.

You missed the point of what Maniac mean by "thats not what I said". Maniac said "You're abstaining from spite", not "Everyone who refuses to vote Big Two is doing so out of spite", which is what Rolepgeek insinuated he did.

just clarifying

[mainiac]

+1

[Guardian G.I.]

At this point it seems like everyone is a Russian plant, including me.

Spoiler: Dem evil Russian plots to subvert American democracy (click to show/hide)

Joseph McCarthy is probably cackling in his grave right now.

[mainiac]

But there is no communism, just third rate authoritarians posing as second rate authoritarians and trying to prop up foreign forth rate authoritarians.

[Guardian G.I.]

But there is no communism, just third rate authoritarians posing as second rate authoritarians and trying to prop up foreign forth rate authoritarians.

Who cares, the menace is the same: evil Russians trying to destroy freedom and democracy worldwide, and America in particular.

If this whole hysteria won't result in a crackdown against anything deemed "pro-Russian"  a-la the Second Red Scare in the upcoming years, I'll be very surprised.

[mainiac]

just third rate authoritarians...

somehow becomes...

evil Russians trying to destroy freedom and democracy worldwide, and America in particular.

Strawmen.  Strawmen never change.

[Sheb]

Well, they're not trying to destroy freedom and democracy, just becoming very good at using media and leaks to try to get foreign government to do what they want.

I wonder how Clinton will fare in the debate. She needs to call out Trump on his constant lies, but if she does she will certainly end up as "shrill" or "hysteric". It's hard being a woman in politics, no wonder that people like Merkel and May have cultivated a discreet, competent image rather than one based on public speaking skills. And that they came up through a parliamentary system rather than through direct vote.

I always find it strange that you guys spend so much time complaining about being forced to choose between the two parties when both your parties are so powerless and vague. I think that, rather than FPTP is the reason you don't have third parties*: there is no real need for them when you can have wathever position you want within the party, while enjoying the party machinery if you win the primary for your paritcular election. (As shown by Sanders's showing in the Dem primary)

I also find it strange that you only seems to really care about third-party for presidential elections (Maybe because the candidate of your party is a compromise between party member on a national scale rather than on a local scale so it is further from your choice?). Presidential elections are totally unsuited for third parties, if only because there is a single seat. If you really wants third parties, maybe you should focus on building them at the local level so they gain the ressources, connection and influence to have a chance in the other elections. The Greens don't even have a single state senator to their name, how can you expect them to compete? The Libertarian are scarcely better (4 state senators and representatives).

* I mean, FPTP doesn't helps, but in the UK third parties have 15% of the seats in the Common. In the US there is not a single third-party Congressman, and only two independents.

[Reelya]

It's certainly more diverse than the USA, but saying 15% is misleading. There are 650 seats. Labor and Conservative hold 559, 2 are vacant, leaving 89 held by other parties (~13.5%). Out of that, 54 are held by the Scottish Nationalist Party, but the fact is Scotland is basically a 2-party system between SNP and Labor, so it doesn't represent "the system" working differently rather than a politico-cultural divide between Scotland and England. Plaid Cymru represent Wales with 3 seats, and they're also the second-largest party in the Welsh Assembly after Labor, so that means Wales is basically a 2-party system between Plaid Cymru / Labor similar to Scotland.

SDLP+Sin Fein+Ulster Unionist Party+Democratic Unionist Party represent Northern Ireland with 17 national seats. So it's more diverse, right? Nope. There are 4 parties because of sectarian divides. Two parties are fighting it out for the catholics, and two other parties are fighting it out for the protestants. It used to be almost all UUP and SDLP, but those guys lost most of their seats to DUP and Sin Fein after the peace accords. So it's gearing up to be a 2-party system between DUP and Sin Fein. The funny thing is that the parties fear their own side more than the other side: DUP+Sin Fein have formed a coalition government representing Protestant+Catholics, and there's a rival coalition of the other Protestant party & other Catholic party. So it's like a double-layered two-party system where people refuse to vote for a party lead by the other religion.

So we should exclude these regional parties which represent their own micro-level-two-party systems. That leaves UKIP, LibDem, Green and Independent members as representing true diversity. Which adds up to 14 seats, or 2% being not some variation of a regional two-party divide.

[Sheb]

So what? In 2010, the SNP had only 6 seats, but the share of the two main parties was 87%. Plus, it's still a third party, you simply don't have regional parties in the US.

[Reelya]

That's because the USA is a young country of immigrants. There are less ingrained regional variations of culture than in the UK.

Also, the SNP holds 54/57 Scottish seats in the national House of Commons. They're basically a 1-party system which represents Scotland. They definitely do not indicate an example of vibrant 3-way races being viable under the UK system. But Scotland is a good example of how FPTP doesn't scale up well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_Scotland
There are ~5.5 million people in Scotland. At the national level, they get 1 rep per ~100,000 people. At the "state" level, they get 1 rep per ~40,000 people. At the national level, SNP landslided with 95% of the seats, whereas at the "state" level, they only got 48% of seats. The 2.5 times larger grouping + FPTP voting created a fairly extreme shift in the SNP from "largest minority" to "one party system".

FPTP therefore failed to scale up in a consistent way: it gave results which turned a local minority into a national majority (because there were >2 choices). This can be partly alleviated by using IRV voting: a party which wins 40% of voters in each seat in a 3-way race will win almost 100% of national seats, whereas with IRV, they might not win a majority at all (since voters for the other two parties might select each other as their 2nd choice). IRV therefore scales up better, both by size and number of parties in the election. Although it still doesn't scale up as much as MMP, which guarantees proportional results at any size of electorate.

Consider that the UK has one Representatve per 100,000 people, and the USA has one Congressman per 735,000 people. So maybe the "difference" in the systems is just the Law Of Large Numbers in action: the USA has vastly higher number of voters per division than the UK.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

At this point it seems like everyone is a Russian plant, including me.

Spoiler: Dem evil Russian plots to subvert American democracy (click to show/hide)

Joseph McCarthy is probably cackling in his grave right now.

Trust not the will of the Russian, who feeds the darkness of men's hearts and suffers none before his maw of destruction.

Cast the enemy out.

Cast the enemy out.

Cast the enemy out.

Amen.

[mainiac]

Canada is a younger and more immigrant country. It has three parties to America's two. And the divide between blacks and whites is much bigger then the Quebec Ontario divide.

[Grim Portent]

That's because the USA is a young country of immigrants. There are less ingrained regional variations of culture than in the UK.

Also, the SNP holds 54/57 Scottish seats in the national House of Commons. They're basically a 1-party system which represents Scotland. They definitely do not indicate an example of vibrant 3-way races being viable under the UK system. But Scotland is a good example of how FPTP doesn't scale up well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_Scotland
There are ~5.5 million people in Scotland. At the national level, they get 1 rep per ~100,000 people. At the "state" level, they get 1 rep per ~40,000 people. At the national level, SNP landslided with 95% of the seats, whereas at the "state" level, they only got 48% of seats. The 2.5 times larger grouping + FPTP voting created a fairly extreme shift in the SNP from "largest minority" to "one party system".

FPTP therefore failed to scale up in a consistent way: it gave results which turned a local minority into a national majority (because there were >2 choices). This can be partly alleviated by using IRV voting: a party which wins 40% of voters in each seat in a 3-way race will win almost 100% of national seats, whereas with IRV, they might not win a majority at all (since voters for the other two parties might select each other as their 2nd choice). IRV therefore scales up better, both by size and number of parties in the election. Although it still doesn't scale up as much as MMP, which guarantees proportional results at any size of electorate.

Consider that the UK has one Representatve per 100,000 people, and the USA has one Congressman per 735,000 people. So maybe the "difference" in the systems is just the Law Of Large Numbers in action: the USA has vastly higher number of voters per division than the UK.

The Scottish parliament is actually elected differently from the UK one, in addition to consituency seats we also have list seats, which are allocated to parties sort of proportionally, but with penalties applied to parties that won constituency seats. If Scotland had used FPTP alone it would probably be an SNP majority in the Scottish parliament, but the way the votes for the list seats work meant other parties were able to get a big chunk of the list seats despite having a minority of constituency seats.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

As seen here if Scotland were FPTP the SNP would have a majority in the Scottish parliament.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Additional_Member_System

The reason for the SNP essentially being a single party representative of Scotland at Westminster is largely a fault of the UK elections having no mechanisms to try and represent the other groups in the constituencies rather than FPTP not scaling up well. The Lib Dems proposed a change to the electoral system when they were in the coalition UK government as I recall, but Labour and the Conservatives both smacked it down because they stand to lose the most if electoral reforms happen.