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[hector13]

That's the very definition of inertia - we maintain two parties because the existing two parties are already present.

Just to drill down on this a bit more, the two parties are maintained because of Big Money.

There is overwhelming desire amongst the population for a third option, but elections are not determined by what the majority want, they are determined by advertisement and the funding behind those advertisements. And there is not enough profit to be made in promoting and then corrupting a third party, so we just stick with the two already corrupt parties that we have.

If people wanted to vote for a third party, they would. Money being spent can’t prevent them doing that.

People don’t vote third party because it is basically wasting a vote. That’s a consequence of the system, that needs change to come from within, and people in power won’t vote to reduce that power.

[Maximum Spin]

Money and advertisements don't determine the outcome of an election, the way people actually vote does. Is anyone in the country, at this point, unaware of the existence of third parties, prominently featured on every ballot? They are fully capable of marking that box if they want to, and no amount of marketing can change that, because advertisements don't actually change what people want and barely influence what they believe. Blaming money is the easy way out designed into the system to dissipate all possibility of change.

[Frumple]

If people wanted to vote for a third party, they would. Money being spent can’t prevent them doing that.

People don’t vote third party because it is basically wasting a vote. That’s a consequence of the system, that needs change to come from within, and people in power won’t vote to reduce that power.

It's also substantially due to both major parties being pretty big tents; they're effectively coalition groups in a trench coat, in a lot of ways. Third parties that actually do stuff people want... end up caucusing with, or joining outright, the two big ones, because they're already pushing for some or all of what that smaller group wants, and it's the best way to get the weight to maybe actually do something.

The ones that don't do that, are largely so incompatible with what people want they end up being a non-thing so far as political impact goes. It's a pretty consistent pattern in the US.

... that said, I'm not entirely sure there is a lot of support for a third option, unless by third option you mean "stop friggin' bothering me". A great deal of the voting population largely just seems to not want to engage with the political process at all. Good bit of that's structural due to difficulties in engaging (fuck you, GOP), but not all of it.

Not even sure how much I can blame them, exactly. It'd be nice if things just... worked, and you didn't have to worry about it. Shame the state of things hasn't been like that since at least the southern strategy, more probably since before the bloody civil war

[IncompetentFortressMaker]

Money and advertisements don't determine the outcome of an election, the way people actually vote does. Is anyone in the country, at this point, unaware of the existence of third parties, prominently featured on every ballot? They are fully capable of marking that box if they want to, and no amount of marketing can change that, because advertisements don't actually change what people want and barely influence what they believe. Blaming money is the easy way out designed into the system to dissipate all possibility of change.

It doesn't help that there's this thing called the Electoral College, whereby the popular vote for president can be completely negated if the people who sit on it so desire. I wouldn't say it happens very often (as a would-be candidate winning the popular vote but some other person getting made President instead tends to lead to some measure of backlash and/or general negative sentiment, and the government is at least smart enough to realize people don't trust it very much right now), but it is still a thing and I will say right now that if a third-party candidate ever wins the popular vote for President, I fully expect the Electoral College to go "yeah no."

[hector13]

The last two Republican presidents didn’t win the popular vote^*, so I can’t imagine they’d have a problem with it.

^* a’ight, Bush’s first term he didn’t but he scraped the second term popular vote. Clinton apparently did not win the popular vote for either of his terms also, by relatively big margins.

[Folly]

It doesn't help that there's this thing called the Electoral College, whereby the popular vote for president can be completely negated if the people who sit on it so desire. I wouldn't say it happens very often (as a would-be candidate winning the popular vote but some other person getting made President instead tends to lead to some measure of backlash and/or general negative sentiment, and the government is at least smart enough to realize people don't trust it very much right now), but it is still a thing and I will say right now that if a third-party candidate ever wins the popular vote for President, I fully expect the Electoral College to go "yeah no."

2 of our last 6 presidential elections were won without the popular vote. That's pretty often.
And the problem is not so much that the Electoral College follows guidelines rather than rules which they can ignore if they so choose; the greater issue is that those guidelines specifically call for them to misrepresent up to 49% of their state's voting population.

Also a quick shoutout to Gerrymandering, which serves the same function of blatantly subverting the will of the voters at lower levels of government.

[hector13]

You say at lower levels, it’s for congressional districts a lot of the time. The Speaker of the House is 2nd in line to the presidency if something horrible were to happen.

[Maximum Spin]

You say at lower levels, it’s for congressional districts a lot of the time. The Speaker of the House is 2nd in line to the presidency if something horrible were to happen.

By the way, since it was asked earlier, I'm pretty sure that's what the people proposing Trump for the position are thinking.

[da_nang]

I guess you guys are building a wall after all.

* da_nang raises his shield at the incoming hemming and hawing.

[Random_Dragon]

DHS and ICE gonna be goons no matter who's in charge, yep. :/

[hector13]

It’s as pointless to build a wall under Biden as it was to build one under Trump.

[McTraveller]

The Electoral College system isn't "wrong" - it's just got some interesting characteristics.

I personally like the idea of a system that doesn't simply grant "majority wins", but "majority, in the most places." Otherwise imagine something like a world election; if it was simple majority it would always be China or India winning, depending on turnout and allowed voting age.

I will grant that maybe the EC doesn't quite do its original job due to technology and other factors, and a mish-mash of winner-takes-all versus proportional EC votes, but I think simply switching to popular vote will not be the ponies and rainbows that some expect it would be.


Post Script:
Hey, what's wrong with a nice decorative hedge row?

[hector13]

Mostly the ignoring of federal laws protecting the environment, animals, and clean water.

The EC’s job was to stop an uninformed majority voting for a tyrant… which worked real good last time, and ignores the fact the uninformed majority already vote for the members of the Senate and Congress.

[Maximum Spin]

The EC's job has always been specifically to balance the power of the states, giving small (by population) states a proportional advantage over large states by guaranteeing a minimum floor of per-state representation regardless of population. This is because the United States is a federation of united states, not a single unified country. hector13, you're a Scot, you probably understand the motivation.
Without the electoral college and the other main instance of this balance, the Senate, the United States simply wouldn't exist, because the small northeastern states refused to ratify the Constitution without protections against the federal government becoming fully captured by, at the time, Virginia. Given the specific conflict that motivated them, if you postulated such a US without the electoral college anyway, it follows that it probably would never have been able to abolish slavery.

Under the Constitution, for very good reasons, individual states are primitive to the federal government. Abolishing the electoral college would be idiotic, and just asking for a dissolution of the union.

[Nirur Torir]

The EC's job has always been specifically to balance the power of the states, giving small (by population) states a proportional advantage over large states by guaranteeing a minimum floor of per-state representation regardless of population. This is because the United States is a federation of united states, not a single unified country. hector13, you're a Scot, you probably understand the motivation.
Without the electoral college and the other main instance of this balance, the Senate, the United States simply wouldn't exist, because the small northeastern states refused to ratify the Constitution without protections against the federal government becoming fully captured by, at the time, Virginia. Given the specific conflict that motivated them, if you postulated such a US without the electoral college anyway, it follows that it probably would never have been able to abolish slavery.

Under the Constitution, for very good reasons, individual states are primitive to the federal government. Abolishing the electoral college would be idiotic, and just asking for a dissolution of the union.

We were not a unified country when we formed, but after the civil war the thinking changed from "these United States, and a citizen of Virginia," to "The United States, and a citizen of the USA." We are now a unified country, despite all the talk of red states vs blue states.
With the recent growing schism, now may not the best time for abolishing the EC, but I don't think it would be enough to spark a new civil war if the state-run initiative to go with the popular vote instead of the EC picked up enough steam to win.

Times change. The EC may have been useful over 150 years ago, but historic use from a long gone age does not mean we still need the EC today.