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Cyran on 23 June 2025
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Mnementh said:
RolStoppable said:

Winner-takes-all is the reason. In a proportional voting system, voters know that there's a high chance that their vote won't be lost (it is when countries require a threshold which usually ranges between 3-5% of all votes). In winner-takes-all, your vote will be ignored if you didn't vote for the winner. Third party candidates in the USA are usually even more clueless and useless than the two major parties. Your suggestion is akin to recommending Germans to vote the AfD because neither the CDU or SPD have fixed the big problems during the last three decades. As messed up as it is, the Democrats happen to be the most left option in US elections despite being clearly located on the right side of the political spectrum. All that is why both abstaining and voting for a third party lead to the same result of raising the odds of putting the Republicans in power.

You've waived your right to call my post bullshit when you selectively quoted it. That's not how you debate if you have actual points.

France, Japan, the UK don't exist, because you say it, it is so, winner-takes-all creates a two-party-system. OK, fine you win. I guess reality loses against your flawless arguments.

France has Two-Round voting so people feel more free to vote for whoever they want on first round since on the second round they get a second vote for the 2 candidates that got the most votes.  I think USA would see a lot more people voting third party if we had two-round voting.

Japan and UK both parliamentary system where you don't vote for the prime minister but vote for your local MP.  When one party does not get the majority of seats then the party with the most seats have to negotiate with other parties to form a minority government which means even a party that only get a few seats can still hold influence over the prime minister in some situation unlike USA where we vote for our president directly (well technically electoral college but the electoral college is winner take all, a thrid party cant give there electoral votes to anouther party after the fact like in a parlimentary system).

All your examples either give more influence to parties in the minority then the USA (parlimentary system) or in the case of france give citizen a second vote which we don't get in the USA.

The USA system is as RolStoppable indicated uniquely setup to encourage people to vote for one of the two party in order to maximize chance of the person you vote for having a chance to win to the point that I had press to think of another country that have a single round vote directly for president that have many parties as valid option.