The Democratic Party is launching an “all-out war” to block third parties from appearing on the 2024 US election ballot. This is in response to declining support for President Biden and the Democratic Party. The World Socialist Web Site has published articles exposing these anti-democratic efforts, which have received widespread attention and support on social media. Third party candidates like Jill Stein and Cornel West have condemned the Democratic Party’s actions as an assault on democratic rights and voter choice. The Socialist Equality Party has also voiced support for the right of independent and third party candidates to access the ballot, connecting this to the broader fight against the corporate-controlled two-party system.
The two-party system showed it’s flaws well before this election. It forces voters to approve policies they don’t support with their vote because they only get to pick from one of two “policy packages”. It makes it easier to extend/enact harmful policies because if interest groups can purchase support from both parties they are immune to legislation that doesn’t favor them. It divides the country into “us vs. them” because every election there is functionally only Dems vs. Republicans.
People talk about our “two-party system” as if it’s written into our Constitution or something. But there’s nothing in the document enforcing parties, and in fact it’s rather well documented that the Founders weren’t that fond of the idea of parties. Washington actually invited some of his political rivals into cabinet positions in his government, and while I’m sure that ultimately made for better policy is also resulted in some well-documented public infighting. Every President since then has identified with some party.
The main reason we have this system is the math of elections. In all but a handful of states that hold runoffs when no candidate reaches 50%, the winner simply needs a plurality of the vote. So in an election with 5 candidates, someone could easily win with 25% of the vote. But In the next election, 2 opposing candidates realize that if their voters worked together, they could achieve 35% in a four-way election. This leads to consolidation until there are only 2 choices left.
If we want to change our party system, we need to change how we vote. Ranked-choice voting is obvious, if we can get people to understand it. (And someone who strenuously objected to ranked-choice voting could still vote for a single major candidate, ignoring the other choices, and have that vote counted the same way it did before.)
Agreed. Multiple parties lead to coalitions. In Israel’s case, that resulted in putting Netanyahu in power. Not every party that put him in power is as far-right as he is, but they weren’t going to side with the left either. Now they’re living with the consequences, but worse- so are the Palestinians.
A number of the parties that put Netanyahu in power are further to the right than he is. As far as the right goes in Israel he is pretty middle-of-the-road. Which is fucking terrifying.