5th June 2016, 10:40 PM
(This post was last modified: 5th June 2016, 10:52 PM by A Black Falcon.)
That makes no sense, how could any electoral democracy function without lasting political parties? None ever has, and I can't imagine it working either... people naturally organize into groups, it's human nature, and to win an election you usually need some kind of organization, list of postentially interested voters to contact, etc. Only policial parties can provide those things, and what would be the advantage of getting rid of them regularly?
As for why we have only two, that's mostly because the Founders were inspired by the British Parliament, who at the time had two parties, Liberal and Conservative ("Tory"). But it's very common to break things down to two opposing sides, because more can get confusing, or just dysfunctional. Look at countries like Italy with probably far too many parties, it's a mess... I understand the appeal of more parties so people can have a party that more directly represents their interests, but the downside there is that it makes legislating more difficult, and for a Presidential system like ours, electing a President a massive pain. We'd need a different presidential electoral system with more parties, and the discord between the president and congress would probably often be even worse than what Obama has experienced... but on the other hand being able to vote for someone who more represents your views IS a good idea, so it's difficult. Having ranked-choice voting for some elections is a good step forward, particularly for primaries, local races, and such, but lots of major national parties? I'm not on board with that, it would probably cause as many or more problems than it'd solve.
As for why we have only two, that's mostly because the Founders were inspired by the British Parliament, who at the time had two parties, Liberal and Conservative ("Tory"). But it's very common to break things down to two opposing sides, because more can get confusing, or just dysfunctional. Look at countries like Italy with probably far too many parties, it's a mess... I understand the appeal of more parties so people can have a party that more directly represents their interests, but the downside there is that it makes legislating more difficult, and for a Presidential system like ours, electing a President a massive pain. We'd need a different presidential electoral system with more parties, and the discord between the president and congress would probably often be even worse than what Obama has experienced... but on the other hand being able to vote for someone who more represents your views IS a good idea, so it's difficult. Having ranked-choice voting for some elections is a good step forward, particularly for primaries, local races, and such, but lots of major national parties? I'm not on board with that, it would probably cause as many or more problems than it'd solve.