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Here in Norway we have multiple parties. What has happened in the last few decades is that none of the big parties have enough votes to get majority on their own, so they have to work together with smaller parties. This creates an inversion of power, where the smaller parties gain significantly more influence than the number of seats would indicate.

The smaller parties have little to lose playing "my way or the highway" during negotiations, so end up getting at least some top items from their program pushed through. This has led to some rather poor laws and regulations in recent times.

That said, while I've thought about this vs the US two-party model a bit, I think I prefer what we got over here.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_threshold

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banzhaf_power_index Expressed this property, that it's not your size but rather how many coalitions you can swap from loosing to winning which matters.

I seem to have lost a sentence in my editing. The electoral threshold reference was there to indicate they try to avoid too many small parties, but I'm not convinced it's working very well at the current level.

Crucially Norway doesn't use "winner take all" voting and people are able to express more nuance in their preferences, otherwise Norway would also have 2 parties. When most Americans hear "multi-party system" they tend to assume voting works the same way as in the US, but that somehow other countries reach a different equilibrium with the same inital conditions.

Canada has a parliamentary system with winner-takes-all for each seat. We have three major national parties and a regional party which regularly has a significant minority. The system is not fundamentally different from the one used to select representatives in the US. Many other countries have similar systems, but not all of them have two party rule like the US.

Odd -- Germany has a similar system and smaller parties kinda feel forced to take responsibility and thus take part in a coalition. Might be media influence, but also because "Opposition ist Mist" - "[being in the] oppoisition is garbage" (Franz Müntefering).

This is essentially what outliers in each party here can do as well - like Joe Manchin in the senate blocking many democrat priorities

> What has happened in the last few decades is that none of the big parties have enough votes to get majority on their own, so they have to work together with smaller parties. This creates an inversion of power, where the smaller parties gain significantly more influence than the number of seats would indicate.

The US also has that, the different is that its less visible, and the minor factions have more power because:

(1) the minor factions are esconced within major parties, so there is no public discussions about coalitions, and

(2) because of #1, and because such arrangements are stickier, the major factions have less choice as to which minor faction to make a majority with, making them more at the mercy of the minor and extreme factions theybare bound to.

Step One to fix democracy would be for the US to have something approaching a representative democracy. Which means 100% voter participation, and substantial government interest in why voters do not participate.

This does not mean forcing you to vote for anyone in particular, but it does mean forcing people to turn up and indicate some type of preference - even if that preference is "no one here".

Mandatory voting is common elsewhere [1], and the sell is simple: voting is compulsory for all citizens unless a valid reason is provided (which isn't a high bar for most valid reasons) or a nominal fine is imposed (in Australia - $20 [2]). This fine isn't significant in anyway, it just has to exist because it does two things: asks people how much they seriously don't want to participate in the free thing which ensures their freedom, (2) forces the AEC to look into the matter - they have to try and collect the fine, and in turn ask why someone didn't vote, which means incidents are investigated, and (3) if a lot of people are getting fined the suddenly it's going to very much become a national issue as people make a fuss about it.

It's irrelevant to talk about anything else while substantial parts of the the American voting eligible public do not vote, and no one is responsible for investigating why and ensuring that it was a personal decision and not a problem of lack of access, time or intimidation. You can't run a democracy when the one defining characteristic of a democracy is handled so flippantly.

[1] https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joi...

[2] https://www.aec.gov.au/Elections/non-voters.htm

Forcing people to vote may give an election more legitimacy to a certain kind of mind set that I don't quite understand (I think the opposite).

But is there some reason to think that it would tend to improve the decision making quality of the population? That when compulsary voters are included, there would be better choices made on laws and representatives? I can't think of one. On the contrary it would seem to compel the participation of a lot more people who don't care.

Pretending that people aren't being disenfranchised from voting as a coordinated campaign in the US is to have blinkers on. It has a long and storied history that hasn't ended[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_Unite...

I voted for the first time at 18. I had no clue who or what I was voting for, but I voted anyway because it was my "duty".

Still regret it.

Lately I have voted the local issues and leave everything else blank. Locally I care what they do and can actually talk to city council.

I'm not saying I disagree with the idea of mandatory voting, per se. But in the U.S., a fine for not voting would quickly be labeled a "poll tax", which would immediately raise the connotation of being racist in nature. In a day or two, the whole idea would be scrapped on grounds of unfairly targeting minorities and the lawmaker who suggested it would be accused of secretly being affiliated with the KKK.

I'm not saying it's right, but it is what would happen.

I do not see how you can possibly interpret a fine for not voting as a "poll tax". Especially since the jurisprudence on banning them is specifically aligned with ensuring people have access to voting.

I've usually voted but if they pulled this shit I would stay home and pay the fine.

If you strongly felt that none of the choices were worth voting for why wouldn't you turn in a blank ballot instead?

They don't necessarily mean the same thing to everyone. A blank ballot still endorses the system, I think

You could literally write on it I don't endorse this system or deign to participate.

> Not only would this make more than two parties viable.

All political parties are filled with petty power seekers. From the article: "Though once a member of Australia’s Green Party, inspired by its commitment to grassroots democracy, he grew disenchanted with party politics." "he made his way into the activist circles of Occupy Wall Street after college but likewise became disillusioned." One of the biggest advantages of random selection is that you select people who are not actively seeking power.

Another inherent problem with party politics is that if there are election campaigns that cost money, there's corruption built into the system.

> All political parties are filled with petty power seekers

Sure, but with more than two viable parties, you have more incentive to run on a positive message, because driving people away from one particular opponent or demobilizing their base, especially in a way that alienates your voters but to a lesser extent, is not as effective a campaign tactic when its not 1-on-1.

So Im not an American, and live somewhere with proportional voting; however from what ive read FPP is a fairly easy to justify system if you take into account two ideas:

First, that the group represented is as small as practically possible, so small numbers of people, small cultural subgroups, and a limited social distance between the elected official and the constituents.

Second, that the rules governing a group are as local as possible, large disagreements should be unusual, and ideally lead to splits in region. Issues on a state or federal level should be limited to interactions with other states or nations; weather or not you want to live in a group with legal abortion for example should be determined at the the smallest size that can make that decision; probably city by city, what people in other cities think should have no bearing.

Unfortunately the nature of government is to centralize and accumulate powers, things that were once the sole preview of a town or county are now federal issues. It seems impossible find a "fair" voting method, to reconcile how to weight two distant strangers opinion on what should be a local matter.

Historically first past the post and related systems are blatantly and obviously designed to give small elites power over the masses.

This is not in any way hidden.

In fact, they were often progressive steps away from even worse systems.

The problem is local bullies taking advantage of people who cant leave. If you cant put a floor under peoples quality of life, you cant avoid this problem.

I think you should look at the terrible things that happen in American HOAs and in small, remote towns. Local rule is often not good, at all.

Regardless of how you make the election rules, if everybody is basing their vote on; 1) hating the other team more 2) thinking the other individual candidate is an all time bad candidate that must be stopped at any cost 3) doing what the tv commercials told them to do 4) building their political views based on what the entertainment news channel wants them to believe 5) mixed with foreign nation state propaganda masquerading as organic individual opinion

you still end up with what amounts to an uninformed electorate. You've figured out how to count an uninformed opinion in a better way. And maybe eliminated number 2 and some of 1 from being a complete problem, but unpopular controversial people will still manage to drive the conversation.

> Regardless of how you make the election rules, if everybody is basing their vote on; 1) hating the other team more 2) thinking the other individual candidate is an all time bad candidate that must be stopped at any cost

Both of these are particularly incentivized in systems with FPTP and the duopoly it tends towards. So, electoral rules do matter here.

The basic problem is that the constituents of a constituency want opposing things. It’s an intractable problem that is only managed via laws.

The result is that even in homogenous societies that have shared history and values have trouble reaching consensus.

Moreover even with the best intentions and actions one cannot predict unintended consequences or future events that are unaddressed by the past.

> The basic problem is a the constituents of a constituency want opposing things.

That’s true but there is also a very real constitutional problem here. My country has a system close to the US and sees the same issues.

A good constitution should foster a viable ecosystem of parties each representing the interests of a relatively homogenous group then force these parties to build coalitions through negotiations. That garanties than people feel that their opinions are represented, that there are a plurality of opinions in debates and the necessity to govern with people with different interests mean a consensus has to be reached and nothing to extreme should happen.

A system fostering two parties necessarily means the party will be caricatures. It’s obvious that both houses people with widely different opinions. It’s a travesty of democracy if you think about it.

> the electorial system that leads to two parties with each close to 50%.

In the State elections law I have read, this is set up to happen like this.

For example, Illinois election law specifically mentions Ds and Rs.

Election law in other States often sets major/minor party donation limits and ballot name ordering based on things like prior off-year Governor results. This uses math to keep the "minor" party allowable donations low.

What State election law are you in and does it mention major/minor party?

This election law setup to move toward two parties is obviously known to your State legislators who team together to prevent fixing it. And the people eat it up and argue about side issues!

The point of sortition is to apply the benefits of representative polling but while allowing the people polled to take the time to deeply research and understand the issue.

I don't see anything that is arbitrary about the process.

The solution is to ban political parties so that people have to be educated on the actual people and issues they vote on. Things like straight ticket voting are an absurd perversion of democracy.

You can't prevent people in the US from ganging up, but there is no reason elections should be required to promote parties or ballots print party next to candidates. Some offices (most judicial races for instance) do not use party affiliation.

George Washington was right when he warned us about political parties.

proportional representation rarely leads to elections won with clear margins

Did you mean to point to that as a problem?

Because all this means is that minorities can not be stumbled upon.

It means that you get long periods with no functioning government at all and when one does happen it tends to be unable to do anything coherent whilst simultaneously becoming committed to a handful of bizarre and extreme policies that the small parties demanded. It also leads to frequent collapse and re-runs of elections that yield the same deadlock.

The idea that FPTP must yield a two party system isn't right anyway. The UK uses FPTP and has quite a few different parties that routinely challenge the big two in major and impactful ways (SNP, Lib Dems, UKIP, Reform etc).

the UK is still very much a two party state

That's clearly nonsense. What do you think the SNP is?

a small minority party?

>Did you mean to point to that as a problem?

no

> proportional representation rarely leads to elections won with clear margins

Not creating artificially exaggerated mandates is a feature, not a bug.

I never made any comment on whether it's good or bad, I'm just pointing out an incorrect assumption

"Even more arbitrary"? The current system is not arbitrary at all.

You do realize that by having more parties, you split the vote further and run an increased risk of no one having a majority.

Would you rather see politicians be elected with only a plurality of the votes?

> You do realize that by having more parties, you split the vote further and run an increased risk of no one having a majority.

Some would see this (having to build coalitions) as a feature.

(As a Canadian I can see pros and cons given our system.)

When no one has a majority they have build coalitions and learn how to compromise. That’s a good thing.

This is exactly what happens in existing FPP systems.

See Trump for example:

48% vote and a 1 in 2 turnout:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_president...

or Boris Johnsons landslide with 42% of a 67% turnout:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_general_...

This is only a problem if you retain a first-past-the-post voting system.

My country uses a single transferable vote system - pretty much no representatives are elected with a majority of their constituency's vote - instead each constituency elects multiple representatives (3-5), and you vote with a ranked choice of all of the people running in your constituency. No one gets a majority of first preferences because there's no concept of a "wasted" vote if you vote for someone on the fringe - your vote will eventually end up transferred to your favourite candidate that can feasibly be elected.

The result is a legislature that is extremely representative of the population at large with a wide gamut of parties. Our politics is obviously still as dysfunctional as anywhere, but I don't think any of it can be chalked up to the electoral system.