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Comment by merman | Hacker News Reader

The problem with extreme polarization in a 2 party system is that each party doesn’t police itself, doesn’t rein itself in, and when the other finally gets back in power, it pushes through awful retaliatory measures. The 2 parties are happy with this state of affairs because they’re pretty much guaranteed 50% of the time to be the one in power, in control. Vote 3rd party to break this cycle

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The way voting in the US works, voting 3rd party has the same real effect as not voting at all.

If you want to build a third party, you have to start at the bottom, with local races, and work your way up. You can't do it starting with national races.

I think you have to start lower than that, with the voting system itself. I've seen it argued in several places that "first past the post" leads to only two parties.

Yes, I mean in all elections not just for president.

Votes do matter. What if Kamala had gotten no votes at all, would that be the same real effect? Yes and no

> Vote 3rd party to break this cycle

Will that break the cycle? Power corrupts, and attracts the corrupt. After a 3rd party attains power, it will become as corrupt as the other two.

The reason that 3rd parties look better right now is precisely because they have no power or money.

I’m not saying many parties would fix human nature I’m saying it would break this specific cycle

Hard to break the cycle with the broken first-past-the-post voting system.

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