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Comment by kelseyfrog | Hacker News Reader

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kelseyfrog·

Are we reading the same constitution?

Article II, Section 1

> The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President

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A party is a thing where multiple elected officials band together in a persistent coalition. The section you're quoting from only applies to a single elected office in the whole country. Are only two parties are going to run candidates for President when there are five or more parties in the legislature?

On top of that, that section applies to how the votes of the electoral college delegates are counted. It doesn't specify how the electoral college delegates are chosen, which it leaves up to the states. There are plenty of interesting ways of choosing them that don't result in a structural incentive for a two-party race.

> The section you're quoting from only applies to a single elected office in the whole country. Are only two parties are going to run candidates for President when there are five or more parties in the legislature?

I don't think it's a coincidence that every US state is structured as a smaller mirror of the federal government.

It's not a coincidence because they adopted their initial constitutions at around the same time or based them on the existing states that had. But we're talking about the electoral college and none of the states use something equivalent to that to choose their governor.

Using score voting instead of FPTP for state-level offices would be a straightforward legislative change in many states and still not require any change to the US Constitution even in the states where it would require a change to the state constitution, which is generally a much lower bar to overcome than a federal constitutional amendment.

I'll tell Hillary Clinton, she'll be thrilled.

And Al Gore, while you're at it.

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