Wouldn't it be fun if whenever somebody criticizes their government, they also state who they voted for to force them to open their eyes to the fact that it's their own fault.
People rationalize it by saying that voting for a 3rd party is "wasting" their vote, but in that sense, voting for anybody is wasting their vote because it never comes down to one individual's vote deciding things. Really they just have two driving forces - allegiance to whatever tribe they randomly found themselves feeling like a part of (and mysteriously agree with all the inconsistent aims of), and wanting to be on the winning team. Healthcare be damned.
Without a switch to range voting, approval voting, or one of the condorcet variants, the party system will remain broken into two corrupt halves.
It's actually worse than what people say. First past the post voting systems have a lot of problems, one of which is called the spoiler effect. By not voting for the major party you prefer you are actually voting against said major party.
Take this simple example: Major party A has 51% of the votes, while major party B hast 49%. Party A wins the election. Next election party C makes a big campaign at party A voters and convinces 3% to vote for them. Now we have A 48%, B 49% and C 3%. Party B wins the election. And if we look at the paper trails it probably doesn't surprise who funded party C's campaign.
Assigning this well studied behaviour of rational voters to simple tribalism is trivialising the core issue in the US: Elected officials are not representing the people. The way to fix this issue is to fix their voting system.
I guess I am stubborn but I will never vote for one of the two big parties. However it would be great if smaller parties got some kind of representation in Congress. It seems ridiculous that in the 90s Ross Perot got 20% of the vote but that resulted in zero representation.
Also, I find it curious that while our community has generally settled on "incremental improvement" approach, we expect different from our governments and want the "big bang" changes. Then we are surprised when things get worse.
It’s not. It sends a signal that there is a desire for something else.
The public memory is so short and so malleable, people forget things week over week let alone the entirety of an election cycle.
The issue with third party voting is a classic case of the problem of coordinated collective action.
Would-be voters don't participate out of perceived futility or participate in the dual party system for similar reasons.
I don't know how to solve it but there does seem to be growing agitation in the electorate with the current system as it stands, with the Electoral College under public scrutiny and with media support. To me that is a signal that times are changing.
In reality, voting for someone who didn't win the election is a "wasted" vote. But people will say that a particular candidate has no chance of winning the election, so voting for them is "wasting" your vote. Unfortunately, because most people follow this line of reasoning, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.