Re:Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sli...
by ben-schaaf on Friday September 13, 2019 @11:12PM
(#20968711)
> People rationalize it by saying that voting for a 3rd party is "wasting" their vote
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.
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.