The problem with Our Two-Party Political System

Present status

Politics in the United States today divide into two categories: Democrats and Republicans, or liberals and conservatives. While political parties are always going to exist (that is, we aren't going to ever have a system where everyone runs independently), the two-party system is overly divisive and doesn't provide enough granularity to represent even closely the various views of the citizens of our country.

The bipolar system we have forces people into two camps based often on razor-criteria. Most obviously, a lot of folks that vote Republican do so because that party represents the anti-choice movement. Others are Republican though they are socially progressive, and some of these socially progressive types are Democrats though they've got a conservative spending viewpoint. Essentially, one must choose a stereotype to fit into, even if one doesn't fit the mold.

(Whether or not you agree with any of these stereotypes is up to you, and I write them down knowing they're stereotypes associated with the categories though I disagree with some of them.)

This creates a problem, because in our representative government the elected should somewhat closely represent the people. It isn't happening in a lot of cases anymore. The question is, how do we fix this? To answer this question, we need to look at where the system fails with multiple parties.

The essential problem

The problem is that of splitting the vote: For example, if we have two liberal candidates and a conservative candidate, the liberal candidates split votes between them and the conservative candidate wins, though with only one liberal candidate then s/he may have won.

The problem is confused more by the way the electoral process for president resolves split votes, which was set up because the founding fathers lived in a world quite different from ours. Due to slow communications, elections were difficult to manage. The electoral algorithm was set up to function in that world, a world that doesn't exist anymore. Although changes have been made in the timing of events as communication improved, such as when a president was sworn in, the rest of the algorithm has been the same since 1804. 1 

Here's the outline of our algorithm:

1. Select candidates.
2. Hold election.
3. Popular vote in each state is mapped through an algorithm, set by each state, to map to the electoral college.
4. If a candidate gets 50% of the electoral college, then they win. Stop.
5. If no candidate gets 50% of the vote, then the selection of the president falls back to outgoing House of Representatives, with each state getting one vote, not one vote per representative.

Some would argue that the electoral college is out-of-date and should be eliminated. I can see benefits and problems caused by the college, so I leave an opinion on this up to the reader. I'd probably leave it intact for now, to minimize changes and evolve a step at a time.

It's this last step that I think is the real problem. The House is required to select one of the top 3 on the list. However, the Senate chooses the vice-president, and must choose from the top two on the list. Thus, there is the possibility of a miss-matched team being created. Furthermore, as elected officials, they should try to fulfill what the people want done, but nobody trusts that they will do so. Since we don't trust them with this decision, we've "fixed" it by having only two major political parties, thus eliminating the possibility of having this happen.

Thus, I think we need to change this last step to do a run-off election rather than rely on Congress to vote. Thus, it will be the will of the people to select the President. The question becomes, do we run-off with 2 or 3 of the top persons?

If we had 3 to start with, obviously 2. If there were 5 or 6, though, it might make sense for 3, the thought here being that votes that were split in the N-way election will combine and may strengthen the third place candidate more than the first and second place candidates. Thus, I would propose to do both at once: Given A, B, and C; poll for A, B, and C together, and A vs. B, B vs. C, and A vs. C. Based on the A vs. B vs. C, drop the lowest candidate and then look to the appropriate 2-candidate poll to determine the final winner.

This is needed because elections take time to set up and cost money to run. Arranging one run-off election between November 2 and the January swearing-in is reasonable, but two would not be.

Thus, if you start with:

• 35% Conservative
• 25% Silly
• 20% Slightly silly
• 15% Goofy
• 4% Giddy
• 1% Other

Then in the run-off, you get:

• Conservative vs. silly vs. slightly silly
  • 40% Conservative
  • 35% Silly
  • 25% Slightly silly
• Conservative vs. slightly silly is ignored, since slightly silly lost in the 3-way competition.
• Conservative vs. silly
  • Conservative: 45%
  • Silly: 55% (Yay! Four more years of silly government!)
• Silly vs. slightly silly is ignored, since slightly silly lost in the 3-way competition.

Thus, the issue of the vote being split, at least at the presidential level, is resolved. Now, while I think this is easy to understand, making others understand might be too much to expect. Nevertheless, I think we need to make some sort of change to open things up to multi-party system.

Side-effects

If we actually move to a three-party system, some additional changes happen. In the House and Senate, if none of the parties have 50% of the seats then the only way to get things passed is to form coalitions. This has some advantages:

• Stupid ideas that one party gets excited about can't get anywhere.
• Getting good ideas through should be easier, because one group holding out can't block stuff getting through.
• The "you believe this, thus I believe the opposite" behavior can stop. Party members won't be able to show their distinction from the other party by being the opposite if there are two other parties.

Additional problems

I don't know if this is the same throughout the country, but here in the north-east you have to select a party when you register to vote. Then, you may vote in that party's primary. You must re-register to change party affiliation to vote in the other party's primary. I think the folks most likely to vote in the primary ones are the ones with the biggest agenda, and thus will tend to select candidates who represent the more extreme views of their party. Thus, I think there is less voting across party lines in the final vote because to both parties the other's candidate seems almost rabid. For example, in the 2000 election, I thought McCain was saying some good stuff, and I was interested in him for president as were many of my typically Democrat friends because he seemed rational and more moderate than the radical right. Unfortunately, the radical right voted for the Republicans and selected Bush, who most Democrats think is a maniac.