Not anytime soon, but I'd bet on big changes across the board in 20-30 years.

You could do a multi-party Pres election: if no one gets enough electoral votes the House of Reps decides by majority. You'd end up with coalition governments.

It's interesting to see elections that use it. I've been watching those fairly closely.

The problem with establishing that on a national basis is that states control elections. That's a situation that really cannot be changed without a constitutional amendment. Due to the electoral college, which is a constitutionally established body, no changes are possible in our presidential elections without an amendment.

We do leave the state side of presidential elections to the states, except for some very specific rules regarding them. 18-year-old voting is one of those, as is the voting rights act.

However, the states would fight any major changes that affected their control of elections, and that would make a constitutional amendment impossible to ratify.

It's an interesting idea, and is being tested in some states for more local elections. So far, it has worked pretty well here in Minnesota, although the ballots are more than a little confusing for some people. We're not used to voting for first, second and third choices, and there have been problems with voters understanding the new ballots.

And I don't see many constitutional amendments passing in the next several decades at least.

That's a good thing. It should be very difficult to amend our Constitution. That it has happened many times is evidence that when amendments are needed or wanted by the nation, they are created, passed and ratified by the states.

We do not need to make it easier to amend that document, I believe. Amending the Constitution is possible, and has been done almost 30 times. Other times, amendment attempts have failed at some point.

We have a system and a method to change the founding document. I see no need to change that. None whatsoever.

But at the same time I think that the two party system has been stretched to its limit, and is breaking down. You've seen the increased polarization and obstructionism going on. This might actually be inevitable, sort of a natural limit that a system like ours would tend to.

Because there certainly is an element of zero-sum-ness to two party governance. For example, in a way it makes perfect sense for the GOP to block Obama's pick for the court. Because if he gets in, it moves the court left, and they want the court to move right. The fact that the court itself suffers is secondary to them. What keeps the thing working are tradition and civility, but there's always the temptation to push the envelope of incivility just a little further than the other guys. And with all the filibustering, threatening to default on the debt, etc., we're approaching the point where it's just all-out gamesmanship (at least on the GOP side), as opposed to governance.

The voters apparently do not want them, and candidates of other parties rarely get any electoral votes at all. The George Wallace exception notwithstanding, the House has not had to decide a presidential election in recent history.

However, the House option exists, and multiple parties could lead to that method of choosing a President. Voters do not want that to happen, for pretty obvious reasons. I do not want it to happen, for the same reason.

Right now, the House has a strong majority of Republicans. A successful third party challenge could easily lead to the House electing a Republican President, regardless of a plurality for a Democratic candidate. It's not going to happen, though, because the voters will reject that option at the polls, I'm certain.

I see no path to a multi-party system happening in the USA. I just don't think the voters will allow that to happen. Not by accident or by amendment. I think it will not be a reality during the lifetimes of anyone currently on DU.

For the most part, third parties can only be spoilers, and this is particularly true at the presidential level. In some state and local elections, the rules are different, but it's still not nearly enough for any third party to become nationally influential.

So I disagree that the voters don't want them. It's just that they can't really exist in a meaningful way within the current system. If we had a proportional representation system, at the very least the Greens would grow and pull off quite a number of Dems, and the Tea Party would break off from the GOP. We'd then see coalition majority governments, likely either Green-Dem or GOP-TP, but there would be a more varied set of candidates to choose from.

The dems throw The People a few more crumbs than the repubs do, but they both serve big business.

and doing completely away with the anachronistic Electoral College system which was designed for the Landed Gentry in the first place, sort of setting in stone the Ruling Class Elite's ability to secure their position with no serious challenge to their position.

Started looking at this system back 16 years ago. Not only is it doable, there's precedent in western democratic election systems.

Imo, we are so behind the curve on this it's ridiculous it hasn't been given more weight given our ever expanding and growing pluralistic population.

Thank you for starting this discussion. keep it going and maybe something will finally spark into a broader movement.

The Tea Party doesn't like being part of the GOP and the feeling is mutual. And who knows what the hell Trump supporters want to be part of.

I don't know what conservatives think about this idea, but I do know progressives are all on board with eliminating the Electoral College.

Back in 2004, there was a great deal of discussion among many of us on the Left hoping to create a movement to abolish the Electoral College, immediately a Conservative advocate (can't remember name of this woman) began making appearances which was broadcast on C-Span to create opposition to this idea based on the notion that the less populated states won't be fairly represented, which is completely false. As it stands now, they are unfairly over represented.

Proportional Representation is not widely known, but a newly regenerated promotion/education effort will be necessary to be understood with regard to how it works, once that threshold is met, it will immediately be understood as much more democratic than the rigged system we have in place now.

But first things first, down with the Electoral College system, and down with Citizens United. !

Maybe the repubs will end up with the tea party and the republican classic, and the dems can split into the DLC bunch and the BernieDems. Then we just need the green party to start becoming a viable alternative and things would look much better.

college system which necessitates two parties at most. More than that risks the House of Representatives choosing the President on a semi-regular basis.

Due to the small states enjoying more than their fair share of representation under this system, they will not vote for a Constitutional Amendment changing it.

I agree with this but have a different take...

Had we listened to our 1st President, we wouldn't have the Party system to begin with, but that's a story for another day.

I have longed favored the voice of a third entity in our system. As a college student, like many young and naive dreamers, I latched on to the Greens even as a registered Dem with hopes they could get the funding to get people talking about our planet and other ecological concerns. Shortly after, our Party took on Climate Change as "our thing".

What happens inevitably, is that the two major Parties just absorb those ideas rendering the smaller parties useless. A real third Party in our country would have to come from ideas (like Democratic Socialism or on the far other end Libertarianism) in which the two major Parties do not want to touch their ideas.

I am not in favor of it to hurt Democrats, I am favor of it in order to give way to more voices and issues important to all Americans.

Basically, to have power, people need to join forces, so parties just kind of form naturally. Every democracy that I can think of has them.

But I just don't see any viable route for a third party to have serious influence given the current electoral system of winner-take-all plurality and the electoral college.

They were called Federalists and their antagonists, the Anti-Federalists, fed into the Republicans (as the later Democratic party was originally called until around Jackson's time).

Parties were always there, inevitably, as was the bogus unity rhetoric. Elites had disagreements they wanted to settle among themselves, and when too many people would get involved, they'd trot out the rhetoric about how terrible parties are.

Identifying with the long-dead leaders and causes of the 18th century is one of the biggest obstacles we - the actual we, the living people - have to overcome. They were very into law and contracts, so there's been a document we can work from and revise, but it's gotten very very unwieldy through the centuries. The danger is trying to change it while there is still such an imbalance favoring the few.

I'd be very happy if momentum that way came out of this campaign.

A system with first-past-the-post-winners cannot accommodate more than 2 parties.

Here is the reality: in multi-party systems people can vote their conscience, but they often end up with a coalition government. In the current US system that coalition already exists in the form of two broad coalition parties. The left would (under the current rules) serve its cause much better if it simply joined the Democratic Party and make it into something that they want to support. Whether you join the coalition before voting (US) or after voting (multi-party nations), in the end the results are the same.

That said, I do think a multi-party system with run-off voting and the abandonment of the Electoral College would give greater freedom and democracy to voters in the US.

When you have to form coalitions in a legislature, it blurs the policies just as much as fitting several/all strains of the left under one party.

It might make folks feel better by allowing them to pull the lever for the person that matches their beliefs the most, but that would not cause the change they think it would.

Thanks for clarifying my point further.

The end result is more or less the same.

support repubs over dems, & praise non-progressives as progressive, how do you propose the left works within the party to change it?

They will ignore those who don't support them, and be more inclined to those who do (provided the support is either powerful enough in terms of wealth or of votes). The point is that under current rules the parties are coalitions. You want power in the party? Join it, annoy it, BE a POWER WITHIN the party. Splitting off into the sidelines has never worked. It just taught the Dems to not pay attention to progressives, since progressives are an unreliable voting block inclined to go full Nader at the slightest provocation.

Fact is that the Democratic Party is a coalition. You want to have your voice heard: be part of the coalition.

because the legislators that you need to change it have been voted into power via the existing voting system. The Liberals (and formerly SDP) in the UK have been demanding electoral reform for decades and haven't gotten anywhere on it.

but do you think it can be accomplished with big money in our electoral process?

Perhaps people are getting pissed off enough at the status quo they will demand change. I know I feel like I don't have representation, even though I always vote. It is ridiculous that we have over 300 million people & only two parties. Two parties that are really one party.

The one thing that it might have going for it is that I can imagine a lot of people on both sides of the spectrum agreeing with it. The Greens don't like the two party system, and neither do the Libertarians or the Tea Partiers. So if someone influential on the left decided to team up with someone influential on the right and make a lot of noise about this, it could have a chance.

But this election shows that the leadership of both parties want to thwart the will of the people & put in a status quo candidate. This election may be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back.

Good thread! Thanks for posting.

and growing. Where does that trend end?

What if it hits 60% and then there are only roughly 20% Dems, 20% Reps?

When (at what level of depletion) do the political parties become unable to corral their base and are forced to rebuild themselves, so they work better for all constituencies?

Under the current system, 3rd parties are spoilers for the major party that they are closer to politically, and there are no viable choices besides the 2 major parties. Under proportional representation, though, it could allow some extremist ultra-nationalist or ultra-racist candidate to have power despite not gaining the most votes. IRV might be the most efficient out of the 3 options and less dangerous than proportional representation.