And it’s not that those things aren’t true. But there’s a much simpler explanation, and it’s the very basic rule governing almost every single one of our elections: Only one person can win. If you’re American, that probably sounds utterly reasonable: what the hell other kinds of elections even are there? But the answer is: lots. Winner-take-all elections (also called plurality voting, or “first past the post”) are actually a practice that most advanced democracies left behind long ago — and they’re what keep us from having more political options.
Even if you’re not sold on the need for more parties in the US, though, scratch the surface of “only one person can win” a little and you start to see how it actually produces perverse results within the two-party system as well. It’s a big part of why the political parties have moved farther apart from each other, and it leaves about half of the country without any political representation at all. Watch the video above to see how.
Scottie's Playtime 
I didn’t watch the video. I can say I got involved in voting/campaign improvement after the debacle that landed GW in the White House. Some states have many parties, with fusion voting; two or more of the parties will take the winner between them in a runoff, giving that candidate all the votes. It might write/read more confusing than it is to do, reading in a comment like this. Also instant runoff voting could/would eliminate parties altogether, which would indeed be a good thing. Finally, people have to watch their state legislatures closely! Again after the election that GW finally was gifted in court, our legislature made up primarily of Republicans, wrote law making it very difficult for any party other than Republican and Democratic to achieve ballot status. The Libertarian party threatened to sue and usually came up with enough candidates, so they were allowed in. Others must pay a filing fee and collect a goodly number of valid signatures in time to make ballot status, and those requirements are onerous. My state is not the only one who’s done that, but the organization with whom I worked in the 90s and early 00s isn’t doing much anymore.
The bottom line is, every line on every ballot matters, and people should show up when candidates do, and talk with them to find out what they think they’re going to do if elected. Better than that would be to retake our authority and tell them what we want them to do if elected! It is not only all about voting, though that has to be done, too.
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So I felt bad about getting on my soapbox after not watching the vid, and watched the vid. What was called instant runoff when I was active, they’re calling ranked choice. There’s a little error there, that such voting still isn’t fair, but as long as voters rank all the candidates, it’s fair.
Campaign reform (does a campaign season of 3 months sound good to anyone else?) and campaign finance reform (limits on spending and airtime, time-limited and fair interviews and debates soung good, too?) are long overdue, as well, but someone will have to get me started on those, since I’ve already been verbose on this one. blahblahblah…
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