POLITICS MOTHERFUCKER

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Re: POLITICS MOTHERFUCKER

Post by Magical » Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:37 pm

No, I cannot justify any part of that statement or what it may imply. Thank you.

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Re: POLITICS MOTHERFUCKER

Post by Dantes » Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:38 pm

Crunchums wrote: Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:29 pm
Rylinks wrote:i don't think the power of the two parties is particularly because of FPTP
well suppose i think both parties suck and I want to start a new party - what happens? answer: i get nowhere, because of FPTP
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7l9QmtiXHU)
It's not FPTP that's the culprit. It's the design of our government. Unlike a parliamentary system, there's no mechanism here for power sharing (control of ministries). That kind of a system logically leads to two opposing parties.
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Re: POLITICS MOTHERFUCKER

Post by Magical » Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:38 pm

If just one time the new page would NOT FUCK me

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Re: POLITICS MOTHERFUCKER

Post by Wumpy » Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:39 pm

Magical wrote: Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:38 pm If just one time the new page would NOT FUCK me
i have been manually setting page breaks to fuck you all this time

behold my mighty power

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Re: POLITICS MOTHERFUCKER

Post by Crunchums » Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:39 pm

Rylinks wrote: Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:31 pm ukip (and various other small parties although for those the geography complicates this analysis) did fine in the first-past-the-post UK
Image
tell me more about how this is evidence that FPTP does not necessarily lead to two dominant parties
(source: https://members.parliament.uk/parties/Commons )
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Re: POLITICS MOTHERFUCKER

Post by Rylinks » Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:40 pm

Magical wrote: Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:36 pm We have RCV and all our politics are so moderate and serviceable and boring that all the Aussies who want to get mad about politics get mad about American politics as proxy instead 8)
yeah the US needs to get back in there and pull another gough whitlam

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Re: POLITICS MOTHERFUCKER

Post by Rylinks » Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:40 pm

Crunchums wrote: Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:39 pm
Rylinks wrote: Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:31 pm ukip (and various other small parties although for those the geography complicates this analysis) did fine in the first-past-the-post UK
Image
tell me more about how this is evidence that FPTP does not necessarily lead to two dominant parties
(source: https://members.parliament.uk/parties/Commons )
they succeeded on their one issue!

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Re: POLITICS MOTHERFUCKER

Post by Dantes » Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:42 pm

Wumpy wrote: Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:39 pm
Magical wrote: Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:38 pm If just one time the new page would NOT FUCK me
i have been manually setting page breaks to fuck you all this time

behold my mighty power
Wise One: If you would but see.
Seeker: See what?
Wise One: It is not the page that fucked you.
Seeker: That implies that I fucked the page!
Wise One: worthless, you're all worthless.
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Re: POLITICS MOTHERFUCKER

Post by Rylinks » Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:42 pm

one of the reasons the referendum happened was because the FPTP system allowed UKIP to throw the government to labour even with a minority of the votes

now i mean maybe this isn't a good outcome but it's a case where FPTP amplified a small party's power

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Re: POLITICS MOTHERFUCKER

Post by Crunchums » Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:43 pm

Dantes wrote: When I was a child, I used to watch election returns with my parents. Before we went to bed, we knew who had won virtually everything. It was vanishingly rare for an election not to be called that night.

Now it can be weeks of waiting punctuated by lawfare over the counting of ballots, courts injecting themselves into processes they have no business in, accusations of fraud (from both side), elections denial (pioneered by Democrats I might remind you), stories of ballot harvesting, and etc.

If you don't understand why people (particularly older people) no longer trust elections, I cannot help you.
i'm confused because this post reads like you think you are disagreeing with me, but i don't understand what we are disagreeing about

also could you please stop implying that i love the democratic party; to me they're just the party that sucks less than the republican party
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Re: POLITICS MOTHERFUCKER

Post by Dantes » Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:45 pm

Crunchums wrote: Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:43 pm also could you please stop implying that i love the democratic party; to me they're just the party that sucks less than the republican party
I haven't been doing that? :confused:
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Re: POLITICS MOTHERFUCKER

Post by Rylinks » Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:45 pm

if someone in the US created a minority party that was capable of sabotaging one of the two major parties in national elections, like UKIP threatened the conservatives, they would have a lot of power to demand concessions.

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Re: POLITICS MOTHERFUCKER

Post by Crunchums » Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:51 pm

Dantes wrote: Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:38 pm It's not FPTP that's the culprit. It's the design of our government. Unlike a parliamentary system, there's no mechanism here for power sharing (control of ministries). That kind of a system logically leads to two opposing parties.
so the claim here is that if we had not-FPTP voters would still scorn third parties because of the workings of congressional committees? i can buy that two parties is optimal for controlling congressional committees (or whatever), but i do not buy that voters would scorn third parties for that reason
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Re: POLITICS MOTHERFUCKER

Post by Crunchums » Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:55 pm

Rylinks wrote: Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:42 pm one of the reasons the referendum happened was because the FPTP system allowed UKIP to throw the government to labour even with a minority of the votes

now i mean maybe this isn't a good outcome but it's a case where FPTP amplified a small party's power
maybe i'm confused, but i don't understand how FPTP was relevant there. given a certain distribution of seats, UKIP did stuff - that's downstream of FPTP. FPTP was only relevant in terms of how that distribution of seats came to be.
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Re: POLITICS MOTHERFUCKER

Post by Crunchums » Fri Jan 13, 2023 12:00 am

Dantes wrote: Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:45 pm I haven't been doing that? :confused:
what is this then
pioneered by Democrats I might remind you
(and I thought you were doing it also when were talking about Ds getting elected in Alaska but re-reading your posts I think that was just put into my head by your phrasing with "I'm going to suggest something to you that you're not going to like" but you didn't actually mean it the way that I took it, though side note I still do not understand what you were getting at here
Dantes wrote:I'm going to suggest something to you that you're not going to like. Ranked choice voting does not force people to actually consider the alternatives and make a real choice.
i do not understand this claim
Testing two options directly against one-another produces different outcomes than asking you to rank your preferences among multiple options.
)
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Re: POLITICS MOTHERFUCKER

Post by Rylinks » Fri Jan 13, 2023 12:05 am

Crunchums wrote: Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:55 pm
Rylinks wrote: Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:42 pm one of the reasons the referendum happened was because the FPTP system allowed UKIP to throw the government to labour even with a minority of the votes

now i mean maybe this isn't a good outcome but it's a case where FPTP amplified a small party's power
maybe i'm confused, but i don't understand how FPTP was relevant there. given a certain distribution of seats, UKIP did stuff - that's downstream of FPTP. FPTP was only relevant in terms of how that distribution of seats came to be.
imagine if the green party started getting 5-10% of the vote, mostly from people who would have voted Dem. This does not win any seats, but it hoses the democrats and makes republicans win elections.

Like you said, this is a reason why voters might reject third parties, but it's double-edged. If the green party did get a substantial fraction of the vote, they would be able to extract concessions from the dems in exchange for not running a candidate or in an attempt to bring green voters back, even without winning any seats.

The conservatives called a brexit referendum in part because FPTP meant UKIP had the ability to damage the conservatives much more than their vote share would suggest. If ranked choice were in effect, UKIP would not have had as much power to push the conservatives towards brexit.

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Re: POLITICS MOTHERFUCKER

Post by Crunchums » Fri Jan 13, 2023 12:06 am

Rylinks wrote:if someone in the US created a minority party that was capable of sabotaging one of the two major parties in national elections, like UKIP threatened the conservatives, they would have a lot of power to demand concessions.
you are right that the fact that there are third parties in other countries with FPTP contradicts my claim that third parties in the US have zero chance (though not the weaker claim that FPTP leads to two dominant parties); i am not an expert at this stuff but my understanding is that the US is an outlier in this regard - my guess is it's because of the US being very oriented around presidential elections? i suppose i can retreat to a weaker claim: third parties would have a much better chance of gaining traction with not-FPTP than FPTP
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Re: POLITICS MOTHERFUCKER

Post by Skeletor » Fri Jan 13, 2023 12:11 am

Khaos wrote: Thu Jan 12, 2023 10:59 pm FTPT produces non-intuitive results, because the intuitive result is that the most preferred candidate wins
yeah it also turns out to be problematically unintuitive that your preferred candidate can be winning when half the votes are counted and then losing when they're all counted

that this has been actually problematic leaves me with little taste for a more unintuitive system
wow, [you]. that all sounds terrible. i hope it gets better for you

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Re: POLITICS MOTHERFUCKER

Post by Crunchums » Fri Jan 13, 2023 12:13 am

Rylinks wrote:imagine if the green party started getting 5-10% of the vote, mostly from people who would have voted Dem. This does not win any seats, but it hoses the democrats and makes republicans win elections.

Like you said, this is a reason why voters might reject third parties, but it's double-edged. If the green party did get a substantial fraction of the vote, they would be able to extract concessions from the dems in exchange for not running a candidate or in an attempt to bring green voters back, even without winning any seats.

The conservatives called a brexit referendum in part because FPTP meant UKIP had the ability to damage the conservatives much more than their vote share would suggest. If ranked choice were in effect, UKIP would not have had as much power to push the conservatives towards brexit.
ah this argument is interesting - that even though FPTP is admittedly directly harmful to policy X (in the sense of hurting its proponents chances of getting elected in a given election), in the long run the party being harmed might adopt policy X in order to avoid that harm. a fair point! but FPTP is still concentrating power in the two dominant parties in this picture
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Re: POLITICS MOTHERFUCKER

Post by Doug » Fri Jan 13, 2023 12:31 am

Why would anyone think that with RCV, the winner will be neither a Democrat nor a Republican
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Re: POLITICS MOTHERFUCKER

Post by Crunchums » Fri Jan 13, 2023 12:40 am

Doug wrote:Why would anyone think that with RCV, the winner will be neither a Democrat nor a Republican
definitely if you adopted RCV (or some other non-FPTP system) it's not like overnight third parties are gonna spring up and start winning elections. but you would enable people to support third parties in elections without simultaneously harming the D/R party that they otherwise would have voted for.

but to me the benefit is less about breaking the D/R stranglehold and more about changing which Ds/Rs win elections, because now in a deep-red state (for example) you're less likely to get [far-right R wins primary, then general election] and more likely to get [medium-right R wins general] because you no longer have primaries. and then congress would be a lot more functional because there are fewer crazy extremists
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Re: POLITICS MOTHERFUCKER

Post by Dantes » Fri Jan 13, 2023 12:58 am

Doug wrote: Fri Jan 13, 2023 12:31 am Why would anyone think that with RCV, the winner will be neither a Democrat nor a Republican
Well, Murkowski did win...
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Re: POLITICS MOTHERFUCKER

Post by Dantes » Fri Jan 13, 2023 1:07 am

Crunchums wrote: Fri Jan 13, 2023 12:00 am
Dantes wrote: Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:45 pm I haven't been doing that? :confused:
what is this then
pioneered by Democrats I might remind you
That was literally in response to a post you made about Trump preaching election denial. If your argument is that distrust in election outcomes on the right is based on Trump crying about election denialism, you have to acknowledge that he didn't start that, he just echoed and amplified something that the left has been doing for two decades! You can't throw all of that on Trump and just give a pass to the other side's contribution to the problem.
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Re: POLITICS MOTHERFUCKER

Post by Crunchums » Fri Jan 13, 2023 1:41 am

Dantes wrote: That was literally in response to a post you made about Trump preaching election denial. If your argument is that distrust in election outcomes on the right is based on Trump crying about election denialism, you have to acknowledge that he didn't start that, he just echoed and amplified something that the left has been doing for two decades! You can't throw all of that on Trump and just give a pass to the other side's contribution to the problem.
ah, i get you
i did not mean to imply that election denialism did not exist before Trump; the claim I was trying to make (directed at Khaos) was that election skepticism among voters is more driven by election denialism on the part of politicians than actual problems with elections
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Re: POLITICS MOTHERFUCKER

Post by Doug » Fri Jan 13, 2023 2:47 am

Crunchums wrote: Fri Jan 13, 2023 12:40 am
Doug wrote:Why would anyone think that with RCV, the winner will be neither a Democrat nor a Republican
definitely if you adopted RCV (or some other non-FPTP system) it's not like overnight third parties are gonna spring up and start winning elections. but you would enable people to support third parties in elections without simultaneously harming the D/R party that they otherwise would have voted for.

but to me the benefit is less about breaking the D/R stranglehold and more about changing which Ds/Rs win elections, because now in a deep-red state (for example) you're less likely to get [far-right R wins primary, then general election] and more likely to get [medium-right R wins general] because you no longer have primaries. and then congress would be a lot more functional because there are fewer crazy extremists
A big issue though is, where is the money, where does the money come from and where does it go. The money is entangled with the two-party system
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Re: POLITICS MOTHERFUCKER

Post by s. goblin » Fri Jan 13, 2023 2:51 am

Doug wrote:
A big issue though is, where is the money, where does the money come from and where does it go
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Re: POLITICS MOTHERFUCKER

Post by Rylinks » Fri Jan 13, 2023 3:03 am

Crunchums wrote: Fri Jan 13, 2023 12:13 am
Rylinks wrote:imagine if the green party started getting 5-10% of the vote, mostly from people who would have voted Dem. This does not win any seats, but it hoses the democrats and makes republicans win elections.

Like you said, this is a reason why voters might reject third parties, but it's double-edged. If the green party did get a substantial fraction of the vote, they would be able to extract concessions from the dems in exchange for not running a candidate or in an attempt to bring green voters back, even without winning any seats.

The conservatives called a brexit referendum in part because FPTP meant UKIP had the ability to damage the conservatives much more than their vote share would suggest. If ranked choice were in effect, UKIP would not have had as much power to push the conservatives towards brexit.
ah this argument is interesting - that even though FPTP is admittedly directly harmful to policy X (in the sense of hurting its proponents chances of getting elected in a given election), in the long run the party being harmed might adopt policy X in order to avoid that harm. a fair point! but FPTP is still concentrating power in the two dominant parties in this picture
also like, suicide bomber single issue parties threatening the ones in power is not really my idea of good third-party politics

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Re: POLITICS MOTHERFUCKER

Post by Khaos » Fri Jan 13, 2023 3:25 am

Crunchums wrote:
Dantes wrote: That was literally in response to a post you made about Trump preaching election denial. If your argument is that distrust in election outcomes on the right is based on Trump crying about election denialism, you have to acknowledge that he didn't start that, he just echoed and amplified something that the left has been doing for two decades! You can't throw all of that on Trump and just give a pass to the other side's contribution to the problem.
ah, i get you
i did not mean to imply that election denialism did not exist before Trump; the claim I was trying to make (directed at Khaos) was that election skepticism among voters is more driven by election denialism on the part of politicians than actual problems with elections
replace trump with any other name if you must. it doesn't matter, the response was to be taken in context with rylinks's post/comment

an election where someone wins by a small margin seems less trustworthy than one with a slightly larger margin, which is accomplished with RCV (when you report the final results)

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Re: POLITICS MOTHERFUCKER

Post by Khaos » Fri Jan 13, 2023 3:28 am

Skeletor wrote:yeah it also turns out to be problematically unintuitive that your preferred candidate can be winning when half the votes are counted and then losing when they're all counted
isnt that how it already works

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Re: POLITICS MOTHERFUCKER

Post by Rylinks » Fri Jan 13, 2023 3:28 am

oh actually i realized one big difference between the UK and the US: in the US the most common outcome is gridlock, while in the UK, one party will always form a government. A filibuster-proof trifecta might only happen once every few decades. Labour winning is an ordinary electoral defeat, but the GOP winning a supermajority is an extremely bad outcome for the dems and the greens.

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