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TokenBoomer@lemmy.world

Could a popular shadow primary usurp FPTP voting? (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by blf@lemmy.world to c/progressivepolitics@lemmy.world

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The flaws of FPTP voting are generally well known at this point. Extremely popular policies are given no platform in the US two party system. But could a grassroots network of vote compacts negate the spoiler effect?

A big-tent psuedo-party could hold a parallel primary before elections, agreeing to use all votes for a candidate if a critical threshold is reached. A green light candidate would need 51% (+ X% margin) of internal votes and ~40% of total election votes (varying by historical election turnout). Otherwise the voters default to least evil of the two party system.

The first question is legality, which I have no clue on. However, political parties are built on the idea of shared voting power, so I don't see how any argument against this scheme would make sense.

The second question would be logistics. Validating public voter identities is easy enough, but there would need to be a system of representative conventions to maintain trust. A local group proving unity by winning a local election would grant them access to a higher tier, up to the national level.

Obviously there are more complexities in reality (eg: the US electoral college, real life voter loyalty, etc...), but could it work?

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[–] blf@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

Very similar, but that's only at the national level and controlled by establishment parties. I could see, for example, Texas + Florida + other red states falsifying their election results or ramping up legal disenfranchisement to capture blue state votes.

There's also no inherent political unity in that agreement, any state could (should?) break the pact if they think it's in the best interest of their voters. Either way I think they would be careful not to allow anything that significantly disrupts the system.

This theoretical system is driven by popular policy, no popular vote or fair representation comes into play. There could be a far right psuedo-party in the same way as a progressive left. At the end of the day achieving a critical mass is still needed to trigger the pact/win the election.

In practice it might not get as far to the left/right as you want, but this release valve would prevent the Overton window from being pushed way outside of popular opinion. I think a key outcome would be pushing in election reform candidates, eventually replacing this impromptu system with proper representation.