Clay Shirky published an amazing Twitter rant a couple of weeks back, that I’ve been thinking about and talking about with a few others since then. Take a look and tell me what you think:
This is everything wrong with third-party voting, in one succinct headline.
https://t.co/1ZtZn4w2py— Clay Shirky (@cshirky) October 23, 2016
Voting can never be a reflection of any individual voter's preferences, because those preferences are too varied between voters.
— Clay Shirky (@cshirky) October 23, 2016
There is no correlation among voters' ideal policy choices for economic vs. social vs. international issues.
— Clay Shirky (@cshirky) October 23, 2016
If you want legal bud, I have no idea what you think of Syria. If you want Syrian no-fly, I don't know what you think top tax rate should be
— Clay Shirky (@cshirky) October 23, 2016
An imaginary world with only 3 issues–Legalize/No Fly/Raise Tax–and only Y/N preferences would still need *8 parties* to represent voters
— Clay Shirky (@cshirky) October 23, 2016
A world with 6 issues and a moderate position between Y and N would need over 700 such parties, each representing ~0.1% of the electorate.
— Clay Shirky (@cshirky) October 23, 2016
Even multiple parties can't represent most voters' preferences most of the time, and the US system limits viable parties to two at a time.
— Clay Shirky (@cshirky) October 23, 2016
A strong Presidency and winner-take-all voting has cemented two-party politics since before the first competitive election, in 1796.
— Clay Shirky (@cshirky) October 23, 2016
This is a Constitutional issue, not an electoral one. A third party could only succeed if the Constitution were re-written.
— Clay Shirky (@cshirky) October 23, 2016
(To give you a sense of the difficulty of that, the bit that needs re-writing is Article II, Section 1.)
— Clay Shirky (@cshirky) October 23, 2016
Since democracy prevents the government from being run by a coherent ideology by design, it can only ever offer choices among lesser evils.
— Clay Shirky (@cshirky) October 23, 2016
Under these circumstances, all a Presidential vote can say is "This politician will use power in ways I marginally prefer over that one."
— Clay Shirky (@cshirky) October 23, 2016
And all a 3rd party vote can say is "Whatever everybody else decides is OK with me." It's a refusal of political engagement altogether.
— Clay Shirky (@cshirky) October 23, 2016
So the argument is that voting is not about validating your identity, but about choosing your government. If you are not choosing between the parties that are 99% certain to govern, then you are allowing others to make your choice for you. To be able to make your vote a non-throwaway one, you’ll need to change the Consitution. I’d add that you could also take the old Republican Party tack — get some grassroots support, including getting people elected to Congress and other offices and be ready to jump into the breach when one of the two current parties fails. This is tougher in an environment where voters are wrangled into pools that are more likely to vote D or R. But unless you are getting a coalition-building number of votes (the kind of votes that can help swing an election), no one hears your protest. When pols (sitting or potential) are looking to run, the first thing they do is look at where the votes came from previously and where they think they can build their own coalition. Votes for third parties are generally not looked at as a factor because those votes function as a vote to go along with whatever everyone else voted for.
Realizing that not everyone is going to get involved in the process, the biggest thing I wish third parties would do is to stop just showing up for Presidentials. There’s downballot potential everywhere (especially in an environment where plenty of people are unhappy about their government at all levels) that needs the right people doing some strategic thinking and long-term execution. My favorite example is right here in Wilmington. The City Council was facing a very large turnover this year and this would have been an interesting place for the right candidate (s) to make an appeal. Impossible? Maybe. But grassroots organizing and some long-term vision is key. So in Wilmington, that means that a third party candidate starts on Jan 1, 2017 — going to community meetings, being a part of solutions and working at figuring out what it would take to mount an effective run in 2020. But if you are a Libertarian candidate and the first time anyone sees your name is 3 months before the General, that is a problem. Third party candidates are going to have a tougher row to hoe, but that work should have some longer term payoff if done persistently. In a perfect world, effective third party organizing and candidates should be a pull for the typical D and R candidates away from their comfortable positions. But until a third party candidate is strong enough to capture enough votes to potentially undermine D and R candidates, voting for them continues to be a protest that only that voter can hear.