JSRG
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- Apr 14, 2019
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Actually, there's sometimes a whole lot of electoral red tape that can make it difficult for anyone who's not a Democrat or Republican to be on the ballot. So a lot of times people don't even have that option.
Even setting that aside, you still run into the fundamental problem of first past the post voting, which is that due to fears about vote splitting, as well as the fact that your vote ends up irrelevant if you didn't vote for the winning candidate, people naturally cluster behind the two frontrunners out of necessity (which of course metastasizes into every election and creates a two party system). After all, you inherently threw your vote away if you vote for anyone other than the winner.
Various other voting systems help solve this. Proportional representation, for example, means your vote wasn't necessarily wasted even if if the candidate/party you voted for doesn't get the most votes, because they can still get some seats. Ranked choice voting lets you put your most preferred candidate first but still, if they don't win, let your secondary vote count towards one of the major candidates. And there are other options also. Simply saying "people can vote for other parties" ignores the way first-past-the-post voting is essentially rigged against anything that isn't whatever the two major parties are. It's why, with only a few short-lived exceptions, the US has been a two-party system essentially its entire history.
Though, even though the US is a two-party system, the parties nowadays are also surprisingly impotent. That's because the primary system mostly takes the ability to choose candidates out of the actual hands of the parties themselves. I don't think you'd see someone like Graham Platner chosen outside of a primary system.
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