
There’s No Such Thing as a Protest Vote - miraj
https://medium.com/@cshirky/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-protest-vote-c2fdacabd704#.p45fxdiwg
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nathan_long
My favorite quote:

> In multi-party systems, voters get the satisfaction of voting for smaller,
> ideologically purer factions — environmental parties, anti-immigrant
> parties, and so on. The impure compromises come when those factions are
> forced to form coalitions large enough to govern. The inevitable tradeoffs
> are part of the governing process, not the electoral process. In America, by
> contrast, the coalitions are the parties. Our system also produces
> alternation of power, and requires compromises among competing interests,
> but those compromises happen within long-standing caucuses; issues come and
> go, but the two parties remain. This forces the citizens themselves to get
> involved in the disappointing tradeoffs, rather than learning about them
> after the fact. No one gets what they want in a democracy; two-party systems
> simply rub voters’ noses in that fact.

I've been wishing for IVR precisely because I want third parties to be viable,
but this is an interesting point. You still have to have coalitions within
government.

Although maybe if there were more single-issue parties, they could push
through change on issues that the other parties care less about.

~~~
thaumasiotes
That's a great quote. Interestingly, it strongly conflicts with the first
several paragraphs of the article:

> For all the eloquence and passion and rage in these arguments, however, they
> suffer from a common flaw: there is no such thing as a protest vote.

> In 2016, that system will offer 130 million or so voters just three options:

> A. I prefer Donald Trump be President, rather than Hillary Clinton.

> B. I prefer Hillary Clinton be President, rather than Donald Trump.

> C. Whatever everybody else decides is OK with me.

> That’s it. Those are the choices. All strategies other than a preference for
> Trump over Clinton or vice-versa reduce to Option C.

> People who believe in protest votes do so because they confuse sending a
> message with receiving one.

> But it doesn’t matter what message you think you are sending, because no one
> will receive it. No one is listening. The system is set up so that every
> choice other than ‘R’ or ‘D’ boils down to “I defer to the judgement of my
> fellow citizens.”

Those paragraphs of invective are accurate _as to the election_ , but they are
not accurate at all _as to US policy_ \-- for the reasons described in your
quote! The R and D policy platforms shift over time, as the vote share
associated with the existing platforms moves away from 50%. Those
"meaningless" protest votes are watched carefully by party operatives, because
they are signals that guide what policies the parties shift _to_.

