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this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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politics
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Really I am not even talking about voters when I am talking about power, I am talking about funding.
The duopoly grants the 2 parties extra funding that third parties can't access. This prevents real third party candidates from running unless they are already billionaire-connected. It saves the billionaires the trouble of trying to buy many parties. They can just buy the 2. So Dems and Republicans have safe sources of funding / power that can't be challenged by more competent representatives.
I think dems and republicans both correctly see their representatives as 'bought' to some extent and want real alternatives.
The funding issue, I think, also exists in forms seprate from the duopoly and needs some kind of fix in addition to RCV. Any party that gives people an alternative to politicians that are bought will clearly not appease donors seeking to buy a politician nearly as much as the big two do. I think both problems need to be tackled, and probably close together, for it to work well. The amount of depth there is to the problems that plague American democracy is honestly really disheartening. I feel many American systemic issues are like this where the current system is so far gone we'd need multiple different laws of varrying scope just to start fixing one aspect.
As I understand it the third parties could be funded better just from RCV because they would likely receive a higher percentage of the vote once the spoiler effect is no longer in place from FPTP. If they get more than 5% they get some funding and I think it scales up with percentage. Source from quick google, might be out of date.
USA democracy is frustrating. The 2 parties have spent close to 100 years entrenching themselves at this point. People who want to dig them out need to understand how they are holding on. This competition in politics paper outlines a few of the changes they've made to consolidate power. Things like party primaries, co-opting communication about elections, restructuring campaign finance law, etc.
You can read the whole PDF online if you are interested.