I just look at how this has all developed in Europe, and it blows my mind. It seems like the EU just sprang out of nowhere and, slowly became a regulatory body instead of a trade union WITHOUT the knowledge or approval of literally everyone but two countries, the UK finally realized that "Holy shit who gave these guys authority? They signed themselves into permanent office," tried to get out, and got betrayed by its leader.

Also we have preferential voting which makes things more interesting and stops mob rule

Yeah, convulted mod rule. Electors represent geographical areas, not demographic breakdowns by numbers

To be fair. Mob rule is more or less democracy anyway.

Just that mob is even bigger.

It blows my mind when people say "The X party is in charge, and THEY chose a leader to represent them"

I'm sorry, *the party chose a representative for me?*

You know who they are before they get voted in

In fact you know the entire cabinet

Do you get to vote on the candidate you prefer for them to pick from? We have elections for that. Well the Republican Party does. The Democrats pretend they do.

Not saying it's great

It tends to only lead to issues if the leader resigns or retires between elections

Or there's a coup within the party....

From the outside, it seems like your Parliament is run by parties, not people, and most of the reps could be swapped out for someone else and it would work just the same

I hate my country sometimes

most parlamentary democracies run this way

A lot of the time yes, but it means that we get a lot more independents having influence

At least that's here in Australia

I don't think Americans calling Reps and Dems 'parties' helps at all

We also have a lot more parties

thats why you need to do with what canada does and you have an official party status level

What should we call them then?

Big groups that run basically everything?

The Victorian state election is this month. The ballot is a metre long there are that many parties

In the US, someone could run as a 'democrat' because they like the color blue, and vote straight republican, while being honest about what he's doing.

And that's not a problem

They're glorified placeholders

Yeah and that voting record would draw all the wrong attention.

It means I can put the greens (my most hated party) at the bottom

@EnderOctanus I said honest for a reason.

the problem is that you have 20 parties that if you trace them back are broken up versions of other parties over some slight at some point

People in America don't care as much about honesty from politicians as the rest of the world seems to.

That is pretty shitty

So really, in the US system, you don't have 2 parties, you have 50-100+

What do you think would happen if voting was compulsory in America?

It'd be shit

If you're an uneducated voter, I urge you to not vote.

Yeah, we do. But they rally under a single banner to focus their authority.

Its compulsory in Australia. A lot of people donkey vote

I unironically believe universal suffrage was a mistake, tbh

anything beyond a 3 party system tends to devolve in a cluster fuck. If you want 20 parties you need to get rid of first past the post and use some elimination system on a party system to knock out the small parties