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

I mean many of our systems require, flat out, a majority, meaning at least half, to do anything new. If we had three or five parties, that would be unthinkable if each one was made of politicians, e.g. have an agenda.

Probably. I will say the electoral commission here is pretty good though

For one thing if you have any sort of political connection you aren't allowed to work for them

Which means we don't get the Florida situation

Thank fuck

Though if it's any consolation, most Americans agree in principle with you. And Washington straight up warned not to make parties.

Then we had the Tory Party form shortly after LOL

Which died after like 60 or something years.

Yay!

To expand on the 50-100 parties thing, you can think of each state being a party, and the 2 senators having to work out their disagreements between each other, like a party would.

Representatives are numerous, and may have more than 2 parties in a state, so there's your third party.

That's good in theory but in the US it's impossible.

To be fair by telling them not to do it. EXPLICITLY!
He was basically telling them to do it

@EnderOctanus I'm American, buddy lol

Then you should realize that not enough people care about much else besides party affiliation.

You'd have to change the public perception of politics first.

Yes, but mostly in the last few decades with national news

As an outsider sometimes your politics seem like a reality tv show

True. But you'd have a system that at least for a while, would be crippled.

A Democrat in West Virginia is a lot different than California

And I am not talking about trump

Yeah. Politics past the state level turns into a money and popularity game.

But now with mass media, those two Dems are put on the same stage and they have to "perform" to the whole country basically

Which makes their platforms start to sound very similar

I also don't understand why so many of your races house or otherwise people are running uncontested

The system has just gotten too big to be properly managed the way we used to, I think.

In my local there are 5 different candidates