How to break the two-party hold on American politics

The American system, really in a lot of ways, discourages participation.
Elections for Congress in the United States are based
on a plurality winner system where you live in one district.
Candidates from two or more parties go run in that
district, and then whoever gets the most votes wins.
Right now many of our maps are incredibly
disproportional and in a state like North Carolina
Democrats got 47% of the vote
but Republicans have over two-thirds of the seats.
Meanwhile most of us end up living in congressional
districts that aren't competitive.
where often the opposition party doesn't run a
candidate at all.
We end up focusing on a handful of swing seats
that happen to be narrowly balanced.
There's a very strong incentive to vote for one of the two
major parties because people don't want to
waste their vote by supporting a third party
with no chance of winning.
When you have 330 million people and two parties
trying to represent them lots of people
inevitably are gonna feel left out.
You have incredible levels now in the United States
of dissatisfaction with the political parties.
Americans should think more seriously about switching
from our current electoral system to one of any number
of more proportional alternatives that could solve
a lot of problems that exist in American voting today.
In a party list system, it's very simple.
Everybody in the state they would go to the voting booth
and they would vote for a party that they like best.
And then at the end we would see how many votes did each party get
and if you got 25 or 30 or 40 percent of the vote
that's how many seats you would get.
And then the seats would be filled by just sort of running
down a list that party leaders had made for themselves.
Israel, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Germany and
New Zealand all used variations on this system
and as a result voters have lots of choices when it
comes to finding a party that represents their interests.
And voter turnout in these countries is much higher
than in the United States.
Another popular system is called an alternative vote system.
You show up and you have to rank a whole bunch of
candidates in order of preference.
A constituency will elect a whole bunch of
different members as individuals.
But it's still gonna work out that if 40% of people were
for Democrats, they'll end up with 40% of the seats.
This is how legislators get elected in Australia and
Ireland and there too you see lots of political parties.
In the American system, a loss is a loss.
So Republicans don't really put resources into House
races in Massachusetts and Democrats pretty much
ignore a place like Alabama.
But in a proportional system, both parties would
need to fight everywhere. Then they would
need to try to engage citizens everywhere.
There's no constitutional requirement in the United
States that everybody use this district based system.
Most states could adopt elements
of a proportional system if they wanted to.
Sure, the connection between a specific place and a
specific legislator would weaken a bit.
But it would also solve the problems of
gerrymandered districts and break the two-party
hold on our political system.
You would get a wider range of views represented.
You would get a wider range of talents involved in the system.
And you have more people feeling that they're represented.
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How to break the two-party hold on American politics

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