General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Does the two-Party system help or hurt our country ?? [View all]Selatius
(20,441 posts)In systems of government that use single-member district plurality or SMDP voting, the mathematical odds tend to favor the emergence of just two viable parties. Maurice Duverger was the first to document this phenomenon. In order to avoid hitting this mathematical phenomenon, we would simply have to require that the winner of an election must win a simple majority of the votes, not just a plurality. Instant Run-off Voting or two-round voting as is done in France would avoid this problem altogether.
Having said that, I personally think the House would be better off being run on party-list proportional representation where people vote for the party they favor, and the Senate should be run on single-member district majority voting where people vote for the individual to represent them, as opposed to SMDP. This would mean that no one party in the House would likely ever gain an absolute majority in seats in the future thus forcing coalition building, and the Senate would quickly open up to third party or independent candidates after a few election cycles once people find out voting third party candidates won't put the total opposite candidate into office (ref., George W. Bush).