2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Political parties: They exist for a reason. [View all]cascadiance
(19,537 posts)Instant runoff voting reform would help us get a lot more citizen involvement and engagement to have the citizenry feel like they are a part of the system that selects our candidates, instead of us just giving the propaganda of "blessing" a candidate selected in the back room as our choice with our "votes" that has had our voter representation stay near the bottom of many countries in the world.
I think parties serve a purpose to allow people at many different local levels to come together when they have common views to reflect on each others' ideas and preferences to come together on mobilizing on people and issues that they want government to act upon. That is the value of parties, and it really shouldn't just be us all gravitating towards one of two parties in more of an adversarial stance rather than one that tries to push through needed reforms and changes that perhaps our government isn't dealing with.
When big money is now arguably controlling both parties and their agendas and people who are preselected for us, this is really why so many people feel outside of the political process and remain independents or in third parties because they feel the government doesn't work for them.
Ultimately the goal isn't just to "win" an election, but to ultimately have people represent us and our views having a decent voice in the halls where decisions are made that affect us all on the rules we live by.