Asklemmy

43731 readers

1232 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

Why do American ballots have more than two choices, when the news media has spent their time pretending there are only two? (programming.dev)

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by CoderSupreme@programming.dev to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

51 comments fedilink hide all child comments

When you get your ballot and there's 10 choices but all year the media pretends there's only two, that should tell you something's seriously broken

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

It varies by state election rules, but for me all the downballot third party candidates are eliminated in the primaries.

All local and state elections on my ballot are: Democrat v Republican, Democrat v Democrat, or Unopposed.

[–] abbenm@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

but for me all the downballot third party candidates are eliminated in the primaries.

What do you mean? A primary would be where Democrats narrow their choices to one nominee, and Republicans do, and third parties do and so on. You seem to be suggesting that primaries filter out third party candidates? Maybe I'm just missing something but my understanding would be that a primary would just be a way that a third party chooses a single nominee, same as the first two parties.

[–] ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Top-two mixed primary regardless of partisan affiliation.

One primary ballot held, all candidates declare a party 'preference', all votes counted together. Top two go onto the general election.

[–] abbenm@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 days ago

Understood, you are exactly right about that. What you've described filters out third parties. I think most conceptions of ranked choice voting by contrast would give them more of a chance, but granted that's not how it works everywhere.