Why is the American people so pitted to go in only two directions?

The older I get and the more elections and accompanying campaigns I witness the more I'm confounded why you keep digging yourselves into one of only two camps?

- When you define democracy as being "rule of the majority" and then look at your electorial college system where winner takes all, it stops making sense.
In fact, if you were to follow a the very basic idea of democracy, the candidate that gets 5% of the votes gets... well, 5% of the votes and the rest to the others (plural).
This way the population of the state in question is more accurately represented in the final toll. And as is should be... why even doubt this?

I know why you don't have this system; simply because it's easier to affect the outcome of the election for those who are buying it.

- Your donation system is completely flawed as well. It caterers the elite and interest of those with the most money. But it does not take into account that the largest segment of voters are people who lie in a percentile of income who cannot afford that much to donate to the cause of their favourite candidate.

In fact what should be done here is abolishing the abomination that is pac and superpacs or let's call them what they are really: gatherings of rich people who join forces to decide who wins the election.

Instead what is needed is a system that is public and allocates SPECIFIC amounts of funds to candidates or a system that puts a top limit on how much you can spend on promoting your candidacy.
There also HAVE TO BE more rigid and unbendable rules surrounding spending of those allocated funds. It should not be possible to circle 1 dollar between donation foundations etc. Transparency is the key.

- Donations from foreigners / non-US citizens should be banned completely.

- Your system should be more friendly and open for third and fourth party candidacy... this cannot be stressed enough. One of the reasons you have such big issues and time spend on lobbying is because you have such a in-diverse political system.

Every single population in any country is more diverse than red and blue, and ofcourse your congress and senate should mirror that.
This will not only expand democracy, but it will also cause more issues to be adressed in the interest of the majority of the population because parties could make compromises amongst themselves.... fx. party 1 and 2 might join forces on issue X, but at the same time party 2,3 and 4 might join forces on issue Y.

- Lobbying should be destroyed. How do you do that? First of all, take away the possibilty for companies to donate funds to campaigns. Make it illegal.
Next, make it illegal for members of state in any position to receive presents from donors above a certain line... fx.: yes, you can received a box of delicious chocolates, but no you cannot receieve an all expenses paid trip to Hawaii or Dubai or what ever.

This will force the politicians to care more for their voters. There will be no incentive to make under the table deals with companies or cooperations and if you do anyways, well, the penalty should be severe regardless of what position you hold in office.

- Crimes commited / lies /etc. Now this is one of the worse issues to tackle. Even a country like Denmark has issues with this, where politicians can say one thing during campaigns and then turn 180 degrees after the election as soon as the budget talks come up. We have this idiotic concept called "giving a nose" to a parliament member or a minister if they have commited a wrong doing, fx. withholding important information in regards to a legislative decision which could have had an effect on how the members would vote on that issue.

I mean... you can litteraly sit and lie and then get a slap on the wrist with no further consequences.

No exactly something that inspires honesty in your daily work.

I have no doubt the same goes for the US politics and possibly even worse. Most of the time it feels like that it's not till the media gets a wind of it and it can't be contained that someone gets fired etc.
This is bad.

Punishment for wrong doing / lying / etc. in office or in congress / senate should be swift and severe.
The reason for this is because you are an elected official, your daily work affect the lives of 100.000, if not millions of people, and by that fact alone, lying in office is a crime with many victims. Therefore the penalty should be eqaully as bad. I mean, we are talking lenghty jail time here... in proper jails, not some resort like camp with benefits.
Those who hold the largest responsibility should face the most dire consequences for their wrong doings. This cannot be stressed enough.


I'm willing to bet my life that if you were succesful in implementing the above, you would in a very short time have a more satisfied and happy population with less in-equality and greater sense of freedom as an individual, simply because the majority would have more to say, a larger amount of the time.


Finally, with the above in place, one could only hope that this would also mean a United States that would spend less time policing the world and focusing more on how to run itself properly.

It's a win win win situation for the US as a country, the public and the world.

I'm willing to bet my life that if you were succesful in implementing the above, you would in a very short time have a more satisfied and happy population with less in-equality and greater sense of freedom as an individual,

I agree with you.. the solution is simple.
People will respond very quick.
Making America great again isnt that difficult getting rid of the scumbags is...

Strong traditional American allies and friends Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United Kingdom have political systems with multiple legitimate political parties. All those countries share many common traditions and founding (colonial) cultures and similar - just similar - governmental structures.

None of them are perfect and all have their unique problems but by having three or more legitimate choices helps to avoid the "Us vs. Them" vitriol that has gotten out of control in this Presidential Election.

Imagine a legitimate place to put your vote in this election that avoided the two main combatants but was not "throwing your vote away" or nothing more than a "protest vote".

Just food for thought.

a reply to: flice

Well first of all, great OP, good points, sound reason and insightful questioning. Well played.

The root of the problem is, that the people who own the system will not relinquish the mechanisms by which they retain control over it. Simply put, one cannot wrest the keys to the kingdom from the jealous fists of those who hold them. Unless there were some financial incentive to doing so, the people who own the Federal Reserve, the people who purchase the candidates, the people who decide who to go to war with next, and then order the officialdom to find a way to justify it (and have no doubt, that is the order of events in this day and age, much as we would like to believe otherwise) have no incentive to give up the massive power they have accrued.

It is also worth mentioning that many of these individuals own more than just the United States, but other western national governmental processes, and international businesses which are vital to the economies of most of the industrialised nations, and certainly the western ones.

The thing with America is, that it is a Republic, with a democratic means of selecting its leader, in that people get a choice every once in a while, as to who is to be their leader. This is different to the British system in the following respects, and before I detail those, I want to make it clear that what I am talking about is the way things are actually SUPPOSED to run, not the way they actually do in reality:

In Britain, we are considered a democratic nation because our system of governance is supposed to be servile to its people in every respect, and at all times. For example, not only do we vote every few years to select which party leads our government, but in the meantime, we are supposed to be able to have our Members of Parliament act on our behalf, to ensure that our will is done, our needs met, and that our government acts in accordance with the ethos, beliefs, and spirit of our nations people. They are sworn to represent our various needs, to respond to our input, they are obligated to do it by way of being in Parliament at all.

In the US however, things are not quite so simple. In actual fact, the only element of American politics which is democratic, is the method by which leaders and representatives are chosen. There is nothing democratic about what happens in the meantime, there is no expectation that once a candidate has been selected for ANY office, that they will respond to the needs of the people, take heed of and act in accordance with their will, or any such notion. Essentially, once a person is in office, they are free to basically do as they please, as long as they are not breaking the law. Simply put, once elected, the elected person, party, or entity, has all the power, and the people have none. Now, that is actually the system at play, working as it was designed to. Its not a game, not a hoodwink, its simply what it is. That is why the American people need to be careful as to who they elect, because even a candidate who makes all the right noises can basically get away with doing anything they like, even if it goes against everything the people want or believe, with the only caveat being that Congress and the Senate would have to be in agreement. Contrary to popular understanding, there is no provision in law or the structure of the United States political system, which holds any member of Congress, the Senate, or the administration in power, to follow through on the instructions of the people.

That is where the US differs from the UK in terms of its visible government structure, because in the UK, there IS a structural expectation that the government behave as the people will it to.

HOWEVER, please do not misunderstand me, NEITHER of these systems ACTUALLY result in representation for the people of the respective nations governed by these methodologies. The reason our UK parliament is so deaf to our instruction, despite being set up with the purpose of responding to those instructions directly, is that it too is owned by powers not of our choosing or representative of our needs. Our political machinery is as gummed up with corruption as any other, which is why the UK system of democratic governance we allegedly have here, appears about as democratic as a firing squad in a prison for political activists, more often than not, and ESPECIALLY now.

The result is, that although our system is supposed to be immediately responsive to our needs but is not, the fact that the system is allegedly set to give us a real time hand on the tiller, which we lack despite the arrangement, sets our nations apparent political machinery apart from that of the US, in which there has never been any expectation what so ever that mid way through a presidency, the people might change the way the president acts on a given topic or issue.

What BOTH nations need, and need badly, in order for their people to be represented equally, fairly and justly, is for the people to own the government wholesale, for no part of it to be privatised (especially not the Federal Reserve, for example), or owned by individuals or any small group thereof and for all activities of the civil service at every level to be transparent to the point where any Tom, Dick or Harry can literally demand to see the books, the security tapes, the correspondence of or between, EVERY department of that civil service, to ENSURE that nothing is ever missing that ought not be, that no hoodwink can occur.

As it is however, both nations are owned outright by groups of individuals whose needs and ideals are not those of the people over whom governance is wielded, and until that changes in our country here in the UK, and indeed in the United States of America, there will never be any notable difference between the runaway governments of the Blair/Bush era, and the governments of tomorrow.

"The winner takes it all!"- that is the cause for this stupid commotion.

Drop that clause, count all votes and add them up - most votings declare the winner. That would be the modern way.

This old-fashioned way comes from the time of the pony-express, where it took weeks for washington d.c. to declare the winner of california, for example.


Drop that nonsense! Man, I heard that 14 out of 15 votes are completely irrelevant, as they come from garrymandered states where the result is SET RIGHT NOW! How discouraging ist this?!


And thanks to the two winning parties, this system will NEVER EVER be changed by them. Why should they? GOP and DEM would find ways to honorably declare a winner even if only one person in the whole of the USA would go voting...!

It's a really easy answer...

It's because the system is rigged that way.

Media will only look in one direction or the other so no publicity.

No one pays attention to the 3rd party so not enough money to make publicity.

No one in a 3rd party is "Trump" enough to create his own attention or is rich enough to pay the media to look at him.

Neither Dem or Republican parties will vote in a 3rd party candidate no matter what the people choose.


It's a catch 22. 2 parties hold monopolies on the PoTUS and it doesn't matter what anyone does, no one with authority (oh it's definitely not WE the People) will allow it or stand against the 2 party system. Everything has become those 2 parties. Unlike the old days where there were multiple parties and if you didn't like one, you just made one up... that doesn't happen or work anymore.

a reply to: flice

The Electoral College is an antiquated system, for sure, and is THE major problem in our two-party rut in which we find ourselves perpetually stuck each election cycle.

That said, though, the short answer to the title of your thread is this: Apathy.