Fix the two-party system with proportional representation • Hacker News Board

Re: Fix the two-party system with proportional representation

#21

Post by gus_massa » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 3:53 PM UTC

jerlam wrote: post #4

Interesting, I wonder how many invisible third parties exist at the state or regional level that would be represented in a better system. That being said, this state government seems rather large for Minnesota, a state with a population of six million people. 67 senators and 134 representatives, and that's within the clunky three-branch system of government copied from the US Federal Government. Those numbers are big…

Here in Argentina, we have a proportional system inside each province. At the national level we have an indefinite number of parties, but as a simplification, we have

* the 2 extremes: far-right, far-left

* the 2 biggest one: Milei and Cristina

* Like 3 small/medium in the middle

So you can select something in between. They work as informal alliances, so the parties in the middle most of the time align with one of the big ones, but they may switch in particular cases.

It makes it harder for the big parties to do very stupid things, but they can manage to do stupid things anyway ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Fix the two-party system with proportional representation

#22

Post by daft_pink » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 4:49 PM UTC

curtisf wrote: post #11

daft_pink wrote: post #8

Will this result in more polarizing candidates since the party is determining who is elected instead of electing a specific person?

It could, but under the current system, candidates who are affiliated with major parties (i.e., essentially everyone who ends up winning an election) already need to win the support of their party, and the process for this is generally opaque and largely controlled by often less-moderate insiders Also, having viable third party choices puts more pressure on larger parties to field more widely palatable candidates, or…

I just think that seeing the current gerrymandered districts where I live and the crazy people who come out of the party, I would rather voters choose individuals than parties.

If someone doesn’t tow the party line, the party would immediately replace them the next year and this would give parties even more power.

Re: Fix the two-party system with proportional representation

#23

Post by timbit42 » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 8:29 PM UTC

cmuguythrow wrote: post #6

I would be in favor of anything that improves the current political system, including a shot at this policy. On a meta-level, I would even be in favor of new political processes that are WORSE, simply because the adoption of such a policy could prove to people that we CAN change our processes, and then we could (try) to continue to amend our process until we find one that works. My personal favorite approach at the n…

FPTP (First-Past-The-Post) pushes toward a two party system. When you switch to RC (Ranked Choice aka. Ranked Ballot or Ranked Voting) or even PR, that push is relaxed and you are likely to start seeing more parties.

The problem with Ranked Choice with more than two parties is that the centrist parties tend to win more often because they are more likely to be the second choice of people whose first choice is a left or right leaning party. That can be a problem if they get 100% of the power when they win.

PR is better because how much power each party has depends on what percentage of the votes they get in the first round (there not being subsequent rounds), so it is unlikely they will get 100% of the power and everyone's vote counts because it increases the power of the party they voted for.

With Ranked Choice, you may end up getting your second or third choice instead and your first choice then has little to no power.

Most of the democracies in the world today use PR (at least 2/3rds) instead of FPTP (about 1/3rd). Ranked Choice is less common.