this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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Could a popular shadow primary usurp FPTP voting? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by blf@lemmy.world to c/progressivepolitics@lemmy.world
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The flaws of FPTP voting are generally well known at this point. Extremely popular policies are given no platform in the US two party system. But could a grassroots network of vote compacts negate the spoiler effect?

A big-tent psuedo-party could hold a parallel primary before elections, agreeing to use all votes for a candidate if a critical threshold is reached. A green light candidate would need 51% (+ X% margin) of internal votes and ~40% of total election votes (varying by historical election turnout). Otherwise the voters default to least evil of the two party system.

The first question is legality, which I have no clue on. However, political parties are built on the idea of shared voting power, so I don't see how any argument against this scheme would make sense.

The second question would be logistics. Validating public voter identities is easy enough, but there would need to be a system of representative conventions to maintain trust. A local group proving unity by winning a local election would grant them access to a higher tier, up to the national level.

Obviously there are more complexities in reality (eg: the US electoral college, real life voter loyalty, etc...), but could it work?

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[–] blf@lemmy.world 2 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

Fully agree, but posted this more as theory on a potential way out of a two party hegemony. It also requires a lot of time and trust building to have any effect, so probably not applicable to US's current crisis. But there are a lot of countries that still use FPTP in some fashion, it might be applicable there.

[–] limer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 weeks ago

I think this would rely on community activism; in America today most activism is internet based, and not neighborhood oriented.

So, I think this has happened before, but not since the collapse of local community politics in the 1980s; but someone more knowledgeable of history could probably find examples from the 1970s and 1960s or earlier.

it’s a great idea and definitely could be used as a stop gap; and I hope to see it used later as community activism gets a reboot later.

But if it can work before then, that would be great