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Comment by Spooky23 | Hacker News Reader

We need to have a meaningfully competitive electoral system.

I live in New York, although not in NYC. I call elections “affirmations”, as there are never meaningfully contested general elections, and probably a meaningfully contested primary about 1/3 of the time. All of the bigger offices (mayor, county exec, Congress) attract enough money that the incumbent can find an African American or other bloc voter candidate to run on a third party line and split the opposition vote. State legislative offices are only involuntarily vacated by death or felony conviction.

It’s difficult to envision a brighter future as the national GOP platform is so poisonous.

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It's way worse than that. Even primaries in NY are essentially coronations - the party, not the voters, is able to choose the candidate it wants to win. And since the two parties have a gentleman's agreement not to compete in each other's districts, the candidate that the party leadership chooses is guaranteed to win both the primary and the general election.

https://nytimes.com/2017/09/18/nyregion/new-york-politics-pa...

This is why I'm so happy about the California top-two primaries - they've created competitive elections in a dominant-party state. But they were only created through a ballot initiative over the objections of the legislature.

Political parties will always resist the disempowering of the party, and things like runoffs, preferential and range voting, etc. gives more choice to the voter and fragments parties. It fragments them because the voter isn't punished as often for taking a chance on what are otherwise considered fringe candidates.

The U.S. is one of the older representative democracies now with the oldest written constitution, which is also difficult to change. Making elections more modern, fair, and actually representative will take a lot of effort by citizens.

If SCOTUS finds in favor of existing extreme gerrymandering practices in the Gill v Whitford case, it will be necessary for citizens to actively crack the grip of the two incumbent political parties, or accept generation long single party rule disconnected from representation of the citizenry. Gill v Whitford is the easier path, but modern elections still need to be a goal: city, state and federal. It will take time.

And House rules give the top positions based on seniority, so states are incentivized to gerrymander to protect their senior representatives. We need to change Congressional rules in that regard as well. Due to top-two, California lost a 40-year incumbent in Fremont who was fifth in seniority in the 435-member House. Sometimes California takes it on the chin with its referendum when doing things that are against its current best interests but provide a useful experiment and forcing function.

> This is why I'm so happy about the California top-two primaries - they've created competitive elections in a dominant-party state.

Have they really? It seems more like they've pulled candidates towards the center slightly and relegated third parties to the sidelines even more.

When the initiative was passed, third parties opposed it because they said it would make it more difficult for them to run competitive or even influential (but unsuccessful) campaigns.

For statewide races, the jungle primary approach seems to come down to which two Democrats attract enough votes away from other parties (and other Democrats) in order to make it to the final two.

A 40-year incumbent in Fremont actually lost to a younger candidate who seemed less controversial. In a primary, the younger / newer candidate may not have won due to lower turnout. Of course, the incumbent was 5th in seniority in the 435-member House, so California is hurt in that way due to House rules, which perversely, favor long-rooted incumbency and states with strong gerrymandering.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/california-politics/2012/11/...

Well yeah. In a FPTP system those third-party candidates hurt the major-party candidates closest to their viewpoints, whereas now their voters end up having a say once it becomes clear that their favored candidate is not viable.

Same with Republicans in liberal districts; a choice between two Democrats is just what the voter profile of those districts leads to, and at least this way the minority party gets to influence the final winner.

_It’s difficult to envision a brighter future as the national GOP platform is so poisonous._

Irony defined in a single sentence.

_Those other guys, right? Not mine_

GP was specifically talking about NYC, so calling out the specific party in power there seemed relevant.

> GP was specifically talking about NYC, so calling out the specific party in power there seemed relevant.

The original post really concerns the state government, not the city, and New York is definitely a two-party state. The Assembly is always controlled by Democrats, and the Senate is always controlled by the Republicans, even when Democrats win a majority of the seats.

Both parties benefit from this stasis, so they have no incentive to upset the balance.

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