In Defense of the Two Party System

I know this is not a very popular opinion, especially in light of our choice in 2016, but two-party system is still the best way to pick a leader. By all accounts, most Americans view this year's election as a vote for the lesser of two evils. Most people are casting their ballots against one of the candidates rather than affirmatively for one of the options. This has caused many people to say that we need more choices - more parties.

If you agree with that sentiment, take a closer look at how the system works in the countries that have multi-party parliamentary systems. In England, Germany, Australia, and even Canada, it's extremely rare that one candidate or party wins an outright majority in any election. Instead the votes are scattered across five, six, or even more parties. After the election is over, no single party or candidate has an outright majority, so then comes the task called "forming a government." The leaders of the scattered parties meet behind closed doors and bargain to form a coalition. It takes a lot of compromising and horse trading to make this happen. One party may be offered a couple of cabinet posts in exchange for their votes for a Prime Minister of another party. The voters have no assurance that the deals made by those politicians are the choices that those voters themselves would have made.  There's not even any assurance that the deals struck are even in the best interests of the voters who sent them; often the primary benefit of the coalition deals is to the politicians who negotiated the deals."Forming a government" is really back office dealmaking. Governments are "formed" in smoke-filled rooms away from public scrutiny.

That, as I see it, is the biggest problem with the multiparty parliamentary system. All of this horsetrading to build a coalition happens in secrecy behind closed doors. The voters themselves may have been given a clean choice, with candidates with whom they can agree universally, but then the messy work of give and take is left to the politicians.

By contrast, in our system, the voters themselves must deal with the ugly choice of weighing the merits and liabilities of two imperfect candidates. It's very unpleasant, especially when the choice looks like the one we have have this year, but, in the end, I would much rather have the compromising be done by me and my fellow citizen voters rather than leaving it to the politicians to compromise behind closed doors after the election is over.