I’ve voted democrat for every election I can remember. And while I like to see my “team” win as much as the next guy, at some point you realize that other countries have better electoral systems in place.
Meanwhile, we’ve all acquiesced to this 2-party winner takes all bullshit.
The most confusing thing to me is how Democrats can have majorities in the House and POTUS and their agenda gets inched along but the second Republicans have that their agenda gets rammed through asap.
Is that a misconception? It certainly seems that Republicans make much more aggressive and active use of their power.
Republicans have forced out anyone who doesn’t walk in lockstep with the party. They have gone as far as to run alternative Republicans in some races, causing the conservative vote to be split and forcing the incumbent Republican to lose to the Democrat. Meanwhile, Democrats will let a far-right nutter like Joe Manchin run as a Democrat because he is slightly to the left of some other even crazier bastard. Even when the Dems win a majority the Republicans do everything they can to keep elected people from being sat for as long as possible. During Obama’s term, Franken was elected, but the Republicans drug out every legal battle they could to contest his win and keep him from being seated. In the end, the Dems had an actual majority for only 4 months, and even then had to get 3 Republican votes to break the Republican filibusters.
If you’re referring to relatively recent events (like the first 2 years of Biden’s term) you need to look no further than Kyrsten Sienema and Joe Manchin. “Democrats” that opposed the agenda (and general Good Things™) for personal greed and lobbying interests. Biden had a majority in the house, and a hostile supreme court, which we’re going to be dealing with for a good long time that’s to McConnell’s fuckery. The defection of Sienema and Manchin made progress very difficult.
It’s also harder to get the wider variety of interests in the big tent of left to go in the same direction. Kinda like herding cats.
Sweden, Germany, Colombia, Australia, etc. Ranked/Alternative/Proportional voting. We should have multiple choices without fear of voting for less popular options being useless. With our current system we basically can’t vote for third parties.
It takes a while for the effects of party decentralization to take hold. The underlying party structure is at the core of two-party systems. RCV is just one incentive (a big one) to restructure parties to be more democratic and diverse, instead of coalescing into monolithic amorphous blobs. Along with Gerrymandering laws, campaign financial regulation and voter civic education. It all has to work in concert to dismantle the social control version of democracy.
Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Malta, Northern Ireland and Scotland all have ranked choice vote. Slovenia had it previously but regressed to FPTP in 2021.
Give up? More like the Republicans are grasping for straws considering how bad they have done in local and midterm elections. They could be putting propaganda to dissuade Democratic voters, which I don’t see happening anytime soon. Biden (and many Democrats) has surprisingly been more progressive for me as a leftist and many people appreciate that. My theory is that the pandemic and the government response to alleviate the costs after the lockdowns made Americans appreciate more government assistance.
That’sa lie. I’ve voted every election since eligible age but fuck the two majors. I’m happy to write in, but I’m not keen on Cornell anymore either so I’m about to nope, unless someone better than the status quo comes along.
The people we need most to turn out and vote this election season (18-24) are the most susceptible to this kind of campaign. And you very much can get them to vote with the right message.
“first past the post” voting always devolves to a two party system. The founding fathers knew this and warned against it. Until we get ranked choice, or something similar, we’re stuck.
FPTP always devolves into local two candidate elections.
There’s no guarantee, though, that those two parties are the same everywhere. Regional third parties can do quite well under FPTP. That particularly works for e.g. the Scottish National Party or the Bloc Quebecois.
To be fair, the American Founding Fathers may not have had heard of the ranked choice voting. The idea was only just forming after the US became independent.
Because the rich have spent 2 centuries entrenching themselves in power, and literally everyone else won’t do a thing about it.
We’re all so apathetic that the impending collapse of our ecosystem is viewed with a shrug. When it should be met with torches and pitchforks in the street, and Madame Guillotine for the rich and powerful.
Nobody gives a shit because they’re all waiting for someone else to do something.
In my country the slashed 7 became mandatory in the national curriculum in the 1930’s. Our military strongly requested this in order to achieve better accuracy in artillery fire control - in those days every calculation was done by hand and mixing 1’s and 7’s could easily have deadly results.
This practice was quickly adopted by the whole population and it was a great success with no drawbacks. The slashed 7 makes it impossible to mix 1’s and 7’s, therefore it is the superior choice.
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