"my guy is great but the rest of those crooks..."
this post was submitted on 31 May 2024
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"my crook is great but the rest of these crooks..."
FTFY.
Plenty of voters KNOW their representatives are crooks. But they're crooks on the "right side", so they're cool. They're using their crookedness to push law through ethically void means that often border on legality, which is fine so long as they're usually pushing their constituents agenda in doing so OR simply fucking over the other side. Those people voting for Jewish Space Lasers Marj and Child Sex Trafficking Gaetz know exactly who those people are, as do every single Twice-Impeached, Convicted Felon Trump voter. It's not an awareness issue.
Another factor is the idea that all politicians are crooks, making perceived crookedness seem irrelevant. This becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
Politics in general is a self fulfilling prophesy. Genuine, honest people who stand for something and want to make a positive change through integrity and compromise do not typically last long in politics. Those who are ruthless have the advantage and those who are not either need to recognize, defy and outnumber the ruthless, or else fall to their level, or fail to see the change they're fighting for. The job just incentivizes being a lying asshole.
Also that almost every election is a choice between a crook who'll implement the policies you want, and a crook who won't.
Simple solutions. Term limits, ranked choice voting, delete the electoral college.
The problem is that while people disapprove of Congress as a whole they tend to like their own representatives.
Gerrymandering is a bigger problem in Congress.
Ranked-choice means nothing if you have single-member districts, other than maybe allowing some third parties to get in. You can still gerrymander and stuff.
What you really want is multi-member districts or just nationwide PR, but that is anything but simple…
Yeah, 96% of RCV elections in the US elect the first round winner anyway. In part because proportional representation is the ultimate goal, I think Approval Voting is a better first step towards fixing our elections. You can very easily adapt it to proportional methods in ways that the voter can actually understand. Fargo and St. Louis use it for their normal elections and it's caused majority winners to go way up. It elected the first black woman to mayor for St. Louis, so that's pretty neat.
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"simple"
Yes, simple. Easy to explain to the average person, easy to implement. Now, as for our overlords with all the money allowing it? Complicated.
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Majority voting system is the main problem. Electoral college is the version for presidential elections, but it needs to be changed to a proportionate voting system for congress as well.
As the US is very state-based, you could do a version like Germany where you vote for a local candidate as well but the proportion of the congress equals the whole proportion of votes.
While I agree with these, removing the electoral college wouldn't have a direct impact on congress, right?
It would have an indirect impact by not allowing an orange fuck by winning without the popular vote.
It could change the VP (tie breaking vote in Senate)
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Every neoliberal:
What are you proposing? A revolution?
Yes.
How far did you read about the French Revolution before you closed the book? Because it certainly seems like you read the part about overthrowing the rich and then stopped reading about what happened next.
Let's be honest: nobody actually reads history. If they did they would know that the citizens of Paris eventually burned the guillotine because it had killed so many people.
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No, just to make sure the little bubble on the ballot is really well colored in.
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He probably should have advocated for a system that wouldn't reault in this bullshit then. Federalists vs Democrat-Republicans became the de-facto state of US politics immediately after ratification of the constitution. You don't get to complain about your dog shitting on the carpet if you never let it out.
He didn't write the constitution alone and subsequent Congresses and presidential administrations had over a century to heed his warnings before the duopoly became unassailable.
Hell, as late as 1912, Teddy Roosevelt had a realistic chance of winning back the presidency as the head of a more progressive party (the aptly named Progressive Party, better known as the Bull Moose Party) that he founded the summer of that year!
Trump has as good a chance of running as a third party candidate as Teddy had. The duopoly has been in place since the 1850s, 60 years agter the constitution was written and ratified. You cant rant and rave about parties all you want, but they are inevitable with our current system.
Trump did run as third party. Several times. He dropped out every time without winning any delegates. 2016 was not his first rodeo, just the first one he finally convinced the RNC to nominate him.
There's a reason you want to be under one of the big tent parties. They get more funding to campaign and they get party hardliners basically for free. Adolf Hitler could run as a Republican and you'd still see lifelong Republicans turn out to vote (R) down ballot regardless.
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Seventy percent of races in 2020 were unopposed. It isn't even two party for the most part.
So US citizens have no say in picking the legislative, the judiciary and the executive branches.
How's it the democratic beacon of freedom again?
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Your congressperson secures an earmark for a local project: "How wonderful, they are working hard to bring back dollars to our community!"
Everyone else's congressperson secures an earmark for their district: "We need to stop these awful porkbarrel projects! What a waste of money!"
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I can't speak for others, but Gerrymandering makes my reps some of the worst in the House.
First past the post elections make reps the worst in the world. Both parties agree on one thing maintain power.
Gerrymandering is one place where I don't think would be fixed with a "Ranked choice" voting method vs FPTP. If the authors of maps draw districts with a moderate majority leaning one way, the general ideology will still be represented in the final vote.
The case for getting rid of first past the post. Ranked choice, star voting, take your pick but we can and should do better, for democracy.
Correct. The solution is representatives who support non-FPTP systems. Your options are Democrats (some have some support for non-FPTP), Republicans (passionately oppose non-FPTP because FPTP is the only way they win) and third-party choices who actively support non-FPTP (single digit percentages of voter share).
The only rational play is to vote D while doing everything possible to campaign to make those third-parties viable. Voting R is failure. Not voting is failure. Voting for non-viable third-parties is failure. D is a means to an end, necessary but not sufficient.
Correct answer.
If 3rd party proponents ACTUALLY want to do something. It needs to start at the local level and build up from there.
This shit of voting in the presidential election and thinking you're accomplishing anything positive is sad...
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When approval couldn't be lower, yet reelection rates couldn't be higher you'll know you've succeded
CGP Grey - Rules for Rulers
As they say around Indiana - "Oh yeah they're terrible, but at least they're not a Dem" and then refuse to elaborate.
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