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Basically a complete teardown and overhaul of the system. The biggest problem is that seats in congress are not proportioned representationally. For example, in the UK, if a particular party receives 5% of the vote, then roughly 5% of the seats in the House of Commons are assigned to members appointed by that party. In the US, if a party receives 5% of the vote, they get nothing. Additionally, the US is further hampered by the fact that we elect our president directly instead of going with a prime minister approach, where the minister is appointed by the party or party coalition that won the election. Because of this, there is a lot of pressure placed on voters in every election to vote for the candidate they hate the least, since if they don’t, there’s a good chance that the candidate they hate the most will become president.
If we had a representational vote, on the other hand, people could feel free to vote for whichever party most suited their political tastes, knowing that they will have a chance at being represented in the government that follows the election. Often times, a single party doesn’t win enough votes to have a majority in governments like this, so they have to cooperate with other parties to form a coalition government. In situations such as these, sometimes small parties can play a pivotal role. For example, in the 2017 UK general election, the number of seats needed to secure a majority was 326 (650 seats total, need more than 50%), but the Conservatives only managed to get 318 seats. They were able to team up with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), however, who had gotten 10 seats in the election to form a Conservative-DUP coalition government. So the people who voted for DUP in that election got some extra concessions from the new government because the Conservatives needed them.
Because the US system is an all-or-nothing affair, where we are concerned only with someone winning a plurality rather than a majority of the votes, it necessarily will degrade into a 2-party system over time no matter how many parties you start with. It’s just a mathematical reality. For example, imagine you have 6 parties, and the vote breakdown is as follows:
In this situation, voters would quickly realize that party F doesn’t have a chance to win going forward. So they’re more likely to vote for a party that doesn’t align as well with their politics, but that actually has a chance of winning in future elections. Maybe they give their votes to Party C, for example. Over time, this effect is carried out again and again, and the numbers of people who vote for the two biggest parties reach a sort of equilibrium, with all of the other parties dying out or having next to no votes. Because the people voting for Party F get nothing if their candidate loses, they are heavily incentivized to settle. So, in effect, our current political situation is a result of the systems we chose, and their effect on game theory.
I’m honestly not sure what you’re getting at with this statement. Idaho has a Republican governor, a Republican Lt. governor, a Republican secretary of state, 2 Republican senators, 100% of the US Representatives for Idaho are Republicans, and 80% of the state senators are Republican.
Is there something I’m missing here? Can you explain why Idaho is in any way something other than a perfect example of why voting very much matters? As far as I can tell, voters in Idaho seem to overwhelmingly favor Republicans, and so they get Republican policies.
I’m completely mystified by how you can look at an example where a 280 vote margin led to an attorney general who refuses to prosecute people in her state over a tyrannical law, and then go: “no, but see - voting doesn’t matter!”
I mean, there’s ignorance, and then there’s willful stupidity.
Oh hey - catturd2; isn’t that that sycophantic piece of shit who fawns all over Elon Musk every chance he gets? Maybe it’s a different catturd2 on bluesky.
Edit: Actually, yeah; it does look like it’s a different person entirely:
I recently read Neil Stephenson’s book called “Fall”, in which a significant chunk of the novel is set about 30 years in the future. At that point in time, large swathes of America are referred to as “Ameristan”, because they are break-away territories ruled by evangelical warlords. It feels surprisingly prescient.
Ah, a fellow “Cracking the Cryptic” lover, I see.
Guess that assassin moonlights as a police officer.
Pipe in an endless loop of “Baby Shark” and Justin Bieber?
“It’s true! I’m not making it up!” said the fucking psychic.
I think if I hadn’t dropped Netflix when they did a 180 on their stance on password sharing, I would drop them now.
Shit. My bad.
The guy went down a rabbit hole that eventually led to him deciding to kidnap and/or murder a sitting US Representative because of a fucking youtube comment? Jesus Christ. This fucking country…
Edit: fixed her job title
I’m not saying it’s better or worse, just that it would be a different story. Dementia changes people. My grandmother went through it; she was an incredibly sweet person before Alzheimer’s, and then once she started sunsetting, she became vindictive and paranoid. Thought people were plotting against her or trying to poison her.
I posted this update because the original article was really badly written, and it was hard to figure out what actually happened.
So this article makes it seem like he’s got dementia and was under the spell of a delusion when shooting his partner & daughter. But it’s written so vaguely that it’s hard to know for sure. So I found another article that seems to be much more clear about what happened:
TL;DR: 66-year-old man is in rough shape; has Hepatitis B, Emphysema, and COPD, and needs an oxygen tank. His partner (a much younger woman), their daughter together (8 years old), and his son from a previous marriage (18) all came to his house. The article doesn’t say what happened in the conversation, but he apparently became enraged thinking they were trying to get him out of the house. My guess is that they were trying to get him to go into a care facility due to his many, many ailments.
Dude saw red, grabbed a gun, and started blasting. Shot his partner, then tried shooting his son, missed, and hit his 8-year-old daughter in the back as she was running away from him.
So it sounds much less like dementia (though that could still very well be a factor), and more like a miserable piece of shit reaching for a gun first to solve all of his problems.
I think you’re severely overestimating the average intelligence of the population.