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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
It would be better to try reforming it first than flat out getting rid of it.
@Aceof Spades: Perhaps, but I probably wouldn't put that high on DNC's platform in 2020, or really any overt change to the political/ electoral structure.
They've already got a body in Congress where they get equal representation. They don't need it in the presidential election too. The tail can't always be wagging the dog.
| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |Mio, that's why the public needs to be talking about it; Even President Obama admitted he couldn't do anything without the support of the people pushing him to do it. Politicians do, in fact, listen. Their jobs kind of depend on it.
@Link; You don't have to feel ok with it, but living in constant anxiety or fear isn't exactly a great way to deal with this situation. Coming to terms with something isn't the same as being ok with it.
@jobs: I was just watching This Old House, and in one segment they mentioned that there is a big demand for people in the various building trades (carpenters, electricians, masons, plumbers, roofers, etc.) because a lot of the old guys are retiring and not enough of the younger generation have taken up where they left off. You don't need a college degree, you just have to be willing to work hard and learn the skills as you go along, like an old-fashioned apprenticeship (and maybe some vocational/technical courses.)
For more info, look up Mike Rowe's "Works Foundation" at http://profoundlydisconnected.com/
edited 10th Nov '16 8:42:34 PM by pwiegle
This Space Intentionally Left Blank.At least we have some good news, Governor Pat McCrory (R-NC) has pretty much lost against Democrat Roy Cooper.
This doesn't mean death against NC's trans bathroom bill since NC's state Congress is still heavily leaning R, but I guess it's a start.
edited 10th Nov '16 8:32:23 PM by tclittle
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."Bit late since this thread is moving so fast right now, buuuuuuuut...
No, what prevents third parties from gaining any traction in the US is the first-past-the-post voting system. Since we divide everything up into districts and then vote for one candidate to fill one office, and third party simply acts as a spoiler and splits the vote with the party they agree with more, thus handing the election to the party they agree with less. This makes third parties self-defeating.
What we would need in order to allow for third (and fourth, and fifth...) parties is a different voting system. There are a lot, but anything that's proportional would do. A proportional voting system doesn't use districts; instead everyone votes in one giant election, and the seats are apportioned out based on the total results.
Let's take the popular vote of the presidential election and pretend it was a proportional vote for Senate. The Senate has 100 seats, so each party would get one seat for every 1% of the popular vote they got — 48 for the Democrats, 47 for the Republicans, 3 for the Libertarians (Gary Johnson), and 1 for Green (Jill Stein). What happens with the last remaining seat (about 1% of the popular vote was split between numerous minor candidates) depends on the specifics of your election rules, but can basically be ignored for the purposes of this example.
The upshot is, in that sort of system, even minor parties can get some voice in government, even if it's just a small handful of seats. In first-past-the-post voting, there's no chance of third parties getting in, and by even trying they screw the major party they agree with more.
Of course, it's important to note that the two-party system is not without its advantages. It generally does a great job of marginalizing extreme positions and denying them a voice in government. Yes, you might want certain positions that are considered extreme to have a voice, but it's not a pick-and-choose thing. You either allow all extreme voices — including the openly bigoted and xenophobic alt-right and the anti-science know-nothing alt-left — or none of them.
Generally speaking, I think the two party system is preferable... except in the edge case where an extreme fringe manages to hijack a mainstream party and suddenly get a major voice in government. Which is unfortunately exactly what's happened with Trump and the GOP.
edited 10th Nov '16 8:36:03 PM by NativeJovian
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.![]()
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I think that if third parties want to get any relevance they need to to focus on working from the ground up. District politics, state senatorships, governorships, representatives and if lucky senators. grow their way up.
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If anything this election suggested to me there's a dire need for political activism of a building-bridges, winning people over kind, rather than holding signs at a college campus yelling slogans and shaming people into agreeing with you kind. Not sure what I can do as an individual because I hardly have the personality for this kind of thing in meatspace but I imagine some of us here can hopefully implement what people have been talking about upthread. Actual grassroots activism.
edited 10th Nov '16 8:51:59 PM by AlleyOop
"Let's take the popular vote of the presidential election and pretend it was a proportional vote for Senate. The Senate has 100 seats, so each party would get one seat for every 1% of the popular vote they got — 48 for the Democrats, 47 for the Republicans, 3 for the Libertarians (Gary Johnson), and 1 for Green (Jill Stein). What happens with the last remaining seat (about 1% of the popular vote was split between numerous minor candidates) depends on the specifics of your election rules, but can basically be ignored."
The problem I can see with a proportional system is that it can't be pure party list — part of the problem was that the Democrats were too insulated from popular sentiment, and in a system where seats are won proportionally, and the candidates themselves don't matter, which candidates invited to sit in government would be decided by backroom dealing. It would set the Democrats up for defeat after defeat by painting them as a political machine. Now, ordinarily, I would be all right with this, because I spit on populism and the vileness of the rube, but populism is the name of the game now, and all Democrats must play it.
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."I also think the whole echo chamber thing has proved to be a big problem. Too many people have gone ignored. Not the violent white nationalists, fuck them, but the uninformed and complacent of which there are so many. Social activism is exhausting work but if we just give up on them altogether nothing changes and we're back to this again in a couple of years.
It is asking a lot to listen to and try to empathize with someone who's made a big mistake and just don't know it, or not voted at all but some of us are better equipped to do that than others, and those who are equipped should do so. Being smug is just going to create more Trumps in the future and leave people inside their own echo chambers, which just alienates people from what is going on in the world.
boogie2988 has some words of comfort. "The pendulum always swings left and right." "You can't stop progress (overall)."
edited 10th Nov '16 8:54:22 PM by BonsaiForest
For example the whole paradigm of ___ privilege, while a legit sociological concept, is something most white people in red states won't grasp. It's not necessarily wrong, nor is it intended as a shame tactic to promote white guilt, but when people on the left talk about it it's often comes off as such, sometimes accidentally, sometimes because the people pushing it legitimately don't understand that it's not. And while it's not always the case most of the people who do eventually warm up to it tend to be already of a leftist bent to begin with.
That suggests to me that many of the very leftists who are supposed to advocate for it can't get it right, what hope do we have of opening the eyes of the moderates and the center-right to their privilege? I simply don't think most of the country is ready for this idea yet, at least not in the way a lot of leftists present it, and the tendency of these leftists to box themselves into echo chambers deludes them into thinking that the country is. Hence all the masturbatory pseudointellectualism from leftist college types sipping from the runoff of the ivory towers, thinking they're anointing outsiders with their wisdom when they're just throwing water balloons at them and ruining their shirts. To be honest, it's not something I didn't expect to happen.
Likewise, the whole "I don't care that you claim you don't hate the blacks, Jews, women, Hispanics, gays, etc., by supporting Trump you're a racist, anti-Semitite, misogynist, homophobe" spiel. In a sense it's true, but that formulation is extremely offputting to people. Some might say tough luck, but all it does is harden people to real change. There's probably other ways to weasel around it, that even if they don't agree with the things Trump says or think he's sincere by it, voting for him increases the megaphone of these actual bigots (notably marking a boundary between alt-righters and the people you're trying to convince). Things like that.
edited 10th Nov '16 9:13:22 PM by AlleyOop
Like imagine you have a population based vote. You live in a small state like Alaska or Maine, and your economy is heavily reliant on fishing. An election rolls around and New York and California who are much bigger states than yours decide they want to back a nominee that will crush the fishing industry. Sure you have your representative in congress, but the bigger states number more than you, and the president has no obligation to listen to your state's concerns if the bigger states that put him in power want something else. With a weighted vote they at least get the chance to pick someone who will fight for what they want too. I mean, if only the dense states matter, they may as well not even vote for POTUS.
Though keep in mind I'm just playing devil's advocate for the sake of intellectual exercise. I don't nave a perfect answer either.
And on the matter of third parties, one solution for that would be a ranked choice voting system.
edited 10th Nov '16 9:08:08 PM by xanderiskander
My personal preferred one is Single Transferable Vote. Basically, you list your candidates in order of preference. In the first round of tallying votes, everyone's first choice is considered. Any candidate that hits the appropriate threshold number of votes (the actual number depends on how many ballots were cast and how many seats are available) wins a seat. Any "extra" votes for that candidate (votes that placed them first, but are more than they need to win the seat) skip down to their second choice. If no one wins in the first round, the candidate with the least number of votes cast for them is eliminated and any ballot that had them as their first choice moves on to their second choice.
So, each ballot one counts for one candidate, but which candidate they count for depends on the way they ranked the candidates. You can't "waste" your vote, either by voting for a candidate that has no chance of winning (like voting for a third party in a two-party system) or by voting for a super-popular candidate that would have won without you anyway — either way, your vote is "transferred" to your second choice. If your second choice would have been a wasted vote, then it goes to your third choice, then your fourth, etc etc. It keeps doing this until either you haven't listed any more candidates or all seats in the election are filled.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

If I didn't have that I'd probably be fucked.
I just hope that the US economy doesn't tank so bad that we go out of business or anything as a result.
edited 10th Nov '16 8:03:51 PM by Draghinazzo