NPR:
Amid growing frustration with both major political parties, voters are open to some big changes.
A new poll, commissioned by supporters of election reforms and shared with NPR, shows there is significant support for upending winner-take-all U.S. House… Continue reading
The post “Voters are sick of the 2-party system. A new poll shows they’re open to big changes” appeared first on Election Law Blog.
They’re open to big changes because corporations have captured our political parties and neither party answers to the population, you know, like a functional democracy. Citizens United and deregulation of corporations is where things went wrong.
Drutman found that 6 in 10 Trump voters who have an opinion on proportional representation said they back it, too….
Okay, but like, what tiny percentage of those people could understand the concept, much less have an opinion about it? heh
We’re also open to executing politicians for treason when they hold more allegiance to money and Israel than the people they represent.
Like seriously NPR. Clean it up a bit and ask that fucking question. Report on how many people you interview agree with that sentiment.
Report on actual sentiment.
Our de facto two party system isn’t statutory. It’s not written in the constitution that there can only be two parties. It’s just the natural consequence of a winner-take-all, first-past-the-post election system. All a candidate has to do is win 51% of the votes to get 100% of the political power. It makes third party candidates essentially nonviable. That’s what would need to change if we want to ditch the two party system.
It’s not in the constitution, but the power of voting lies in the states. So we’d need state to slowly change their voting systems for this to happen properly.
The electoral college for nationals is a whole different ballpark. Also not in the constitution, but I think that still lies with states?
Party principles have a history of changing over time.
I think we can still salvage “democrats”. We just have to make it far left.
If we do make a new party though, what animal or color ?
I mean white seems like the only option. But that’s kinda maybe problematic.
Can’t be part of the white party.
Rainbow?
Oh and animal. Hm.
Anything is better than a literal jack ass.Even if we stick with the Dems vs Republicans. Can Dems get a new mascot. ?
Can’t be part of the white party.
WHITE POWER!!!..wait
Ranked Choice Voting. If anyone is curious just know that it’s illegal in some places in USA. Similar with general work striking.
It’s my personal opinion that a lot of the support for Ranked Choice specifically is astroturfing from groups that don’t want real change. It’s nearly as bad as First Past the Post and is still subject to spoiler effects for example. Also too confusing for voters to trust.
My preferences are for approval or score voting. With those there isn’t a situation where voting for someone you want increases odds for someone you don’t.
It’s not astroturfig. That’s the way a lot of local elections (and 1-2 statewide elections) work. It’s a system that has precedent, so it gets the most support.
But yes, there’s more than one way to shear a sheep. I’m open to any variety of choices not based on winner-take-all.
there isn’t a situation where voting for someone you want increases odds for someone you don’t.
RCV barely increases the odds for someone you don’t want. The whole idea is that it rewards moderate views so that “everyone’s 2nd choice” is better than a radical first choice. The Spoiler effect will almost always be there, but Nothing is worse than FPTP for that effect. Especially with Score based voting that can (and given experience with internet ratings, will) degenerate to “0 or max score”. Score based voting works best with high information electorate, and the US… hell, pretty much all global politics aren’t full of people laser focused on every little law.
I like Approval based voting, though. The issue lies more in excessive runoffs when we get the most popular candidates (or the worst case where none of the candidate are approved enough).
I wish that was true in WA state. Incumbents and the typical 2-party won in landslides. Anyone independent or voicing out against the nonsense that politics has turned into was mostly put in the single digit percent range.
Although our voter turnout was near 18-22% across all districts, so hard to know what people are thinking when they don’t fucking vote.
I’m not a big fan of proportional representation, because it can be gamed just like the current system, but in proportional representation you don’t actually cast a ballot for a person. While a third party candidate might sneak in there with some proportion of the vote, for the most part it will still be D’s and R’s with most of the vote, so whoever is the first D or R on the list will basically have the job for life, with no practical way to challenge them at all.
I do like ranked choice voting, in conjunction with a massive increase in the size of Congress. 435 is way too small. 1435 might be the right number, if my math is right that could be about 250k people per Rep. Let’s see people try to gerrymander 175 Congressional Districts in California…
