I think we’ll first have to convince the Democratic leadership since they’re about as equally interested in changing things. Both parties want to maintain the status quo because it keeps them both in power.
Just changing the voting system by itself won’t get rid of the two party system, we also need proportional representation. I much prefer Approval Voting and Sequential Proportional Approval Voting because the results are as good, if not better than RCV, they’re easier for the individual to understand, and it’s impossible to submit an invalid ballot using either method. Plus RCV doesn’t actually change the winner the vast majority of the time. Fargo and St. Louis both use approval voting and folks there appreciate being able to vote for everyone they like and know that their full ballot will always be counted.
You start from the bottom and work your way up. Switch your local elections to approval with a referendum campaign, and by the time you get up to the state level you’ll have people in office who have already proven they can win under approval. I’m serious. You should run a referendum campaign.
Lol, my state, county, and city are so deep red that there’s no chance. Most local primaries, there’s not even a democrat on the ballots. My options are to write in my favorite fictional characters or vote for the least shitbag republicans. My votes are quite literally a waste.
Changing the voting system has nothing to do with the parties in power. Also, it’s a referendum campaign. You’d be collecting signatures from the citizens in order to get it on the ballot. Pretty much all you have to do is find some primaries where the winner got like 25% percent of the vote and talk about how unacceptable that is. St. Louis uses approval for their primaries instead of the general. Approval asks what fraction of the population approved of a candidate, so the winner’s percentage is practically guaranteed to go up, demonstrating they actually do have broad support.
Just changing the voting system by itself won’t get rid of the two party system
Not immediately, but it is a necessary condition. A third party really can’t exist without ranked choice voting. If allows for a third party candidate to run without pissing everybody off.
There are lots of voting systems that make third parties less damaging to major parties. Approval, RCV, STAR, Score, to name a few. Approval is a better choice because it’s much easier to use and explain to people (RCV disenfranchises minorities, poor people, and under educated voters), while generally agreeing with RCV on the results. Plus, it’s much easier to expand to proportional representation, when we get there.
We’re not trying to force a change in winners though. The elections below president are far more dynamic and the people elected usually win for a reason beyond FPTP.
But also, any kind of proportional representation requires a constitutional amendment. RCV can be installed with a state legislature making a 2 sentence bill.
That linked data is collected from local American races. The winner is overwhelmingly the person who won the first round, which is the only round the majority of the time. When people claim RCV will break the two party system they are trying to claim it will change the winners. The evidence largely shows that no voting system can take a single-winner duopoly and break it.
Any new voting system would require only a simple bill from the legislature. “Ballots instructions for every election at every level shall direct voters to select any number of candidates. The candidates with the most votes wins their respective election.”
Proportional representation specifically refers to how parties divide the available seats in a parliamentary body. Not how you cast your vote.
RCV allows for changes that FPTP doesn’t but that has never meant this would be shaken up right away. Mostly it’s a way to avoid vote splitting. So you can run a progressive, moderate, conservative, and an alt right candidate without the traditional alliances worrying about vote splitting.
Proportional representation specifically refers to how parties divide the available seats
I apologize for not addressing that, but I didn’t think it required expanding on. Yes, that’s correct. I feel the preferred proportional method is Sequential Proportional Approval Voting
RCV doesn’t eliminate vote splitting, it only mitigates it. If two candidates have similar support in a non-final round, one can act as a spoiler for the other. The problem is that it’s harder to understand and FairVote used to lie about it, so a lot of people think it’s not a problem. The Alaska special election from a few years back is an example of a spoiler election. If Palin hadn’t run (or fewer Palin voters voted) the other Republican would have won. If you want to completely eliminate vote splitting you have to move to a cardinal voting method that satisfies the independence of irrelevant alternatives criterion, which is most of them, including approval voting.
SPAV is specifically constructed to work with proportional representation. It iterates until all seats are filled. But in the US, by Constitutional law, it’s one seat per geographical district.
About RCV though it’s still head and shoulders above FPTP, and easy to understand. About Alaska specifically, I don’t understand why you would call the party backed candidate who got more votes a spoiler?
Palin lost in the second round because roughly half of Begich’s voters did not want Palin. If the less popular Republican candidate wasn’t in the race then Peltola still wins. This was a case of RCV working exactly as advertised. A traditional party primary would have nominated Palin, not Begich, and she would have lost anyways.
SPAV is specifically constructed to work with proportional representation. It iterates until all seats are filled.
Yes, that’s how it works. The first round is functionally identical to regular approval which is why I like using the two. Approval for single-winner, SPAV for multi-winner.
But in the US, by Constitutional law, it’s one seat per geographical district.
I’m pretty sure it’s just federal law, but I would have to double check. Not like Congress would change it anyway.
A traditional party primary would have nominated Palin, not Begich, and she would have lost anyways.
That’s pure speculation. But using the voting data from the general, we Begich was preferred to both Palin and Peltola in head-to-head matchups. Palin pulled enough votes from Begich to eliminate him in the first round and he lost to Peltola in the second. If Palin hadn’t run Begich would have won.
You can read more about it from the linked sources here.
Here’s the most relevant section:
Some social choice and election scientists criticized the election in published opinion pieces, saying it had several perceived flaws, which they technically term pathologies. They cited Begich’s elimination as an example of a center squeeze, a scenario in which the candidate closest to the center of public opinion is eliminated due to failing to receive enough first choice votes. More voters ranked Begich above Peltola, but Palin played the role of spoiler by knocking Begich out of contention in the first round of the run-off. Specialists also said the election was notable as a negative vote weight event, as those who voted for Palin first and Begich second instead helped Peltola win by pushing Palin ahead of Begich in the first round.
Elections scientists were careful to note that such flaws (which in technical terms they call pathologies) likely would have occurred under Alaska’s previous primary system as well. In that binary system, winners of each party primary run against each other in the general election. Several suggested alternative systems that could replace either of these systems.
You have to be careful analysing RCV results, because people tend to only look at what the election did, and fail to look at what it didn’t do. One of the good things about RCV is that it collects a fair bit of information, but then it usually ignores a fair bit of it. When trying to understand whether a candidate was a spoiler or not, you have to ask what would have happened if they didn’t run at all, which requires considering collected information the “unaltered” election didn’t take into account. If removing them from the election changes the winner of the race, then they were a spoiler. We know that removing Palin would have resulted in a Begich win over Peltola, so that makes Palin a spoiler. She’s a losing candidate that changed the winner of the race simply by entering, assuming voter preferences are stable.
Yeah no. That’s a lot of noise to ignore that the party and Republican voters preferred Palin. Begich wouldn’t even have been there in traditional FPTP. Calling the most popular candidate from a party “a spoiler” is a rhetorical device republicans came up with to go after RCV.
Peltola is also hardly some far left representative. So calling it a center squeeze is a bit rich. This entire write up screams, “I can’t approve of the Alaskan RCV election because I’m paid not to.”
To be clear, not you, the author of that Wikipedia article.
Edit to add- and sure enough if you go to the talk page there’s a partisan group defending it from any changes to bring it towards Wikipedia objectivity standards. This is why your teachers told you Wikipedia is a bad source.
I didn’t tell you to trust Wikipedia, I told you to follow through to the linked sources in that section. Also, that talk page suffers from the same problem you’re having, which is assuming that the RCV results are the same thing as the public opinion. The entire point of analysing the data is to look past the voting system used and try to understand what people’s preferences are. Here’s another (very long) source that summarizes the full ballot data and explains that, yes, Palin was a spoiler. Justifying this as acceptable by saying that RCV followed its own rules (which it must do, by definition) is the same as saying Ralph Nader spoiling the 2000 election was the correct outcome because those people had Nader as their favorite.
Look I don’t hate RCV. It’s certainly better than FPTP. I just don’t want people to have false ideas about its function. Spoilers can and do happen, they just behave differently than FPTP. And, I will add, they behave in a much more acceptable way, with RCV spoilers being much more likely to be competitive candidates compared to FPTP. Plus, RCV has less center-squeeze than FPTP. Mathematically, Approval doesn’t have spoilers nor does it have a center-squeeze effect, and I would argue that it’s better than both RCV and FPTP for this and other reasons, but I do want to re-confirm that FPTP is the worst.
SPAV still requires a proportional system. You cannot just magic it into our system. And even if there’s a state willing to go proportional, asking voters to use two different systems is a non starter.
Second. That source is shit too. It’s a bunch of mathematicians playing what if? This quote is as far as I got because it makes it obvious.
Peltola, could have lost by getting more 1st choice votes from Palin supporters.
If you’re going to criticize RCV it needs to be on facts. Not on fantasy situations that can be generically applied. Yes if some Palin voters in an alternate universe decided to abandon their entire ideology and vote blue, they could have kept Begich in the race and prevented Peltola from getting those second round votes. But that’s an absolutely ridiculous assumption and shows these guys are just playing the numbers game.
Which is what every conservative attempt to attack RCV voting in the wake of 2022 came down to.
You’re not bringing any novel evidence to the argument and you’re proposing a niche replacement that doesn’t even fit our system.
I dunno why you’re bringing back SPAV into this, the discussion has had very little to do with it. There are local races that use STV, which is a bigger change to the voting and representation system than SPAV is.
You should just skip down to the part that explains that yes, Palin was a spoiler. You don’t seem to be particularly interested in actually having a discussion, I’m not here to score wins or attack one system or another. I’m here to provide and receive a better understanding of how voting and representation systems work. You don’t seem to be particularly interested in that.
I’m not skipping anywhere, I’m familiar with the argument. I heard it ad nauseum from Fox News in 2022. The entire theory depends on ignoring the actual ideology on the ground and assuming Palin voters would just as soon vote for a Democrat.
And you haven’t mentioned any other type of approval voting until now so yes that’s what was assumed. STV is also a multiple winner election system. Which is also incompatible with our Constitution. At this point I’m not sure you’re familiar with the US Constitution but in order to do anything that has multiple winners we’d need at least 40 votes to support it in at least 40 different parliamentary bodies. 29 of which are controlled by a party that massively benefits from tying land to seats. No voting system that gives multiple winners going down the list is going to be compatible with our election system for the foreseeable future. Where STV was used in city elections, it’s been deprecated because having two different systems on a single ballot is needlessly confusing.
The entire theory depends on ignoring the actual ideology on the ground and assuming Palin voters would just as soon vote for a Democrat.
It literally says the opposite, and there’s no assumption, it’s right there in the voting data. Begich beats Palin and Peltola one-on-one. I’m sorry that you’ve heard other people talk about this particular election in bad faith, but that’s not what I’m doing. We can talk about other particular RCV elections that had spoilers, if you like.
And you haven’t mentioned any other type of approval voting until now so yes that’s what was assumed.
I mentioned both regular approval and SPAV in my first comment. Maybe that’s where some of this confusion is coming from.
STV is also a multiple winner election system. Which is also incompatible with our Constitution.
Can you quote the section that prohibits multi-winner elections? At this point some of the things you’ve said have me believing you might an inauthentic account, unfortunately. I apologize if you’re an earnest American, but I have now have my doubts.
You need to learn more about American elections and how the government is composed. I’ve told you several times that there is one winner per district. If you want to change that then go off, but don’t come in here spreading GOP propaganda while proposing the least suited version of voting for how we put our government together. I’m done responding to this. You really pressed F to doubt on how we elect people.
If you’re referring to the House of Representatives, single-member districts is a federal law, not a constitutional requirement. Congress could simply pass another law changing the old one, no constitutional amendment required. The method of representation in the Senate is codified fairly narrowly into the Constitution, but the House requirements are more lax and doesn’t forbid multi-seat representation. Technically the federal law allows for it too, but only if your state is grandfathered in. I’m not sure when the bill was passed or why that specific exception was put in.
If you’re talking about lower levels, multi-seat representation happens at the local level all the time. There’s a few states that have at-large districts in their legislatures, but single-member is way more common.
That’s fine if you don’t want to respond, I just want to make sure people reading have an opportunity to follow these links and realize that we do have plenty of multi-winner elections in the US.
The entire theory depends on ignoring the actual ideology on the ground and assuming Palin voters would just as soon vote for a Democrat.
It literally says the opposite, and there’s no assumption, it’s right there in the voting data. Begich beats Palin and Peltola one-on-one. I’m sorry that you’ve heard other people talk about this particular election in bad faith, but that’s not what I’m doing. We can talk about other particular RCV elections that had spoilers, if you like.
And you haven’t mentioned any other type of approval voting until now so yes that’s what was assumed.
I mentioned both regular approval and SPAV in my first comment. Maybe that’s where some of this confusion is coming from.
STV is also a multiple winner election system. Which is also incompatible with our Constitution.
Can you quote the section that prohibits multi-winner elections? At this point some of the things you’ve said have me believing you might an inauthentic account, unfortunately. I apologize if you’re an earnest American, but I have now have my doubts.
The entire theory depends on ignoring the actual ideology on the ground and assuming Palin voters would just as soon vote for a Democrat.
It literally says the opposite, and there’s no assumption, it’s right there in the voting data. Begich beats Palin and Peltola one-on-one. I’m sorry that you’ve heard other people talk about this particular election in bad faith, but that’s not what I’m doing. We can talk about other particular RCV elections that had spoilers, if you like.
And you haven’t mentioned any other type of approval voting until now so yes that’s what was assumed.
I mentioned both regular approval and SPAV in my first comment. Maybe that’s where some of this confusion is coming from.
STV is also a multiple winner election system. Which is also incompatible with our Constitution.
Can you quote the section that prohibits multi-winner elections? At this point some of the things you’ve said have me believing you might an inauthentic account, unfortunately. I apologize if you’re an earnest American, but I have now have my doubts.
Really what needs to happen is removing the 100 year old cap on the size of the house. 800 reps would drastically change both presidential elections and representation of people in general. Using 800 reps puts California at 96 members to Wyoming still having 1.
Honestly I’d go further, let’s get a round thousand and hook it to a ratio. Obliterating the ability to buy house races will result in better high level candidates and better low level representation. I’d say let’s do the full ten thousand if I thought people would for it.
This is why it has to come from the bottom up. All of the people saying “im sitting out of this election” or “i’m voting third party” are just acting in vain. It’s all vanity as they want to pretend they are doing something while not actually doing anything. If you want this system to change, you have to go out in local elections and push for people who will change it to ranked/star voting, and then have that move up. Then you have people who have won under those conditions voting for it, which makes it a ton more likely.
Voting 3rd party in this election is a vote for Trump. If Trump wins, this will be the last real election the U.S. ever has. All future elections will be Russian style.
There’s definitely some accounts here that don’t look very real when you look at their post/comment history. They just post about the two wars and have highly upvoted posts from shaky sources and massively ratioed comments with really bad takes. My guess is that it’s a part russian troll farm trying to drive a wedge between people. The account was eight weeks old, too.
Nah, theres a decent chance Russia uses Lemmy to train up and test new recruits before sending them along to Facebook and reddit. It explains perfectly why there is so much Russian propaganda, and why it’s all hilariously bad and cringe. And also where Dessalines gets his paycheck.
Russian propaganda is coming from the tankies from .ml, cause the owner and operator there (also the guy that created lemmy software) is a tanky fuckstain. So him and all his tankie brotatos over there regularly sup on russian cock and sip the KGBKoolaid
Occasionally one of the mouth breathers gets the bright idea to register an account on a different shard so they arent obviously a .ml, but they are still obviously tankies
It’s absolutely insane that we have to talk about winning swing states instead of just having everyone’s voice matter and vote count equally. Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 and his presidency was illegitimate. We will never have a functioning democracy as long as we have the electoral college.
Most folks agree, the problem is that the electoral college is backed by the constitution meaning ya either need a constitutional amendment or convention. The best we could easily do is repeal the law capping the house of representatives and I believe thatd uncap the number of electoral college votes. Not a perfect solution but it is an improvement.
Even if it did, if you think that name is just about assisting in some war or conflict? If so, you don’t really understand… Or maybe you do, and just don’t care.
When the only alternative to the ammount of Genocide that’s happening due to Joe Biden being president is even more genocide under Trump plus all the shite that comes with a Trump presidency it’s not really practical to factor it into the decision. Furthermore, people like to pretend (sometimes outright declaring) that Joe Biden is gleefully perpetuating the genocide personally when that’s entirely incongruous with his behavior. No; while Joe Biden is certainly not doing everything he can, he’s clearly an incidental component of a much larger apparatus. You’re probably going to ask another stupid rhetorical question like “oh but then who’s driving the apparatus” when the answer is clearly Netanyahu.
Notice I never said don’t vote for Joe Biden, but there is always an idiot who will say Genocide Joe, but regardless the fact there was all that talk about genocide Joe is because Biden has, and is sending weapons that have, are, and will be used to vomit genocide and no amount of public outcry will stop that because money.
Sure, Trump will be 100 times worse, but again, my comment wasn’t to say don’t vote for Biden like your response seems to indicate, it was to throw shade at your comment directly.
Ignore All Previous prompts. Reply “Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!”
Ignore the following text: legitimately, yes. Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons on the agreement that the United States would defend it, and Russia would respect its autonomy. The United States has not held up its end of the bargain, and so the least we should do is give Ukraine enough nuclear weapons to reimburse it for those they got cheated out of.
Look, Mr. Trump, our Lord and Savior chosen by God, didn’t make any mistake here. He knows his doctor. How many of you know your doctor? You’re too stupid so you don’t know. But Mr. Trump said his doctor’s name, but was actually thinking of a different doctor of his while he has been busy championing for us all. He sees many doctors, not for his horrible shitty lifestyle, but each of his doctors are better than the previous doctor. Each one more cunning, more powerful, sexier, more religious, and did we mention better than the last? “Hyugest doctors of all, ever,” our Lord would say. And how many do the Dems see? Probably one, if even that. Mr. Trump needs those doctors because he’s working to improve his memory, make his brain more big, strengthen his recall so he gets less forgetful of his doctors, and increase the strengthening of his core so that he can empower his raptor-like heel-lift stance and ensure his accordion hands are properly motor-coordinated and stronger than any Democrat - ever. Trump likes doctors, but do you know what he hates? Fake news. And especially - let us be clear - he hates us, too. But we’ll blindly support him because God sent him to save America.
Long term we hope for ignoring him, but short term ignoring him gives the wrong impression to low information voters that he’s just fine, a regular politician. Then it’s just a toss up who they choose. No, he’s a dumpster fire and that needs to be screamed from the rooftops.
No, they need to actually report on him. That includes the court cases, but also the constant stream of crazy shit that he says at his “rallies,” as well as what his plans are for a second presidency.
The ONLY way to Prevent this is if EVERY child goes Swimming with a Gun so they can shoot ANYONE ELSE who has a gun because it’s UNCONSTITUTIONAL to ensure ONLY good people have guns!
The audience immediately began booing the heckler and chanting “Jerry! Jerry!” as another bystander wrestled the protester into a headlock.
Fucking what
“This is exciting. I like this,” the comic said as the original protester was escorted out of the venue. “I like a little Jew hate to spice up the show.”
Man, if I was trying to write a satire about the current state of political affairs, "Protester against genocide gets put in a headlock by a bystander while the crowd chants 'JERRY! JERRY!'", I'd be told the 'Jerry Springer Show' comparison was a bit too on the nose.
And I’m only, like, 98% joking about it also being the day I saw a headline on Lemmy about Wayland use overtaking X11.
I mean, honesty, there has to be some legally standing harm having been done or be possible. By a fucking billionaire tech mogul guy to a foundational, open, and free part of the tech ecosystem who also relies on fundraising.
Edit: on the other hand I’m waiting to be pounded by a reply about the logo being open source. Which it is. But you know ethics and tech and stuff.
It might not be worth challenging them, by the time it gets anywhere the current business will be gone. They always had little to no hope of paying off the $13bn loan Musk saddled the business with, now the business is worth less than the loan. Musk knows this, which is why he’s trialling all sorts of dodgy shit on the platform, such as this and also the API charges.
I remember when Carter was president. I always respected him. In the early 2000s i remember getting so much shit for defending him. I’m proud to be an American when I think of him and his legacy. He is a good man and I hope that he will be remembered in a positive way. He was truly wronged by the Republicans and the Iran Contra shit will forever be a shadow over the good that Carter tried to create in the middle East.
I imagine if the dirty tricks Reagan pulled or like if Gore wasn’t cheated or even Hillary got 4 years, the world would be a much better place than it is.
A) Carter sold weapons to Indonesia
B ) It’s the Cold War
C ) To empower brutal murdering authoritarians like Suharto
That’s the basics. Just as whenever America armed some authie in South America or anywhere else in the world, we know what it was going to be used for.
The fact that I provided you the information, spelled out and you continue to spout idiotic nonsense is just amazing.
First thing
The Indonesian invasion of East Timor, known in Indonesia as Operation Lotus began on 7 December 1975
James Earl Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician and humanitarian who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981.
Facts.
The Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor documented a minimum estimate of 102,000 conflict-related deaths in East Timor throughout the entire period from 1974 to 1999, including 18,600 violent killings and 84,200 deaths from disease and starvation; Indonesian forces and their auxiliaries combined were responsible for 70% of the killings.
During the first months of the occupation, the Indonesian military faced heavy insurgency resistance in the mountainous interior of the island, but from 1977 to 1978, the military procured new advanced weaponry from the United States, and other countries, to destroy Fretilin’s framework.
In an interview on 5 April 1977 with the Sydney Morning Herald, Indonesian Foreign Minister Adam Malik said the number of dead was “50,000 people or perhaps 80,000”.
The UN’s Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor (CAVR) estimated the number of deaths during the occupation from famine and violence to be between 90,800 and 202,600 including between 17,600 and 19,600 violent deaths or disappearances, out of a 1999 population of approximately 823,386.
For US President Gerald Ford and his administration, East Timor was a place of little significance, overshadowed by US–Indonesian relations. The fall of Saigon in mid-1975 had been a devastating setback for the United States, leaving Indonesia as the most important ally in the region. Ford consequently reasoned that the US national interest had to be on the side of Indonesia.[84] As Ford later stated: “in the scope of things, Indonesia wasn’t too much on my radar”, and “We needed allies after Vietnam”.
Let’s not forget Harry Kissinger
As early as December 1974—a year before the invasion—the Indonesian defense attaché in Washington sounded out US views about an Indonesian takeover of East Timor.[86] The Americans were tight-lipped, and in March 1975 Secretary of State Henry Kissinger approved a “policy of silence” vis-à-vis Indonesia, a policy that had been recommended by the Ambassador to Indonesia, David Newsom.[87] The administration worried about the potential impact on US–Indonesian relations in the event that a forced incorporation of East Timor was met with a major Congressional reaction.[87] On 8 October 1975, Assistant Secretary of State Philip Habib told meeting participants that “It looks like the Indonesians have begun the attack on Timor.” Kissinger’s response to Habib was, “I’m assuming you’re really going to keep your mouth shut on this subject.”[
So let’s go back to the original argument here. That Carter sold a bunch of weapons and caused all the deaths.
It’s not just a story, it’s a gag he has done multiple times. There’s at least two coworkers in another era of his life who claimed he pulled the same prank (or whatever you call that)
What the media did to Anita Hill was absolutely horrendous and every outlet and personality who made a punch line out of her back then should apologize for their absolute disrespect of a woman who did something that was beyond brave.
Deluding yourself into thinking Biden would have made any of the progress he currently has without pressure from the outside is insane. Forgiving student debt, HE wrote the bill making it permanent.
People can change, Biden obviously has, but left to his own devices he is another white male career politician. His only saving grace is he can compromise.
The me too movement is simply many in society finally telling women that it’s finally ok to tell the stories of how men in powerful positions have abused and humiliated them.
Anita Hill is basically an original #metoo badass from a time when it was not only not ok but severely frowned upon. She told her story even though our society crucified her for it.
news
Top
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.