Interfluidity.com: our electoral system is ing up our society

[Winehole23]

Quick, politically nonviable solution: ranked choice voting

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that our electoral system is destroying our society.

The United States uses single-winner, “first-past-the-post”, plurality voting for almost everything. When we elect someone, we define an eligible electorate, create some procedure by which candidates can get their name on the ballot, and the position goes to whomever gets the most votes, regardless of whether that’s a majority. It’s a simple, intuitive, form of democracy. It’s also terrible.

The most commonly discussed flaw, sometimes recast as a virtue, is “Duverger’s Law“, which points out this system herds people into two-parties. Plurality voting renders a multiplicity of political parties unsustainable, as distinct but somewhat aligned parties that fail to join together split one other’s vote, handing victory to groups the somewhat-aligned parties detest even more than one another. I endorse this critique. I think we’d have a much healthier democracy if citizens could make homes in political political parties that genuinely reflect each of our values and interests, rather than melting into two permanent, bitterly contested, coalitions. The Americanist apology that the broad coalitions forced by a two-party system yield moderation, stability, and compromise has, I think, been discredited by events. Instead, in bency incentives within the United States’ two party system demand entrenched polarization, however dysfunctional that is for the polity as a whole.

Less frequently discussed than all of that is how weak first-past-the-post voting is, with respect to resisting corruption. And weakness, Republican politicians eternally remind us, is provocative. Single-winner, first-past-the-post elections are often described as “winner-takes-all”. That means that in a close election, the leverage, the “ROI”, associated with stealing a small edge can be huge. If the ultimate margin of victory of an election is likely to be within 2%, you only have to manipulate, suppress, or steal 2% of the vote to win 100% of the power. Then we are “shocked, shocked” that political entrepreneurs with an interest in the outcome (not necessarily of the parties themselves, it could be Russia!) do play for such edges.

But that’s only true for close elections, right? Yes, that’s right.

But because single-winner, first-past-the-post voting yields a two-party system, we should expect that the most consequential elections will frequently be evenly matched.

The two parties are strategic actors, and they want to win a struggle for power. [1] When either party’s strategy leaves it losing that struggle by a clear margin, that strategy will change, one way or another, even by poaching aspects of the other party’s iden y if necessary. (Consider the realignment of the Democrats when 12 years out of power in 1992, or Republicans’ adoption of Dixiecrats.) With party ins utions more eager to contend for power than they are devoted to any fixed ideology or cons uency, a 50/50 divide is the equilibrium, the attractor.

https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/7687.html

[Winehole23]

So, to sum up, the United States’ electoral system yields:

• Elections that, when closely matched, yield a tremendous return to just a little bit of manipulation, corruption, or voter suppression
  
• A near certainty that the most consequential elections will often be closely matched.
  
  

That’s pretty bad, right?

It’s worse than that. Parties will try all of the above, manipulation, corruption, and voter suppression. But manipulation is the safest — because it’s often legal, “legitimate” — so it is done most loudly, most aggressively. If you can do something, any little thing, that s with the news cycle immediately preceding the election, you can win everything for almost nothing.

[boutons_deux]

Quick, politically nonviable solution: ranked choice voting

https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/7687.html

agreed overall

The ed up, archaic Cons ution has been perverted, weaponized.

Leaving voting up to the states, a bone to the slavers, means the states can, and are now , disenfranchising Ms, violating their Cons utional right to vote.

The disenfranchising, intentionally anti-democratic Electoral College, thanks, slave-owning, land-owning white FFs.

The anti-proportional Senate, prefers land over population, another Cons utional up.

Can American fix itself? no. The oligarchy has rigged the country and defends the status quo with their pocket change of $Bs, corrupting all 3 branches of govt.

[Winehole23]

The 2022 midterms were heralded as defying history, replete with “historic firsts” and “shocking results”—yet the vast majority of congressional races were essentially decided long before Election Day.

Just before the election, the Cook Political Report rated only 40 House and Senate seats as “toss-ups”—that is, as truly compe ive. It was a good call. Of the other 430 races last November, only one had an unexpected result. Just four Senate seats out of 35 were forecast to be close. In the end, only 17 percent of the House races and 26 percent of Senate races were decided by a margin of less than 10 percentage points.

To put this fact another way: The winners of about four in five congressional races were determined no later than September 13, the last primary day. The general election in these cases was just an afterthought. Most seats are essentially owned by one party or the other, so the only races of consequence in those districts and states are party primaries, where hardly anyone shows up. As the democracy-reform group Unite America calculated, “In 2022, 83% of the U.S. House was elected by just 8% of Americans.”

https://www.thebulwark.com/how-final...ave-democracy/

[Winehole23]

Texas related, another reason moderate Republicans have all but vanished from prominence here.

But the most significant tactic that [Tim] Dunn would adopt as his own was that of concentrating on Republican primaries. After the 1998 elections, it was apparent that Democrats were unlikely to win statewide office again anytime soon and that their grip on the Legislature was slipping away. “I felt like the real Achilles’ heel for conservatives was the moderate Republicans,” Ford said. “And so we decided we would go after them.”

In 2002 the foundation’s take-no-prisoners approach ignited a statewide controversy after it targeted six Republican in bents, including acting lieutenant governor Bill Ratliff, with an incendiary piece of direct mail, paid for in part with a $10,000 donation from Dunn. Because Ratliff had supported including “sexual orientation” in a hate crimes bill, the mailer denounced him as a supporter of “the sexual Agenda” and included photos of a man kissing another man on the cheek, a man in a leather bondage outfit, and two men in tuxedos cutting a wedding cake. All six in bents won reelection, but a year later Ratliff announced his resignation from the Senate. The lesson learned was simple: junkyard political attacks may not work in a single election, but the prospect of such battles scares people off. It’s a long-term strategy that keeps in bents wondering whether a problematic vote on the floor of the Legislature will draw them an opponent in the next election.

https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-po...arty-arms-god/