• foggy@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Ranked choice.

    Fix gerrymandering.

    Popular vote.

    If you don’t want this, you’re simply a sore loser. You dont want democracy, you want a boys club.

    • solsangraal@lemmy.zip
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      2 months ago

      want a boys club.

      *white, straight, christian, republican, cis, landowning boys club

    • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      How do you achieve this, when by and large neither party seems to want to move in this direction?

      • foggy@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I do think it is entirely possible, it just requires money. There is a way to defeat our two-party system and it’s by running a third party that gets the popular vote.

        If someone were running on the platforms of:

        Corporations can’t own residential real estate.

        Members of Congress are not allowed to own or trade stock in any capacity, private or public.

        Socialized single payer healthcare. Not rocket science.

        Comcast, Verizon, every other ISP gets absolved by the United States government and is no longer a for-profit competitive agency,

        CEOs are forbidden by law to be paid more than 1,000 times more than their lowest paid employee.

        Minimum wage is $30 an hour. Entry level IT roles, entry level teaching positions now pay about $85,000.

        Taxes are now included in sales prices everywhere.

        No merchant is allowed to change the price of any product for at least one fiscal quarter.

        Buying or purchasing means owning. No company is allowed to tamper with what you own in any way shape or form. They will be held fully liable for the total cost of damages in the form of cash recompense. Damages can exceed the price of the goods themselves and include the luxuries provided by the service if terminated.

        No government agency may have any say in an individual’s reproductive rights in any way shape or form.

        Individuals earning more than $1 million per year will be taxed at 99.99% of every dollar they earn beyond 1 million.

        Corporations are not people. They CAN be tried in the court of law, as people, for crimes that entity committed when it had personhood.

        Wealthy individuals without an income will be taxed at a rate of 10% of their calculated net worth as per their assets, annually. These figures will be determined by an average of no fewer than 5 independent auditing firms. These auditors all most be able to show their lack of connection to the taxable entity being audited.

        Elected officials are not allowed to have accounts in their own name on private or publicly traded platforms. There will be a government social media platform where these individuals may partake in social media. The public at large is also allowed to be on this platform, but they must register using a government provided email address, which will be provided from now on at birth.

        End gerrymandering

        End electoral college

        Ranked choice for all elections…

        What am I missing? Ticketmaster? Probably plenty more…

        I guess what I’m saying is the two-party system can be fractured if a large enough amount of the population can wholly agree on policies not being put forth by the two party system. I’d say we’re getting fucking close to critical mass here.

        • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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          2 months ago

          The closest to this is PSL, the issue is that they have to fight against FPTP and moneyed interests.

            • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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              2 months ago

              The quantity of money owned by the Bourgeoisie is far in excess of the money owned by the Proletariat, unfortunately, and the State won’t willingly concede power

              • foggy@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                It does not take equal money to spread a message.

                The quality of the message carries a lot of weight. How well it resonates with the populace, and how well you can spread it.

                • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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                  2 months ago

                  By all means, join PSL and try to build that up, then. The good thing about PSL is that they don’t believe Electoralism is the answer, and do other forms of praxis as well.

  • MeekerThanBeaker@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I get that the Electoral College was originally designed to give smaller states an equal say. But, when Los Angeles county has more population than like 10 states combined, things are getting ridiculous.

    California has like 67 times the population of Wyoming… yet they each have two senators. And that keeps increasing.

    Our government is not a good representation of the populace.

    • Khanzarate@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      The number of people was a political compromise between individual rights and States rights, but so was a Senate and House.

      The electoral college was primarily designed to enable states to vote despite a communication delay that could take months.

      It did great at that, actually. How would California have up to date info on what’s going on in Washington when the fastest mode of travel was a horse? It wouldn’t.

      Instead of voting based on information that’s outdated and potentially inaccurate, best to pick some people you trust to vote in your interests, and send them to Washington. Let them get caught up, and vote how they will as your representative.

      Then States can sort out their own voting time and method, with no real concern for it being simultaneous or consistent because news travels so slow anyway. The important thing was authorized people would show up by the expected federal voting time, and if that happened, everyone did well enough.

      Of course, now they can cast their vote without leaving the state, and coordination is possible, but here we are holding the bag on a lack of accounting for technological progress.

      • EatATaco@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        I agree with your ultimate premise, that technological advances have all but eliminated the need for the Ec. But, my man, the telegraph predates CA as a state.

        The EC was also for many reasons, but pertaining to the point were talking about, it was because they were afraid people would just campaign in cities because that would be the most efficient. The EC forces a wider appeal.

        But with the ability to reach everyone, everywhere, instantly, this fear that they only campaign in cities is gone.

        • spongebue@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Also, the electoral college only shifts the focus from cities to major swing states (and even then, cities within those states).

          But more importantly, why the fuck should potential campaign strategies affect the strength of my vote?

    • WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      It was originally designed to give slave owners a greater say than people in free states, since EC representation is mainly based on the number of representatives you have in the House, and the slave state representative count was inflated by the 3/5 compromise.

    • Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      California has like 67 times the population of Wyoming… yet they each have two senators. And that keeps increasing.

      The worst part about the legislative branch is that Congress also acted to handicap the House of Representatives. It was supposed to be the body based on population. And you may say “Well California has 52 and Wyoming only 1 so that’s proportional.” But the original intent was no more than 30,000 constituents per representative. So based on a quick look at the 2020 population figures, Wyoming should have 19 while California should have ~1,317. (That would also be equivalent to California having 69 representatives to Wyoming’s current 1.)

    • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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      2 months ago

      Instead of having a forever constitution that was great and new 200 years ago when the internet and modern transportation and communications didn’t exist … they should regularly overhaul the entire government every hundred years to keep up with the times.

      I’m in Canada and they should do the same here.

      We can’t possibly think that everything we see, think and believe today will be applicable to people living 100, 200 years from now.

      We look at 200 year old laws about horses and we laugh at it. 200 years from now, our descendants will laugh at what we’re debating today.

      The only reason to maintain the status quo is to protect the power and privilege of a few powerful and wealthy people. It never has anything to do with the goodwill of the people.

    • Snapz@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      “…designed to give smaller states an equal say…”

      Not quite…

    • NegativeInf@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      This is exactly where we should be focusing when this pops up. If PA decided and the pending states go through, that’s all you need. Hell, with the pending states, you only need 11 more electoral votes for it to to be enacted.

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      2 months ago

      and it would come into effect only when it would guarantee that outcome

      And it will never budge above that line. They should have just done it anyways. Most of the votes to decide is better than all of them.

      • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        They should do it anyway, but limit it to the winner of the popular vote within the states that are part of the pact.

        Then there’d be several states that would realize they’d have more influence by contributing their popular votes to the pact than by sending their electors to the College independently (and in any case a candidate would still have to virtually sweep all the non-pact states to win the College without winning the pact).

        • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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          2 months ago

          I think enacting it early would just make it look like a Democratic party alliance. That’s roughly who the enacted states are currently and it would dissuade other states who might benefit or believe in the popular vote from joining.

          Right now, it’s in the abstract interest of Texas to join the Compact, because a popular vote would increase their influence, but if the Compact involved just being forced to vote blue indefinitely without gaining any influence, then it’s a bad deal. “Doing what the majority of the people” want is a lot easier a concept to sell than “doing what the majority of blue states want”.

  • CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    You could make the argument that if it was solely down to the popular vote, the last Republican president would have been George Bush in 1988.

    The only Republican since then to win the popular vote was Bush II for his second term in 2004, but it’s arguable that since Gore would have been the incumbent he might not have won that one. Plus there are a lot of hypotheticals like whether 9/11 could have been prevented under Gore, or if it had happened if the response was less aggressive, or if Bush II would have even run again after losing the first time etc. So it’s impossible to say but certainly conceivable that Gore would have gone for two terms IMO.

    • Bizzle@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Gore won twice in the good timeline. Sucks we have to live in this one.

    • samus12345@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I wonder who would have been the opponent in 2004 if Gore had won? This was back when losers didn’t try running for election again, so not Dubya. Maybe McCain since he did in 2008?

      • CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml
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        2 months ago

        Yeah I think McCain would be a likely candidate, he was the runner-up in the primaries in 2000 against Bush II so he was definitely thinking about it back then.

    • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      Would be nice, but I can’t see either major political party actually following through with something that hurts their power.

        • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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          Yep, as soon as it became a risk to power it got taken away. It’s a treat that will always be dangled and pulled away before it can do anything major.

          • cristo@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            I meant to write they cant* undo it. They tried already but it didnt work, although there is a repeal effort that has survived some legal challeneges so it will be on the ballot in november, although i doubt it will pass

  • Hazzia@infosec.pub
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    2 months ago

    Ah, but is a significant enough amount of that majority located in the lowest population states to make it matter?

    • ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com
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      2 months ago

      From the article, maybe not:

      Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are far more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners to support moving to a popular vote system for presidential elections (82% vs. 47%).

      I think the issue is if we get close to enacting this, partisan politicians will flood the channel with anti-popular vote propaganda, because they know every step towards a fairer system harms their chances.

    • NegativeInf@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Is that a threat? Do we need to have government sponsored people movement into less populated states from left voting cities? Because I’ll fucking vote for that.

      You can bus all the immigrants you want to cities in blue states, and in equal exchange, we will bus lefty to sparsely populated states to render your votes blue.

  • Phegan@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    It’s wild that if multiple things we implemented republicans would never win the presidency again.

    Any anti voter suppression method, like universal mail in voting

    Ranked choice voting

    Removal of the electoral college

    I am sure there are even more.

    Remember that republicans are the minority, they just show up to vote more often (and aren’t actively suppressed)

      • Phegan@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I’ve been working with local groups trying to get it passed. It may be worth investigating if there are some near you. Donate money or time or support.

    • skeezix@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      The electrical collage is way overdue to be retired. I wonder if we will have the means to actually do it.

    • Moobythegoldensock@lemm.ee
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      They would still win, but they would have to shift their platform to capture the true political center rather than the center right.

    • Rapidcreek@lemmy.worldOP
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      The way elections are run Is mostly up to the states. The electoral college, though, is stipulated in the Constitution.

          • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            Or we could ratio it out of existence. If we had 10,000 representatives then the EC would match the popular vote results.

          • orcrist@lemm.ee
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            That’s not exactly true. Each state could choose to give their votes to the candidate that wins the national vote. Then the electoral college system would still exist on paper but in reality wouldn’t be relevant to the outcome.

            I think it would be better to amend the Constitution. But it’s not the only way to make popular vote reality.

            • Rapidcreek@lemmy.worldOP
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              2 months ago

              The states changing their electors outside their popular vote is exactly what Trump was trying to do.

  • Kalysta@lemm.ee
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    So how do we get a constitutional amendment passed to do this?

    Especially with the republicans only able to win the presidency through the electoral college. They’re gonna cling to that shit with their dying breath.

  • Optional@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    How we did this

    In 2000 and 2016, the winners of the popular vote lost their bids for U.S. president after receiving fewer Electoral College votes than their opponents. To continue tracking how the public views the U.S. system for presidential elections, we surveyed 8,480 U.S. adults from July 10 to 16, 2023.

    Everyone who took part in the current survey is a member of Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology.

    Here are the questions used for this analysis, along with responses, and its methodology.

  • pyre@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    this poll may show that Americans want electoral college gone, but if you look at where they answered, you can instead count the answers given by state delegates and then it turns out Americans love the electoral college!

  • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I can already hear it…

    wEr,E a REpUbLiC nOt A dEMoCrOcy111

    Alternatively, with a simple bill we can establish an EC so large or doesn’t effectively matter. We would just repeal the inter-war bill freezing the size of the House of Representatives and set the ratio to something that means even Montana gets 20 EC votes.

  • Media Bias Fact Checker@lemmy.worldB
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    2 months ago
    Pew Research Media Bias Fact Check Credibility: [High] (Click to view Full Report)

    Pew Research is rated with High Creditability by Media Bias Fact Check.

    Bias: Least Biased
    Factual Reporting: Very High
    Country: United States of America
    Full Report: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/pew-research/

    Check the bias and credibility of this article on Ground.News


    Thanks to Media Bias Fact Check for their access to the API.
    Please consider supporting them by donating.

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  • xenspidey@lemmy.zip
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    2 months ago

    I get it, but then only like 4 counties in the whole country decide an election.