AskBeehaw

2013 readers

28 users here now

An open-ended community for asking and answering various questions! Permissive of asks, AMAs, and OOTLs (out-of-the-loop) alike.

In the absence of flairs, questions requesting more thought-out answers can be marked by putting [SERIOUS] in the title.

Subcommunity of Chat

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

alyaza@beehaw.org

UngodlyAudrey@beehaw.org

thrawn21@beehaw.org

I apologize for my ignorance but, is the US really this bad and if so, why aren't more people banding together and doing something about it? (beehaw.org)

submitted 2 days ago by BevelGear@beehaw.org to c/askbeehaw@beehaw.org

61 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The American electoral system is completely fucked. It was not designed for or implemented with the concept of political parties, and some of its fundamental assumptions are predicated on political parties not existing in order to function as a working democracy. However after the first election, political parties formed, and began working on codifying and entrenching their power. It’s like game theory run amok. The win condition is first past the pole, so there’s only one winner, and by default, if there’s more than 2 contenders, then the vote is split inefficiently, so naturally there can only be two major parties at a time. And the two parties must exist such a way that they do not dilute or share their power, so they do not modify the system to allow for the inclusion of other parties, or allow for the vote to be split. It’s unlikely the parties would pass laws that they know would dilute their own power, even if it also diluted the power of their opposition. As a result, voters in the U.S. must either: Vote for the party that most closely aligns with their interests, vote against the party that aligns against their interests, or abstain from voting.

Care to comment on Alaska and it's Ranked-Choice Voting system?

[–] Monument@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Care to comment on Alaska and it's Ranked-Choice Voting system?

Honestly, I was going to be a little snarky and say “No.” all petulant-like and leave my response as just the quote of your question and my dumb response but I did a quick skim of the headlines about it because I, well, forgot they passed ranked choice. I know, at a time of upheaval, pandemic, and highly mediocre personal depression, I should have been thinking of Jewel’s home state.

But it’s kind of interesting, right? A citizen-led ballot initiative passed in the 2020 “blue wave”, and using ranked choice in 2022, Alaskans elected their first Democrat state senator in over 50 years. And Republican aligned groups are now repeatedly bringing petitions forth to to to get it overturned - which have so far continued to fail.
That’s a solid counter to my “Americans are hostages” line of thought. Unfortunately, Alaska represents less than 2% of elected officials, and about 0.25% of the U.S. population.
But those ballot initiatives won’t stop. Talking points from the strategists trying to undermine ranked choice will be played, parroted, and drilled into people’s heads. Until enough folks rethink their decision to vote for ranked choice on one of the upcoming votes to repeal it. And then what happens. Is there a political party that will fund ballot initiatives until it gets passed again?
Nah. Just two parties, pretending to oppose each other while pocketing a paycheck. It’s pro wrestling. Scripted fights. Misdirection. Anything to turn a profit and keep the show going.
Fitting that Trump sits at the top.

[–] conditional_soup@lemm.ee 3 points 1 day ago

This comment fucks