* Drop the electoral collage
* Proportional and/or preferential voting
* Term limits/retirement ages
* An independent electoral organisation with real teeth to prevent gerrymandering (and verify the election)
* Free and easy voter IDs (if ID are ever required)
* All election days are public holidays, with requirements to allow workers on the day to vote
* Compulsory voting (works in AU)
* Minimum number of polling booths per X people
* Absentee voting
* Changing to a parliamentary system where the president is a figurehead
Agree with many of these. But changing to a parliamentary system would make the GOP even stronger: they won the House popular vote in 8 of the last 13 elections, including comfortably both in 2000 and 2016.
But there is no such thing as an “independent electoral organization.” The Framers never credited the idea of an “independent” body that could be trusted to be somehow “above politics.” That’s why the constitutional government is like a game of rock paper scissors. Everything can be checked by everything else.
But the power Musk holds isn’t the result of him being rich, it’s because he has a populist cult of personality. The candidate who spent twice the money lost the election. Musk has power because he got on stage with Trump in Pennsylvania promising to fire all the federal workers.
>Musk has power because he got on stage with Trump in Pennsylvania promising to fire all the federal workers.
From Gallup [0]—top issues among all registered voters:
The economy
Democracy in the U.S.
Terrorism and national security
Types of Supreme Court justices candidates would pick
Immigration
Education
Healthcare
Gun policy
Abortion
^^Taxes
Crime
Distribution of income and wealth in the U.S.
^^The federal budget deficit
Foreign affairs
Situation in Middle East between Israelis and Palestinians
Energy policy
Relations with Russia
Race relations
Relations with China
Trade with other nations
Climate change
Transgender rights
^^Items under which "firing all federal workers" could conceivably fit, and that's a massive stretch. Still, even with that generosity granted, they're 10th and 13th on the list.
The thing is, the current situation is "more control by credentialed elites". Way more than at any point since at least WWII. It’s just that the elites are oligarchs who kneeled before Trump. He is the only one giving credentials.
Musk isn’t a credentialed elite—someone who holds power by virtue of attaining credentials to run an organization or institution with regulatory power. Musk holds power by virtue of having a populist cult of personality.
The credentialed elites are the Ivy League graduates who go work for government and do things like have the SBA make loans to minorities that white people aren’t eligible for: https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/court-rules-biden-admin-di.... They’re the ones who see, for example, immigration and affirmative action as moral causes—even though most voters oppose both—and have injected those ideas into all our government programs, corporate HR, etc.
What happened is that a plurality of voters decided that they’d rather have billionaire industrialists in charge than the Ivy League pencil pushers.
* Drop the electoral collage * Proportional and/or preferential voting * Term limits/retirement ages * An independent electoral organisation with real teeth to prevent gerrymandering (and verify the election) * Free and easy voter IDs (if ID are ever required) * All election days are public holidays, with requirements to allow workers on the day to vote * Compulsory voting (works in AU) * Minimum number of polling booths per X people * Absentee voting * Changing to a parliamentary system where the president is a figurehead