[p-e-w]

Turnout in the past few elections was already extraordinarily high. Clearly this isn’t the answer. And neither is protesting, considering that 4 of the 5 largest demonstrations in US history happened in the past 10 years and achieved nothing.

[estearum]

Well right... you also need to vote for the correct ("less-bad") people and get your friends to do the same.

Voting for the worse people makes things worse.

[rectang]

Ranked Choice Voting makes it easier to vote for “less bad” candidates.

RCV also tends to work against polarization, since it rewards candidates who are at least acceptable to a broad swath of the electorate.

It may not be the “answer” for all that ails the American political system, but it would help.

ETA: Unlike many other reforms it's also doable within the constraints of the current constitutional order and is hard for SCOTUS to torpedo (though I suppose I shouldn't underestimate SCOTUS).

[estearum]

100% -- RCV is a super important part of this equation in the long run.

[nerdsniper]

Approval Voting would be an easier pill to swallow for most americans. It’s hard to explain “yeah Trump got the most #1 votes but still lost” and easy to explain “this other candidate got the most checkmarks”.

https://www.rangevoting.org/CompChart.html#votsysts

[Dylan16807]

We already have a system where the person with the most #1 votes can lose. A third party candidate that only got a couple states would be able to prevent a majority.

And that's electoral votes. Counting actual people has the most voted candidate lose all the time.

Approval voting would be an improvement over the status quo but it makes it a lot harder for me to influence the choice between candidates I like less. If I do check my third choice I risk helping them beat my top two. If I don't check my third choice then I risk them losing to even worse options.

[AnthonyMouse]

> We already have a system where the person with the most #1 votes can lose. A third party candidate that only got a couple states would be able to prevent a majority.

And people complain about it. If you were trying to make a change from some other status quo to that, it would be a significant impediment.

> Approval voting would be an improvement over the status quo but it makes it a lot harder for me to influence the choice between candidates I like less. If I do check my third choice I risk helping them beat my top two.

Approval voting is the range compressed version of score voting. Instead of scoring each candidate on a scale of 1 to 10, it's score each candidate on a scale of 0 or 1. Use score voting and you can give your favorite candidate a different score than your second favorite without giving them the same score as your least favorite.

Both of them are still better than RCV.

[Dylan16807]

> Approval voting is the range compressed version of score voting.

I'm not thrilled with score voting to begin with, and compressing it down doesn't change much.

> Use score voting and you can give your favorite candidate a different score than your second favorite without giving them the same score as your least favorite.

That doesn't solve my problem. Take exactly what I said before, but replace "check" with "give the maximum score to".

> Both of them are still better than RCV.

I don't see how.

[rectang]

RCV completely solves the “spoiler candidate” problem, which is a huge issue limiting choice and innovation in the two-party-dominated US. Approval Voting remains susceptible to spoilers.

In the US there are already people who complain that any election they lose must been “rigged”, including the current occupant of the White House. Choosing Approval Voting over RCV is not going to bring such people around; it’s rhetorical advantages are inconsequential.

[gs17]

No, approval voting effectively solves spoilers. For example, the Green Party can't be a spoiler for the Democratic Party as people who like both will simply vote for both. RCV has its own novel form of spoiler: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_squeeze

The 2022 Alaska special election is a great example of RCV failing where approval voting wouldn't. And FairVote had the nerve to say it showed Alaskans understood and could use the system.

> Choosing Approval Voting over RCV is not going to bring such people around

It's a lot easier to claim the system is rigged when the voting system is much more complex in a way that most voters will not understand.

[ClayShentrup]

thanks for actually knowing what you're talking about.

[ClayShentrup]

no it does not.

http://rangevoting.net/CoreSuppPocket https://wonk.blog/duopoly

approval voting actually DOES and it is better in every other way too.

[robocat]

That site promotes range voting, and rather superficially dismisses approval voting: "Why Range Voting is Better than Approval Voting": https://www.rangevoting.org/rangeVapp.html

We've got MMP here in New Zealand, which is a fantastic improvement over what we had. However the list vote does give politicians some weird power.

Comment moderation is voting too.

[aleph_minus_one]

> Approval Voting would be an easier pill to swallow for most americans. It’s hard to explain “yeah Trump got the most #1 votes but still lost”

As a non-US-American, it is hard to understand for me why this is so hard to explain: the amount of #1 votes is rather a measure for the number of "ultra-fans" that the candidate has.

I think it should be rather easy to find an example in US-American pop culture of some C-list celebrity who has a respectable base of very devoted ultra-fans, but is hated by basically everybody else.

This example should make the fallacy obvious to most people.

[gs17]

You also need the option to vote for "less-bad" people. Where I am now, my vote doesn't matter, even if it means the "less-bad" people win with no competition (as opposed to where I moved from where things were skewed the opposite way).

[godelski]

Vote strategically. Candidates notice btw.

So if you're in a heavily red state but you're blue, then vote in the primaries for the more centered Republican. If you're in a heavily blue state but red, do the opposite. Either way this actually helps because more people are centered and we're getting wilder and wilder candidates because there's increased tribalism. They go to the extremes because they get more voters that way. They figured out that the mainstay voters will just end up voting left or right regardless, and that by catering to the extremes it actually pulls the mainstream voters too. (Both Reps and Dems are using this strategy)

Remember, you don't have to vote for the person you actually like.

And keep doing this until we get a sane voting system which can embed actual preference (any of the cardinal systems: i.e. Approval or STAR). This strategy still works with ordinal systems (i.e. Ranked Choice) because a weak spoiler is still really good at splitting the vote (happened in a pretty famous Alaska election).

[dubya]

Republicans in my state, TN, having eliminated the last Democrat congressional district, now want to close primaries, precisely to prevent strategic voting.

[gs17]

That still requires the options. The next election for me is a primary, with only one race that both has more than one candidate and is competitive AFAIK. The two viable candidates (who will both move on regardless) are similar enough that I don't have a preference. WA has an interesting, non-partisan, top-two-move-on system for the non-presidential primaries.

[usefulcat]

Totally agree. I did exactly this in the recent primaries, and then got to vote again in a runoff.

I think of it this way: in a state where one party is clearly dominant, most offices will end up being held by members of that party. That means that the primaries for that party actually matter more than the general election.

[Retric]

Somewhere between just going out to vote and revolution sits moving to an area where your vote counts.

I’ve not quite reached that threshold, but I avoid moving to DC due to the lack of voting rights.

[intended]

I highly recommend the research done by Robert Faris, Hal Roberts, and Yochai Benkler.

In a nutshell, you have an issue where part of the information economy/market is captured. To the point that agenda can get set by theories or podcasts that have little truck with reality. Any checks or reviews of the claims, simply do not get surfaced within that ecosystem. This creates a more efficient system for political messaging.

You cannot have an effective democratic system when your consensus building mechanisms have been (intentionally) compromised and weakened.

[dgellow]

Protesting one weekend day every 6 months will obviously do nothing. The pressure needs to be non stop

[SmirkingRevenge]

The trend has been going that direction, where low turnout elections favor Ds and high turnout favors Rs. But only kind of... that holds when Trump is on the ballot. Trump seems to activate a segment of low-info, low-propensity voters who stay home when their guy isn't on the ballot. Things will probably get scrambled again once Trump is gone though.

And don't discount protests. It's crucially important to have big public and forceful displays of united opposition. The regime is unlikely to be toppled by protests, but they will weaken it.

That really matters.

In an authoritarian take-over institutions are the front-lines, not the masses. Think colleges, media, industry, courts, legal firms, local governments, etc. The dilemma those institutions will face is to follow rule-of-law or submit to authoritarian corruption. Authoritarians win when those institutions decide it's safer to submit than it is to follow the law. And when institutions (and the people within them) feel like they are twisting in the wind alone and nobody cares, they are more likely to buckle. Protest movements help reinforce the rule-of-law side of that calculation.

(The rise and fall of Orban is a great lesson on all of this)

Also see: https://essayx.substack.com/p/the-35-percent-rule-just-made-...

[deaux]

> Turnout in the past few elections was already extraordinarily high.

In a sense, this in itself is the issue. It's long-term _worse_ to vote for the "lesser of two serious evils". This extreme "long-term pain for short-term gain" attitude is what's gotten the US to where it is. If in 2016 of 2024 even 20% of the dems would've stayed home or voted third party, the DNC's continuous forcing of awful corpocrats with zero charisma would've become completely untenable and Trump would've been limited to one term. Yet instead they were rewarded for it, so you'll see Newsom get the candidacy and presidency in 2028 (if 2028 even happens at this point), and then in 2032 you'll get something like Hegseth or Thiel winning and it's all over.

There is an answer: relentlessly vote, but only for candidates who are actually slightly decent - including third-party - and otherwise stay at home. "Relentlessly" means "at every level", including locally from the very bottom, all the way up.

The whole idea of "third-party voting is a complete waste in the US" is incredibly dumb because a vote for someone who loses isn't a wasted vote. It shows the others that there's a voter there who can be convinced if catered to, if they select a better candidate. The powers that be have done a fantastic job of brainwashing the entire population of the myth that anyone who _doesn't_ go out and vote for either major candidate is a morally bankrupt person, because it directly benefits them.

The reply to this will be "well it's too late for that now!". It's wrong because the alternative doesn't help you one bit. You're just wishing for a miracle, that in 4 years something happens, kicking the can down the road making things worse long term. And that's actually what's got you here.

It's a symptom of the terminal disease which has infected all layers of American society and has gotten it to where it's at: short-termism. Everyone just looks at the next quarter, the next election. China's ascendency is 1:1 tied to doing the exact opposite. Some smartypants will now point "but zero Covid", great you found a potential exception, now look at the other 90% of policy.

Every time I've explained this I've gotten instantly downvoted without a single reply making an argument against it, because it's too painful for people to admit that they've been part of the road to where the US is at. And again, short-termism: rather feel the short-term tiny dopamine hit by slamming that downvote button than thinking about it. Let's see if this happens again.

[gs17]

> The whole idea of "third-party voting is a complete waste in the US" is incredibly dumb because a vote for someone who loses isn't a wasted vote.

Yes, but with a caveat, if you had a strong preference between the top two actually-likely-to-win candidates (assuming the third party wasn't competitive), it's at least not voting the most in your interests for the outcome. Which is why we really need approval voting, so we can actually vote for the candidates we like, rather than needing to "strategically" hold our noses.

But I agree with the rest of it, if none of the candidates represent you, the third-party vote at least allows you to send a signal of "I vote, but you need to make me want to vote for you, and this is what I want".

[deaux]

> Yes, but with a caveat, if you had a strong preference between the top two actually-likely-to-win candidates (assuming the third party wasn't competitive),

Fully agreed, I vaguely implied this by talking about the "lesser of two evils" scenario but good to make it explicit.

> Which is why we really need approval voting,

Agreed here too, but it's not happening so people better wake up and realize that even without it, continuously voting for the "lesser of two evils" is the opposite of strategic.

[pseudalopex]

> Which is why we really need approval voting, so we can actually vote for the candidates we like, rather than needing to "strategically" hold our noses.

Approval voting would not end strategic voting.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting#Strategic_voti...

[gs17]

Yes, but it specifically ends the "vote for a candidate you dislike instead of the one you do like" type. Strategic approval voting is simply setting a higher/lower threshold on your approval. Your favorite is always included in your vote (assuming you like at least one candidate).

[pseudalopex]

> Strategic approval voting is simply setting a higher/lower threshold on your approval.

The strategy of this is no simpler than the strategy of a single vote system.

> Yes, but it specifically ends the "vote for a candidate you dislike instead of the one you do like" type.

> Your favorite is always included in your vote (assuming you like at least one candidate).

Ranking candidates would express preferences more than approval voting. But you advocated approval voting solely.

[gs17]

> But you advocated approval voting solely.

Yes, because RCV has issues: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_squeeze . Voting for your favorite candidate in RCV can help cause them to lose!

STAR is okay, but approval voting solves most of the issues with elections without being more complex.

[zimpenfish]

> 2024 [...] the DNC's continuous forcing of awful corpocrats with zero charisma would've become completely untenable and Trump would've been limited to one term.

You mean the 2024 election cycle where incumbents all around the globe were beaten because the economic situation was strongly anti-incumbent? Are you positing that the US election was somehow a unique outlier and solely down to Harris being the Democrat candidate? Even though a swing of 115k votes would have handed the presidency to Harris instead?

It sounds like you have a particular issue with the 2016 and 2024 elections and I'm wondering if there's something in common that might explain it...

[deaux]

> Are you positing that the US election was somehow a unique outlier and solely down to Harris being the Democrat candidate?

There is never a sole factor. The problem by talking about 115k votes is, once again, not taking into account the strength of the opposition. The US losing in hockey to Canada by a tiny margin is not the same as losing to Spain by the same margin.

Ironically, in a sense you're only strengthening the point that an even moderately better candidate would've won.

> It sounds like you have a particular issue with the 2016 and 2024 elections and I'm wondering if there's something in common that might explain it...

What a vile implication. Selectively ignoring my mention of Newsom in the exact same bucket. I'm wondering if you're a state-backed operator, that might explain the trying to rile things up through FUD.

I mentioned 2016 and 2024 because they lost, and the candidates were indeed awful.

[fugalfervor]

Democratic candidate, not "Democrat candidate".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_%28epithet%29?w...

Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. People didn't want Trump in 2016, they wanted her. But he won the electoral college,

He won the popular vote in 2024, but the tight margin in the electoral college suggests a democratically elected Democratic candidate (i.e. one selected by a primary, not one appointed by the sitting president) could have won instead. Other potential candidates were polling better than Harriss. I personally think Gretchen Whitmer could have successfully distanced herself from the Biden administration and defeated Trump.

[mullingitover]

> Every time I've explained this I've gotten instantly downvoted without a single reply making an argument against it,

Ok I'll break it down for you.

> If in 2016 of 2024 even 20% of the dems would've stayed home or voted third party

Parties cater to their bases, and putting yourself out there as an unreliable voting bloc is exactly how you get your demands ignored.

> The whole idea of "third-party voting is a complete waste in the US" is incredibly dumb

It's not incredibly dumb, it's simple mathematical reality. This doesn't change unless the first past the post system changes. Why do you think the GOP backs the Green Party?

[deaux]

> Parties cater to their bases, and putting yourself out there as an unreliable voting bloc is exactly how you get your demands ignored.

Reality shows the exact opposite. Why do campaigns and candidates put an incredibly outsized effort into swing states? Those are the exact "unreliable voters". Yet they get the most attenton. In policies too, it's all about convincing those who otherwise might stay home or might swing. What you're saying doesn't reflect reality whatsoever.

> It's not incredibly dumb, it's simple mathematical reality.

This isn't an argument, or you struggled to read. It's not a wasted vote because of its secondary effects, as explained. Voting on someone who loses isn't a wasted vote.

[SmirkingRevenge]

> Parties cater to their bases, and putting yourself out there as an unreliable voting bloc is exactly how you get your demands ignored.

I wish more people understood this. Instead, there's this mistaken notion that you give away leverage by supplying votes. It's literally the opposite.

Your coalition will have more influence and leverage within a party by supplying votes, not withholding them.

[mullingitover]

Really the hack to get outsized influence in a party is to show up in the primaries.

NYC has a DSA mayor because people used that one weird trick.

The other important one is showing up in local elections.

[dualvariable]

> The whole idea of "third-party voting is a complete waste in the US" is incredibly dumb because a vote for someone who loses isn't a wasted vote. It shows the others that there's a voter there who can be convinced if catered to, if they select a better candidate.

Tried that in 2000, voting for Nader as a protest vote against Clinton/Gore third way neoliberalism. I did that in a state where the electoral votes for Dems were 100% safe. Still just got blamed for Bush and there was zero self-reflection on the part of the Democratic Party.

...

I would urge everyone to stop fixating on the Presidential vote as the only fight to win and everything being win/lose based on that outcome. If the Congressional Progressive Caucus in the House exceeds 50% of Democrats in the House, then we can start thinking about a world where e.g. AOC might be the speaker of the House rather than Nancy Pelosi.

> It's a symptom of the terminal disease which has infected all layers of American society and has gotten it to where it's at: short-termism. Everyone just looks at the next quarter, the next election.

Yeah, and the Office of the President is 4-8 years and is just more short-termism, along with individualism / cult of personality / CEO-leadership. If you want to make lasting change in the DNC, start by flipping more and more House seats to progressive from neoliberal.

[DrewADesign]

The legislative seats are barely more malleable than the executive ones, and they’re a lot cheaper to buy off. Even with grassroots efforts to elect local candidates and move them up, it takes a perfect storm to actually get someone that’s even modestly different than the empty suits that largely fill those seats already.

I have zero faith in this system to execute anything other than purchased policy agendas, or empower any more than a tiny symbolic collection of people who oppose them… just enough to give the illusion of agency and stop any real organizing. I have no idea what could possibly break this pattern.

[dualvariable]

The Republicans were successful with the Tea Party in taking over the House and the Presidency, that's a model which I'd argue is really proven to work in our two party system because we all just literally watched it play out in real-time.

Arguing against that, probably comes from a cynical neoliberal perspective where the Democratic Party can't change because the argument assumes that the Democratic Party can't change.

And the alternative is definitely outright fascism and the suspension of Democracy. They've told us what they're planning on doing, just like we knew they wanted to get rid of Roe vs. Wade, we just accepted the lies about it being settled law and a political football.

If you're not willing to vote against that, then you're comfortably middle class and don't think you'll be one of the ones that are going to be hurt.

I've voted against Trump 3 times and threw money behind trying to get Sanders the nomination in 2020 instead of Biden, so when all the horrible stuff has been going down this term I don't have to tie myself in knots with rationalizations about my actions.

[DrewADesign]

The Tea Party had the support of the Koch brothers, Fox News, the Heritage Foundation, et al. They had a VP puppet on the bill, Palin, almost immediately after their inception, despite McCain being a center-leaning Republican. It was not a grassroots movement. Make any unfounded assumption you like about my motivation, and construct and straw men you want between you and that reality, but it is reality. It was bought and paid for before anybody had even heard of it. The closest thing the democrats have seen to a national-scale grassroots political initiative was Sanders, and the DNC torpedoed it reflexively.

[kgwxd]

> Every time I've explained this I've gotten instantly downvoted

Because it's dumb. People don't want to hear dumb ideas, or take the time to try and convince someone that would spend however long it took to type that, apparently multiple times, without realizing it. Throwing away votes will never be the reasonable thing to do. I know you don't want to hear that, because it's too painful for you to admit there's no simple answer.

[t-3]

Please, explain to me how voting for a candidate you don't like is not throwing away your vote, but voting for a candidate you support is.

[amanaplanacanal]

You are saying the candidates are forced on us by someone else. But that's just wrong, we choose the candidates. Anybody can run, there is no secret cabal that decides who can run and who can't.

[ipaddr]

Didn't happen last year when Kamila was selected by the leaders.

But in normal years candidates are successful because of the amount of money they can raise. The more they can raise the more brainwashing ads they can buy. The non so secret cabal is the donor class.

Anyone can run? You must meet requirements on age and how long you have lived in the US. You must pay fees and provide signatures for each state. If doing it through a party you have to meet their rules.

Cost to get on most states ballots at a basic level is a million. You could do it for free if you dont want to appear on any ballots.

[amanaplanacanal]

The Kamala thing was unfortunate, but I'm not sure what else they could do. Biden bowed out too late to rerun the primaries, and the whole purpose of the vice president is to take over when the president can't perform any more.

[gs17]

The ideal is that anyone can run, but it's not that easy to just start an independent campaign that has a decent chance of winning. Local races are the most realistic "anyone can run" arena, but once you need a lot of travel and logistics in a large region, you either need a lot of your own resources or the support of an existing large political organization.

[somenameforme]

You do know the former head of the DNC was forced to retire after the leaked emails outed her, and basically all of the top of the DNC, extensively conspiring against Sanders in favor of Clinton? [1] You're right the cabal isn't secret - it's literally the DNC, and who they want to win is who will win, one way or the other. Just reading over that source - it's insane how blatant these people can be:

"In May 2016, MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski accused the DNC of bias against the Sanders campaign and called on Wasserman Schultz to step down. Wasserman Schultz was upset at the negative media coverage of her actions, and she emailed the political director of NBC News, Chuck Todd, that such coverage of her "must stop". Describing the coverage as the "LAST straw", she ordered the DNC's communications director to call MSNBC president Phil Griffin to demand an apology from Brzezinski."

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_National_Commi...

[cyberax]

I mean, why wouldn't they? Bernie is not a Democrat, he's independent. Winning elections for their own party is the whole reason DNC exists.

[somenameforme]

If somebody runs as a Democrat then they're running as a Democrat. At that point the entire point of democracy is that it should be up to the people to decide if he is true to the ideals of the party - and the preferred candidate, not the apparatchiks. In practice that is not what happens which makes the entire notion of democracy just farcical. On top of this the apparatchiks are often living in a bubble disconnected from society, which can lead to them regularly making self destructive decisions.

So for instance Sanders would almost certainly have beaten Trump in 2016 - the polls showed him ahead by double digit margins, whereas they had Clinton in for a very close election. Had the DNC listened to their own voters, the country would likely look very different today, and in a way far more favorable to DNC interests, at least if they even believe in their own platform.

[SmirkingRevenge]

A primary role of political parties has traditionally been to filter candidates. It's literally their raison d'etre

Sanders wasn't even a Democrat. He switched solely to run in the primary. It's neither scandalous nor surprising that the DNC would try to put up barriers between him and the nomination.

If the RNC had done it's job, Trump would never have been allowed into the primary in the first place.

[JoshTriplett]

> A primary role of political parties has traditionally been to filter candidates. It's literally their raison d'etre

Yes, that's exactly why they shouldn't exist.

[SmirkingRevenge]

I don't know about that, but if they exist, they need to be stronger institutions that take more of an active role in picking/filtering candidates.

The introduction of the partisan primary has been an unmitigated disaster for our politics, by massively empowering the most zealous fringes within parties