Makeitstop

"If that pumpkin didn't want it, why was it smiling at me?"

Worked for Captain America

We need a tax that kicks in when anyone gets a total compensation that is some multiple of the poverty line and some other multiple of the lowest compensation given to anyone working for their company (including subsidiaries, contractors or part time work extrapolated to full time, and not including overtime). The amount should take into account both the lowest pay and the distribution curve of pay, so that the worse the pay inequality is the higher the tax goes.

Suddenly, the only way the executives can actually get the benefit of those bonuses and stocks is if they're raising wages across the board as well.

Not to mention delays in aid due to ~~Putin's henchmen~~ Republicans fighting tooth and nail to prevent any support for Ukraine.

It would fascinating to see how the next hundred years unfold depending on the outcome of this election. I would love to be able to compare the two timelines and see just how wildly different they can be.

Unfortunately, we only get one timeline, so we better not fuck it up.

Oh he knew the spoiler effect was a thing. He just didn't think it was Trump that he'd be hurting.

Mastodon and Threads also exist. I don't use them or Bluesky, and I'm not endorsing any of them, just pointing out that there's several would be Twitter replacements out there.

Well, I generally agree that party leaders have way too much power, but that seems to be an issue across many different systems. Your example is from a FPTP system. Is there some reason to think it would be worse if we had proportional voting?

It's not that it would be worse, it's that it would be the norm. The party would always be the one with the final decision on who actually represents you.

I mean I can see how party leaders might have more power in some ways. But on the other hand it’s much easier to abandon them for another ideologically similar party if they abuse it. Yes it means abandoning AOC or whoever your favorite is but they can also jump ship if need be. I think we need a different solution to overly powerful party leaders.

Which makes it an all or nothing proposal. You can have the entire party or none of it. You can't vote out a particular shithead, you can only take the nuclear option and abandon the whole party. That makes it a lot harder to hold each individual representative accountable to the people they are supposed to be representing.

To bring this back to real world examples, the only reason Kari Lake and Mark Robinson are not likely to win their elections is because the voters get to vote on a specific candidate. Both would easily have the support of their party's leadership, and the party's supporters would certainly vote for their party, but a large number of those who support the party don't want those candidates. That ability to say "no, not you" is not something we should give up when trying to reform the system.

But the thing is, there are so many things I would want to change about the Democratic Party, but I can’t abandon them because my only alternative is far worse. If we had a diversity of somewhat similar parties then it would be much much easier to pressure them into doing what voters want.

Not suggesting we keep the status quo, Just suggesting that any reform should keep representatives directly accountable to voters.

Ranked choice would do this to some extent as well, so I broadly support both. However, I have concerns about election security with ranked choice. Unless the election authorities share their ballot data, it’s very very difficult to determine who the true winner should be from exit polling or similar. There was a major fiasco in Alameda co California where the wrong candidate was seated by accident and no one even noticed until a later audit was done by a non-profit group.

Transparency absolutely needs to be the rule. If we move to RCV, we need to have the full dataset released with each election. Results should be published showing the percentage each candidate got for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. and the order in which they are eliminated. It would take a while for everyone to get used to it, but the data should be straightforward and it isn't hard to figure out how to fit into a simple enough graphic for people to understand.

The issue isn't just one of partisan extremes. Just look at the near miss in the Democratic primaries this year. Biden was the choice of the party leadership and it took his public humiliation and a massive pressure campaign to get a replacement. The people calling the shots at the party level do not necessarily have same interests as the voters, even when they are politically aligned.

Sure, you can jump ship and go to a new party, but that only works when enough voters care to make them jump ship, and when there is a worthwhile alternative. That also means abandoning anyone you support in the party, because they are all lumped together and there's no separating the people you want to vote for from the people you oppose. Building a new party from the ground up is a much more extreme reaction than just voting for a different person.

I wouldn't have the same objection if we had a system where we were had proportional representation spread across specific candidates voted into office. I would have some questions about how it would work, but it would address the issue I'm bringing up.

My concern with proportional representation is that it typically means you are voting for a party, not a specific person. Imagine voting for the Dems and not knowing if you're getting AOC or Joe Manchin.

With Ranked choice, you can know exactly who you are voting into (or out of) office. I'd rather let the voters be the ones who choose candidates directly and not have the party do it for us.

That just leaves the other 999,993 reasons to cover.

Why are we doing this? Because we believe America’s future is decided locally – one race at a time,” Antón continued. “And with more than 200 publications across the nation, our public service is to provide readers with the facts that matter and the trusted information they need to make informed decisions.”

Local elections are important, but I'm pretty sure that the one race that's going to have the biggest impact on America's future is the presidential race. You'd think think they'd have something to say on the topic if it was America's future they were thinking about rather than just their own.