@MicheleV_AK

anyone who didn't vote is just as culpable in all of this as MAGA

@MicheleV_AK

i voted for bernie in the primaries and gave him money

then i voted for hillary in the general election, because i'm not a moron

anyone who feels a need to punish spineless centrist democrats as a more important goal than not becoming a fascist country is an entitled piece of shit

@benroyce

Tangentially related dumb q: States in the US can decide whether they want to do first-past-the-post voting or use a different voting system, right?

So states could potentially vote to move to a more representative democracy in terms of having representatives be allotted according to number of votes?

What I mean by that is that you could potentially end up with one "green", two "red" and two "blue" representatives for a state with five representatives in total?

@MicheleV_AK

@ermo @MicheleV_AK

with ranked choice voting you can vote your conscience in peace without dreary strategy like with fptp

what will tend to happen at first is that third parties still won't get enough votes, and so your vote will flow to your second/ third choice: the dems or GOP who will still tend to dominate

but with more penetration in more states third parties will trend to grow and become viable and stable and then we will see what you're talking about

@benroyce

It is interesting to me that both the U.K. and the U.S. (who share some parliamentary and voting traits AIUI), also appear to have similar F.P.T.P. polarization issues.

@MicheleV_AK

@ermo @MicheleV_AK

the UK is different because it is a parliamentary system, so third parties can form coalitions and it isn't such a threat to one party or another like it is in the USA

this lends some stability to third parties the usa does not have. the usa is archaic. it's just winner take all, so we can never have more than two parties

@benroyce

What is the easiest or, alternatively, most viable way out of the deadlock for the U.S. in your view?

I ask because things look increasingly grim, and I've been paying attention to what the GOP is (and has been) trying to get away with for more than twenty years at this point, and it legitimately gives me the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it.

@MicheleV_AK

@ermo @MicheleV_AK

well, number one, don't think i'm an airhead optimist, it's bleak

if there were a way out, i think, we need more people to vote

not that that's easy, just the path of least resistance

currently 1/3 of the country is bigots and ignorants

1/3 of the country is positively engaged

and 1/3 of the country is entitled and lazy and doesn't vote

it's a game of small percentages so if we just get some of these indolent nonvoters to vote we can flip the script

@benroyce

When I last did the numbers, there were ~277M eligible voters, and ~77.3M was enough to elect the current WH occupant.

It's kind of crazy that 77.3/277 =~ 28% of eligible voters are responsible for electing the 47th president when you look at how that character has comported themselves, and what position they've put the US in from both a domestic and especially an international perspective.

I live in a part of EU where our DIA has declared the US a security threat.

@MicheleV_AK