What would really Save Our Democracy is national RCV. We don’t even need to get fancy with stuff like multi-member districts; RCV would simply destabilize the two-party system enough to get us on track for a multiparty one.
So, put national RCV in HR1, and I’ll carp for it till the cows come home. I’ll be that crazy guy out on the street with signs every day and twice on Sunday, saying stuff like “HR1 = Third Party!”. But until then… I’m going to be giving the Democrats the side eye every time they insist HR1 will Save Our Democracy. It’s too sad that the only party even remotely altruistic enough to want to SOD, is too cynically beholden to its own power base to ever contemplate weakening itself before it wins The Final Victory both parties have been trying to win for generations now.
“… suppressive voting laws like Photo ID and proof of citizenship (the latter now unenforceable due to court rulings) lower voter turnout by roughly 2%– more in some cases, less in others.”
I used to look at countries that had more than two parties and think they were odd. Some of them probably were. (Watching Israel try to establish a government over the past couple of years has been mildly upsetting.) But, they had something we didn't, the ability to form coalitions to get done the most important things that people wanted.
After some years and one experiment in voting for an Independent presidential candidate (John Anderson), I really started thinking that our two-party system was wrong. Today we are so wrapped up in Democrat/Republican that we are dangerous to ourselves. So I'll take RCV to SOD in spite of the SOB's.
Agreed. It kind of sickens me just how stuck in this mentality we are. The entire system is set up on domination, so the leaders and partisans we get are all obsessed with dominating each other to achieve The Final Victory, instead of figuring out how to defuse the entire fight.
I used to look at countries that had more than two parties and think they were odd. Some of them probably were. (Watching Israel try to establish a government over the past couple of years has been mildly upsetting.) But, they had something we didn't, the ability to form coalitions to get done the most important things that people wanted.
After some years and one experiment in voting for an Independent presidential candidate (John Anderson), I really started thinking that our two-party system was wrong. Today we are so wrapped up in Democrat/Republican that we are dangerous to ourselves. So I'll take RCV to SOD in spite of the SOB's.
Agreed. It kind of sickens me just how stuck in this mentality we are. The entire system is set up on domination, so the leaders and partisans we get are all obsessed with dominating each other to achieve The Final Victory, instead of figuring out how to defuse the entire fight.