Have higher standards, demand to have real options in the voting booth.
Electoral reform is not just for leftists looking for their first taste of representation in government. Across the political spectrum, we all deserve to have a real choice on how to best run this country.
Give republicans the chance to get off this stupid fucking circus carousel by letting them vote outside the two party system with no risk of a spoiler effect. The cracks are showing, set these people free from this walking corpse of a political party. Us too, thanks.
Videos on Electoral Reform
First Past The Post voting (What most states use now)
Videos on alternative electoral systems we can try out.
If only ~
I had a guy in my Discord following some insane moon logic about how ranked choice voting has some concerns because people could “tactically put their preferred option second to game the system”. He tried about five times and still could not convince us that water is dry.
They take an oath to their political party … technically treason
Hard to call it treason when you’re just paying fealty to the king.
At some point, Americans do need to recognize that they aren’t the ones in charge and what they’re talking about is rebellion rather than some kind of restoration.
I feel like we are already deep deep underground.
These are people who have avoided conflict their entire lives and laughed at people defending themselves. Now they want to wake up today as if they can make up for decades of neglecting these key parts of life that actually make them a threat to anyone. The boycotts are a nice touch. Good to see people organize effectively for a change. But the usual heads will distract and convince people to protest burning any energy into that and burn out any momentum
Nor the corporations
evidence suggests otherwise.
It’s time to remind Congress that they work for the people
They do? Like I get that’s the pretext for why we remain their subjects, but do we really believe they will ever work for us? The only people I remember them ever “working for” are white landowners.
Then maybe buy some land and paint yourself white. Problem solved, just think outside the box
If people are interested in trying to make a difference on this front, you can. I’m working with a group of people to enact ranked choice voting in our city. If you can get it passed at a local level, that’ll pave the way for familiarity with higher levels of government down the line.
Some states are pretty authoritarian and stop cities from doing anything good. Some states have banned rank-choice voting. But yeah, where this is possible, it’s definitely a path forward.
Yeah, it can be really difficult if you live in that sort of place because I feel like making change locally is going to be a lot easier than tackling the state level immediately but I totally get that it’s not always an option.
Care to tell us how we can make a difference?
Certainly! Now bear in mind that this is going to look a bit different for everyone because not only is every state’s politics different, but every city and town is too.
I was fortunate enough to have an already established RCV group in my state that I could reach out to–they’ve had practice getting it passed in various locales already and were able to set me up with a ton of resources.
So, first step, look for anything like that in your state. If you’ve got a group doing that work, reach out to them and connect. They’ll know how to steer you better than someone who probably doesn’t live anywhere near you and is a stranger on the internet.
If you can’t find/don’t have anyone like that already established, you’re going to be working from square one, and that will be difficult, but it’s not impossible. Again, my guidelines might not be applicable to you in this case, but they should at least get you started. Here’s the instructions I was given (in a rough overview) for how to get the ball rolling in my city:
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Learn your local government. Are you a city or a town? Do you have a mayor? City council? Town hall? How does voting currently work? What seats are available for election and how often, and are they single-seats or multi-seats (like a board or a committee would be.) How long are the terms? Do you have preliminary elections, and what’s the criteria to trigger one? Do you have a town/city charter? If so, give it a once over. Who is the person who primarily handles election duties (such as handling the ballots) and what is their title?
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Do your local voting machines handle ranked choice voting? There’s actually a website for this! https://verifiedvoting.org/verifier/#mode/navigate/map/ppEquip/mapType/normal/year/2022 - If your machines are too old you might have to include (or start with) a motion to upgrade your machines.
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This is where things get hard for me to tell you what to say in any detail because it’ll be specific to your home. But the basics is–start reaching out to the people in your local government. See if you can find someone who’s knowledgeable on local legislature who’s willing to help you out, either in general by teaching you how to get things brought to the attention of the legislatures there or who is even willing to help you go the whole way. You might need to get a petition going, you might not. But forging connections with people, even if it’s just one person, is going to help a lot. I’m fortunate that my city has a committee dedicated just to liasoning between citizens and the council–I’ve got a meeting scheduled to talk to them and see if they’ll give me a boost on this. That’s the kind of thing you’ll want to do on this step.
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The best option is proportional representation, anything else is just a bandaid on a broken system
Time to rethink the reapportionment act of (checks notes) 1929.
Sidenote: I didn’t really need to check my notes, but it added a dramatic flair for the 96 year old establishment of the number of representatives.
