Politics

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Whom Should You Vote For? Don't be just a 'political hobbyist' (billhulet.substack.com)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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"My experience is that most of the people who get really upset about the current leadership of our nations tend to be folks who haven’t spent much time either as an activist or as someone working for a candidate. What happens instead is they immerse themselves in on-line news and commentary."

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Get involved at the state level to implement ranked choice voting. It is the first and most important political change.

https://fairvote.org/

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I prefer Approval Voting, but no voting system by itself will solve the two party system. We need to move to proportional representation. Something like 5 member districts using Sequential Proportional Approval Voting would be ideal.

But really, anything is leagues ahead of single-winner "choose one."

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yes to everything you just said.

I have one counter example against proportional representation vs districts that worries me. Harvey Milk won his city supervisor post after San Francisco moved from proportional to district. This was because a lot of gay people lived in his neighborhood. I don’t think he would have won in a proportional election. Will similar minorities now be oppressed by the majority if we move to proportional?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

It would depend on how you set up your proportional system. There's a million ways to do it. Under my favorite system, 5-member proportional districts, yes, Harvey would have been elected. The legislator is cut into districts, each district has five members, who are elected using some proportional or semi-proportional method (again, I like harmonic approval). Harvey likely would have won one of the seats in his local district.

I'd have to look up the previous method San Francisco used in order to understand how the council used to work. The proportional method might have been pretty terrible.