Edit: Stickying some relevant “war reporting” from the comments to the post body, in a hopefully somewhat chronological order. Thanks for diving into the trenches everybody!...
Positive change in the American system usually comes from the bottom up. If you’re interested in fixing the system, the first step is to switch your local elections to Approval Voting, probably through a referendum. There’s a whole bunch of reasons, and lots of second and third steps, but that’s the first one.
I mean, you can’t just hope it’ll happen, you have to decide to be the person that switches your local elections. I would have done mine already but I’m too disabled to do work, so this is one of the ways that I try to help instead.
Lots of walking to and from places throughout your day is super good for your physical and mental health, all else being equal. Afterall, we’re descended from nomads.
He did try to get them to pay for it. He literally begged the Mexican president. “You gotta help me out here.” They recorded the phone call and released the tape, laughing at his pathetic groveling.
I’d prefer Approval Voting, RCV has really been over-sold and it practically the same to FPTP anyway. In RCV elections, the first round winner ultimately wins the race 96% of the time. That article tries to claim it somehow makes a difference in campaigns, but in a practical sense, it doesn’t. Campaigns rarely say “rank me second,” because of course not. Who would aim for second place? It also has unfortunate consequences with disenfranchising poor and minority communities, because they end up submitting invalid ballots at a significantly higher rate.
Anyway, so if you’re all like “stop attacking RCV it’s better than FPTP!” Well, I agree, but use that energy to run a referendum campaign and switch your local elections to Approval Voting instead. It’s used in both Fargo and St. Louis and we’re seeing the same positive effects that RCV has without the voter disenfranchisement.
I agree that the National Popular Vote is a fantastic idea. I can’t wait to see it hit the threshold and immediately get hit with lawsuits from terrified entrenched powers.
I strongly disagree that RCV would have a significant effect on the presidential campaign, since it has already been shown to have little effect on any other campaign. It’s also ubiquitous in Australia, with a similar two-party forcing when implemented for their single-seat elections. The only reason they have third parties is because of their proportional elections.
No? Under the usual American implementation of RCV only the highest ranked candidate on a ballot gets the vote from that ballot. If no one has a majority of the remaining votes the person in last place is eliminated and their votes are redistributed according to the individual ballot preferences. So if the American presidency was ~50/50 red v blue as first choices (with a few people picking third party candidates) whichever third party candidate that took last place would get eliminated. In fact, mathematically speaking, if red and blue each got at least 1/3 of the first place cuts votes, one of them must be the eventual winner and the other must take second place.
There are other systems that could cause chaos with your suggested rankings, but they’re generally not considered serious methods exactly because they are chaotic under reasonable circumstances.
Yeah, FairVote is… Okay. In terms of objective vs political, they tend to be as political as they can get while still being objective. They used to actually say a few things that weren’t exactly true, but opponents kept calling them out on it so they quit as far as I know. Wikipedia would be a better source, though be aware that proponents of any system will try to sneak in promotional language. But, at least on Wikipedia there’s also people trying to keep things objective.
These are what I would consider the most relevant articles if you’re looking to understand the realistic options in America.
I would say that you don’t actually need to read any of these articles particularly closely. They can get very technical. You can just skim them for the parts you find interesting.
Seeing as how we hunted multiple mega fauna to extinction, I’m gonna go ahead and say that humans have been eating meat for a very long time. Also there’s shit tons of archeological evidence for our omnivorous diet going back hundreds of thousands of years, but… whatever.
I will never understand why people feel the need to try and prove humans are supposed to be herbivores. Who gives a fuck? There’s ample evidence that your can eat a healthy vegan diet, who gives a shit about “supposed to” if you can eat vegan either way?
That paper is making some absolutely ridiculously unscientific comparisons, and immediately ignores the existence of omnivores after flatly stating that most people eat an obvious diet. It’s absolute trash.
For me, personally, I agree that the industrial meat industry is unethical and has to go. My push-back against the herbivore claims is purely from an objective standpoint. Putting aside objectivism, if humans are omnivores, it makes the moral argument stronger. You’d be telling people they have a choice and can choose to eat a more compassionate and ethical diet. (More energy efficient, too.) If people are herbivores, you get stuck in this weird argument about what humans are supposed to do instead of what we can choose to do.
I spent a lot of time as a vegan, and talked about my choices openly. (Stopped on account of health.) No one attacked me for them and it was because I stuck to irrefutable facts and never made the person I was talking to feel bad for their choices. I just showed them they could easily be a better human, if they wanted to be. Maybe that doesn’t feel like enough for you, but I felt that no one ever changed their position on a personal matter because someone else made them feel attacked. They always dig in their heels.
Toxic linux communities moment:
Original Comic: thejenkinscomic.wordpress.com
It has already been removed again
Edit: Stickying some relevant “war reporting” from the comments to the post body, in a hopefully somewhat chronological order. Thanks for diving into the trenches everybody!...
We would've been fooled (lemmy.world)
Email rule (slrpnk.net)
Seeing a lot of this lately... (lemmy.world)
Via Berkeley Mews
mood (slrpnk.net)
What do you see? (sh.itjust.works)
deleted_by_moderator
Joe Biden is correct that violent crime is near a 50-year low (www.poynter.org)
Hero (mander.xyz)
After Libertarians reject RFK Jr., what does success look like for third-party candidates? (www.cnn.com)
Neverminding the evidence to the contrary. (lemmy.world)