this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2024
368 points (91.3% liked)

politics

19144 readers
2212 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

The animating concept behind the Trump campaign will be chaos. This is what history shows us fascists do when given the chance to participate in democratic political campaigns: They create chaos. They do it because chaos works to their advantage. They revel in it, because they can see how profoundly chaos unnerves democratic-republicans—everyone, that is, whether liberal or conservative, who believes in the basic idea of a representative government that is built around neutral rules. Fascism exists to pulverize neutral rules.

So they campaign with explicit intention to instill a sense of chaos. And then comes the topper: They have the audacity to insist that the only solution to the chaos—that they themselves have either grossly exaggerated or in some cases created!—is to vote for them: “You see, there is nothing but chaos afoot, and only we can restore order!”

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 43 points 11 months ago (1 children)

To be fair, the parties themselves have changed significantly since then.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 11 months ago (3 children)

To be fair, no two-party system is a healthy democracy, and the way our elections are designed it’ll stay that way.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yep, as it has been since the 1850s

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Yep, as it has been since the 1850s

since the 1850s

Yeahhh, you may find some people disagree with you on that one. I hear some stuff happened in 1861-1865 or something, for example.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Our election system is generally bad. Elections aren't controlled by the federal government, even for federal elections, they are run by counties (or whatever the locality calls a county - in Louisiana they are parishes) and each county runs their elections differently unless the state steps in and regulates it. Some states have mail in voting, some make you stand in line on election day. Some counties have FPTP voting, others might have STAR or RCV.

The only way I see things changing at all are two fold: publicly funded elections with no private money at all AND abandoning FPTP voting for a broader method with an added benefit of potentially eliminating primaries. I know parties would complain, but things would be much more democratic.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

This is entirely correct. The only way to heal the nation is to take steps forward, not relying on an archaic system that ‘works’ and building out something that actually works.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago

We won't get rid of FPTP or gerrymandering so long as we elect our representatives from geographically defines districts. We should empanel state congressional delegations in statewide elections, rather than by districts.

In a state with 20 congressional seats, any party that wins at least 5% of the vote should have a seat. A party that wins 10% of the vote should have 2 seats.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

America's founders biggest fear were political factions forming. But when they were concerned the voters were all landowning men, how could people with shared economic interests ever form factions?