Yes! Thank you for sharing this, the NPVIC is so huge and we are so close to it actually being possible.
I feel we can make it happen, especially if we continue to get the word out and reach out to our senators and representatives, then we can have momentum for it actually happen as well.
My response to the why is buried a bit tbf. The why is ‘who are we defining as the majority winner’? If we are defining it based on the current FPTP voting system, then yes the person who got the most votes in the one round of voting is the majority winner. If we define it in another system or based on who the total voting population would be happy to have as the winner, then another system would be better more often then not.
I agree there is a simple and more concise way of answering, but I saw it as a teaching moment to go a bit more in depth.
FPTP is terrible for encouraging a two party system over a long enough period of time, because it can incentivizes partisan division to secure voter share, and since it often ignores the opinions of the majority of the entire electorate.
The damage of FPTP is further amplified by the House and Senate being capped on the amount of Representatives and Senators for each state. For many states, they just need to secure 51% of the voter base and it becomes winner takes all, especially so with gerrymandering. If there were Alternative Voting systems in all states and if states have had a minimum of five Representatives and five Senators per state scaled up based on population, then our country as a whole would be properly representative to how different populations throughout the country feels. It wouldn’t be just red or blue states anymore, multiple third parties would be able to flourish, and people would have congress-members in office that actually reflect their views.
I just wooshed the joke there lol.
RCV is still solid over FPTP ~>85% of the time, I’m just advocating for these other voting systems. Many people have heard of RCV, but maybe not one of these other systems. There isn’t really a universal favorite, but I feel having a dialogue about the alternatives is something we want to clarify before we commit ourselves to one without acknowledging any potential drawbacks.
Just because a person’s favorite choice isn’t the most popular, doesn’t mean the winning candidate is preferred by the majority of voters. Let’s say there are three candidates A, B, and C and their vote totals are below.
A: 20 votes
B: 18 votes
C: 15 votes
In First Past The Post A wins.
Now, let’s give voters the option to select their top two choices so they can safely pick their favorite option first and while still having a safe choice secondary pick. In this case the election results are the following:
A: 1st pick 20 votes; 2nd pick 4 votes
B: 1st pick 14 votes; 2nd pick 12 votes
C: 1st pick 19 votes; 2nd pick 10 votes
B got the least votes in this different voting system, and B gets eliminated first. Then we move onto the second round of voting to compare the total votes of A vs C. A has 24 total votes and C has 29 total votes. In this example, C wins the election as they are the candidate most preferred by a majority of the voters. The majority winner still wins as they have the votes of a plurality of the electorate.
My example is a simplified explanation for alternative voting systems, the exact mechanism for each of them differs though. I specifically support Ranked Robin, STAR, or score as the specific alternative voting systems I would prefer over FPTP, as I believe they are all more fair and have the best outcomes for the majority of people expressing their preferences.
If we want elections to be more representative of what the majority of people want, then taking in more preferences of the voters only makes sense. They have less incentive to vote strategically for the same reasons, at least under the systems I mentioned. So for a real world example, most people can safely pick a third party candidate without worrying about the spoiler effect. This would be huge for properly showing just how much true support third parties have out there, because currently they have to compete for people that vote similarly between two or more parties.
Y’all Australians really have one of the best systems with your compulsory voting and not having FPTP. I feel the only thing that would make your system better is if it was upgraded to use ranked robin or STAR voting instead, as the least liked candidate can still win in uncommon circumstances under RCV.
From what I am seeing in a few states is that some establishment Dems push back against it or tore it down, but the progressive Dem groups showed open support of it. I was tracking RCV in Nevada and Arizona specifically and there was not a recommendation to shoot it down, but the main Democratic Party in those states didn’t tell their voters to vote one way or the other from what I saw, only the progressives groups advocated for it though.
I would believe Colorado Dems shot it down though, as they did the same in a few other states. I think it’s still possible to sway public opinion and pressure certain Dems to be in support of Alternative Voting though. I don’t think there is a consensus to shoot it down 100%, but they shoot it down in instances where they might feel it threatens some of their hand picked Senate seats. If they think it would gain the party as a whole more seats on the state level or even federally I believe they could be convinced to back Alternative Voting.
On a side note, Ranked Choice specifically is only slightly better than FPTP compared to say Ranked Robin, STAR, or Score voting. I believe we should push for one of these other three alternatives to prevent uncommon instances where the least liked candidate still can win.
What you described is a big issue. I feel it shows just how much there needs to be a push for change nationally and within each of the states to lobby the Democratic Party for change. Some states have open primaries, some have closed, and others have semi-open primaries. It makes no sense for states to not just be semi-open or fully open for primaries, as closed primaries just further alienates the party from potential voters.
As someone that voted Bernie in 2016, we didn’t have the votes in 2016 for Bernie to make it through the primary. The country itself was not as progressive in 2016 as it is now imo, especially so for the Democratic base.
For Bernie to have even had a chance to win the primary, the election format would have needed to not be First Past the Post. He was a victim of vote splitting found in First Past the Post and then establishment Dems allocated their voters votes to go towards Hillary. I don’t think it was fair what happened to Bernie especially with the DNC, but I realize now it was a flaw of the system itself that makes it extremely difficult for a progressive to win a Democratic presidential primary. I think it makes zero sense why people can’t pick their favorite candidate(s) first and then pick backup ‘safe’ candidates for elections. Also there is the issue of some states excluding people not registered with a party from voting in the primary. I feel it is a bad move to prevent these voters at the primary level since non-affiliated voters are usually the ones that ultimately decide the elections and they can give input ahead of time if they would vote for that candidate in the general election.
Having ranked robin voting, STAR voting, or score voting would help prevent a popular candidate like Bernie from losing by default to a ‘safe’ establishment pick.
Edit: Trust me, I would like to be wrong about 2016 and just how progressive country as a whole was at the time. But we’re really backwards in a lot of ways, especially so back then. The bulk of older voters were at most were economically voting for Democrats, not on social or economic policy by and large.
No need to steal, they should pay out what they owe through taxes, which should be a considerably higher sum than it is currently.
This helps explain Ranked Robin better than I could, but it’s a great starting point for electing leaders from third parties and for helping to change the media landscape for winning elections.
RCV specifically is worse than say Ranked Robin voting, STAR voting, or score voting which all would make the least liked candidate winning less likely compared to RCV or FPTP.
Most countries stopped at RCV, but Ranked Robin or STAR would be a big upgrade.
Fixing the voting system is just one of the key things that needs to happen though. Education desperately needs reforms. Our media desperately needs reforms such as the Fairness Doctrine coming back and being expanded to all media and social media influencers/podcasters as well.
Choosing not to participate is how you become dominated by one of the parties, possibly the one you like the least. The way to actually be able to participate is by trying to change the system itself. By that I mean changing First Past the Post voting in each state, as this is the means through which other political parties would be able to spring up. Another option is to run for government yourself as an actor for change within one of the major political parties.
Make no mistake, changing the system is possible. Alaska and Maine have both done it already. Other states can do it too. I think trying alternative voting systems such as ranked robin voting, STAR voting, score voting, or even ranked choice voting would be a major step towards other political parties and to move away from the most the least liked candidates winning elections.
I’m not sure why this was voted down, real lasting solutions require hard work and organizing to make change. Mind you, changing the system of how we vote alone isn’t the end step, but a starting place for change.
Thank you for you detailed response! I think something like Bazzite would be more up my alley based on what you said. Something that is hard to mess up is something I’d be more comfortable with for sure.
I appreciate your offer for troubleshooting help as well!
Is there an easy way to port all my stuff to Linux? I would not have made the switch in the past, but all the good will I attributed to Microsoft is pretty much gone. I’ve heard Mint is petty easy to hop onto?
I agree, since all the animals are seemingly posed as being remade on the ark and suddenly you have the first people walking the earth again after the flood.
Note: this is not a me thinking the ark exists, it’s a commentary of the story being retold.
From my perspective, the Bible should have continued to been written forward, and included pieces of the issues Christians sought to address in their current times. I think an updated one would have spoken of the poorly of the actions taken by the church and followers alike through the ages, and would have followed people trying to do good in hard times.
I’m not saying that people don’t have free will or that it’s not talked about in the Bible, but free will is not something presented as a gift, yet alone God’s greatest gift to humanity as the meme says.
From my perspective, once God set the universe in motion he has mostly taken a step back from direct action. I would say life is a test of sorts for us, to see if we can make earth resemble the good of heaven, on a humanity wide scale. But it’s also an individual test for each person’s willingness to use their obtained knowledge to still be good unto others. We are all the children of God, from my own perspective we are learning to become like God, who is the Bible is shown as loving and kind.
With time we’ll get there! The more we slowly contribute to the niche topics, the more we’ll see these communities grow. I’m sure there are a sizable amount of people from Reddit looking for their niches on here to start growing more for them to fully hop over. I’ve got a good chunk of mine on Lemmy now, but still a handful of ones I haven’t found a comparable server for yet. If I understood running a server more I probably would have started a couple of my own for these topics.
Is there anywhere on Lemmy people can request for servers to get started? I think that would be helpful to have since missing topics are some of the barriers of entry for some people.
deleted by creator
I would add that not every author is writing unbiased in the Bible. We know now for instance that some books near the end of the Bible attributed to Paul may not have been written by him, but by some of the people under Paul in the early church. So adding parts about women not holding positions of authority within the Church more or less served to cement their own positions and authority for the early-Christians that were formalizing the religion.
Why? We’re talking about electing representatives to govern our country, not picking what movie a few people want to go watch. What do you want from a representative? You want them to reflect the consensus of the wider electorate that voted them in rather than just their smaller base. If 66.6% of the voting electorate didn’t vote for someone of a certain political spectrum in a election where that person won by getting 33.4% of the vote, then how are they the most representative option or how do they reflect the views of the majority? My example is a bit extreme, that’s what winner takes all is. The great thing about other systems is, if you personally only want to vote for one candidate, you still can. However, if you wanted to have a backup option in case your favorite lost the first round, then that’s okay too under other systems.
Even something as simple as ordering food with friends makes sense to use an alternative voting system such as approval voting. You and your friends pick all your favorite options, and you’re less likely to be upset at the results since you can show preference. Some options you might hate, some options others may hate, and other options you might all be okay with having.