politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- 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:
- 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.
- 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.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive.
- 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.
- 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
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
Problem lies in the 'first-past-the-post', aka 'winner-takes-all' system. There are others, like the electoral college, but I digress.
Third party candidates only ever bleed votes from another in FPTP. Assuming RFK is going after Democratic/'swing' voters he'll potentially end up costing the Democrats votes in key states which, at the margins we're currently seeing, would potentially allow Republicans to win, holding slightly more votes to be 'first-past-the-post' at the end of ballot counting even though a majority of people would've preferred a Democrat representative anyway.
Under the FPTP system, voting for RFK as a protest vote, at his 10% margin, becomes a wasted vote because of how FPTP works.
The only true way to fix this is 'single transferrable vote', or 'ranked choice' voting. Voters simply rank their preference from most desired (1) to least desired (n) on a single ballot.
If the first round of counting doesn't yield a winner (usually 50% of ballots + 1 ballot in a candidate's pile), the candidate with the least amount of ballots is eliminated. Ballots are then redistributed from the eliminated candidate, according to the voters next preference on their ballot, amongst those candidates who remain.
Process continues until a candidate has 50% of ballots + 1 ballot in their pile.
The best version of this is 'full' preferential voting (every candidate must be numbered), rather than 'optional' (number at least one candidate; better versions of this are 'number at least n candidates'). Optional preferential votes 'exhaust', potentially becoming wasted, if the voter didn't number all the boxes.
This will allow people to protest vote, without actually wasting their vote.