I say again: “Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.”
― Joseph Stalin
22 Republican senators, dozens of Republican House members voted to fund Ukraine. Many of them call Trump a liar about Putin.
Now, in the continuing defense olf Putin, the State Department terminated a contract that was in the process of transferring evidence of alleged Russian abductions of Ukrainian children—a potential war crime—to law enforcement officials in Europe. https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-admin-nixed-contract-helping-175053334.html
Get those Republicans who oppose Putin on the record!
I urge everyone to read the Yahoo article referred to, about the abduction of hundreds of Ukraine's children by Putin/Russia & the forced/coerced adoption of those children! Yale has been doing remarkable work tracking some of those children, the ones they could track (100's)! Now, there's a report & we have cancelled program to get that!
Maybe we're just afraid that it'll remind people of what we did to/with children at our S. Border during Trump's 1st term?! Many of those children still haven't been returned to their families & we "lost track of them!"
I recall Betsy DeVos was taking 17y.o. girls to her church, where she said there were families wanting to adopt them. Really? Adopting 17y.o. giris?? Never was able to find any follow-up info/reports on that, but I find it suspicious that it's just 17y.o. girls she was taking to be "adopted" by people at her church.
The Russia taking Ukrainian children during war IS DIFFERENT story, but VERY concerning!! Is that what 'we' do now ij wars? Yale did great job tracking all they could. Parents want their children back! "Duh!" Ukraine has said it has to be part of any peace agreement w/ Russia. Now, we've cut all funding to USAID, Yale group has the ihfo, but we don't want it anymore?! Yeah, guess it was just a Biden thing, huh? 1,000's of children missing from Ukraine! How would we feel if same done to our children!!?? Where are those kids now, dammit?? That's war crime, of course! Trump/Putin & Marco Rubio hoping that with the constant chaos Trump is known for, this will remain under-reported story & soon be forgotten.
WON'T BE forgotten by Ukranians, who Love their children! Who you elect has big repercussions & the Party that chose to run him should be held responsible for him, since SCOTUS stupidly gave him immunity for anything he does!!
Hashtag: "Where are the children, Putin?!?!"
-------->--------->
(I want to know more about this. Is this what we allow in wars now?!?)
Stalin was sure right about that! BOTH/ALL Parties must be present whenever ballots are counted (or tossed)! No more of this having just 1 Party controlling which ballots get counted, or not! Who can vote, or not! Due to intimidation & other such behavior of Repubs at polls, they were banned for 30yrs from being at polling places on Election Day! A wise decision that SCOTUS changed not that long ago. THAT was NOT a wise decision! This 2024 election seemed to be run by the MAGA/GOP ~ at least the "which ballots get counted, are legit" part. Where were Dems in those decisions? Repubs were very busy packing positions in 6 swing States. They started right after Jan. 6th & bragged about having Party loyalists in all the key posutions! Guess Dem Party too busy with Jan 6th aftermath, which all but 2 GOP refused to participate in, to voice much objection?!
I voted by mail, wanting to be observer at polls on Election Day (or any other assistance), but there was nothing to do?! "No need." I found that strange, unusual.
Compound the voting deficiencies outlined by Greg Palast by the voter and poll worker intimidation and the psy ops by the Russians. If one voter was intimidated it was a crime! Perhaps thousands. Here in Baghdad By the Sea dem voters were sent to the wrong polling address.
And did Trump admit that Musk fixed Pa for him? While speaking at a town hall in the swing state of Pennsylvania before the election, Musk repeated conspiracy theories claiming that voting machines rig elections. "I'm a technologist, I know a lot about computers," Musk told the crowd during the event. "And I'm like, the last thing I would do is trust a computer program, because it's just too easy to hack." https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/musk-pushes-debunked-dominion-voting-conspiracy-theory-campaign-appear-rcna175985
Later Trump spoke at a rally on Sunday, January 19, in Washington, D.C., “He journeyed to Pennsylvania, where he spent a month and a half campaigning for me in Pennsylvania, and he’s a popular guy. He was very effective,” Trump said. “And he knows those computers better than anybody. All those computers. Those vote-counting computers. And we ended up winning Pennsylvania like in a landslide. So it was pretty good, pretty good. So thank you to Elon.”
Pennsylvania uses multiple types of voting machines, according to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania website. As of June 2020, according to its official website, all 67 counties had voting systems that produce voter-verifiable paper records and "meet 21st-century standards of security, auditability, and accessibility."
However, during the 2024 election, a software malfunction in Cambria County gained national attention after voters were unable to scan ballots, which were later manually counted by the Board of Elections. Ultimately, Trump won the state with 50.4 percent of the vote.
The only group I know of that's primarily focused on election fraud by way of rigging the "proprietary software" (rather than by voter suppression methods) is SmartElections.us. Regarding the 2024 election, they have identified an atypical pattern of "drop off ballots" - those with votes for President but not for down-ballot races like Governor or Senator - that (a) uniformly favors Trump, (b) is found in all seven swing States, and (c) is found ONLY in those seven.
How could this happen without a lot of voting machines being rigged, and being rigged in a slapdash fashion? Trump's insinuation about Musk's help with the voting computers in Pennsylvania might be the only clue we need: Elon, the self-styled slash and burn technocrat, has a disdain for detail that could very well account for how blatant the "drop-off ballot" pattern is in PA - as well as in the other six swing States.
So how is it that Harris and the Democrats are not only ignoring a very suspicious ballot pattern found in 2025, but also the fact that Trump operatives - in 2021 mind you - downloaded the proprietary software of Dominion and ES&S voting machines, tabulators & aggregators in Coffee County, Georgia? This theft obviously put the security and integrity of the 2022 and 2024 elections at risk, yet nothing was done. Nor was anything done when this and other concerns about possible vote rigging were brought to the attention of Harris in a public "duty to warn" letter sent by Duncan Buell and other computer security experts on 13 Nov 2024.
Granted, it does little of no good to demand a recount or audit when a full hand recount is not possible. But it IS possible to count votes attested by notarized affidavits from voters (without revealing who each voted for), and so find out if more votes were cast for the loser than the insecure and compromised machines counted on election day. This would be the kind of proof of election fraud that would stand up in court - and in the court of public opinion.
Important to beware of dangers of the the ranked choice system.
The ranked choice system during the primary almost gave Washington citizens two conservative choices for Commissioner of Public Lands in 2024. During the primary multiple candidates split the vote moderate and progressive vote, almost by only a tiny (very tiny) margin putting two conservative candidates on the November ballot. Fortunately after a recount the Democratic candidate literally squeaked onto the ballot giving Washington voters a choice between a candidate committed to climate protection and protecting legacy forests and one who would have been more favorable to the timber industry. It almost went the other way. Lots of choice in the primary can lead to no choice in November if there are lots of candidates for one political ideology and just a few for the opposing position.
In Colorado, we have struggled with how to structure the primary if RCV is used. This past November, an initiative was defeated that would have allowed an open or "jungle" primary with the top four going to the ballot in the general election. The phasing is an area that needs more thought.
Perhaps a limit on the number of possible candidates for each Party (say, 3 or 5) could make sure that 1 Party did not dominate most/all the choices/slots, due having all the money to "flood the market"(?) The voters would still have choices within each Party, but ALL Parties still represented & having chance to be heard/represent us.
Of course, if we DON'T REMOVE private donor money from elections, we will still have a gov't that is Of, By & For, those with all the money $$$$$ to BUY IT! Other, functioning democracies have already figured that out, along with having more than just 2 Parties.
Yes/No party line votes with just 2 Parties has made ours an "us vs. them" mentality & 'paralysis', where it's almost impossible for real, 'give & take' negotiations to come to agreement that works for us all.
True Democracy, 1 that works for a majority of citizens & best interest of our Country, cannot exist when private donors able to 'buy' the gov't that works [just] for them! It may take a while to corrupt democracy, but it WILL always corrupt it! The constant focus on giving wealthiest few (the big donors) ever more HUGE TAX CUTS, at the expense of everything & everyone else is proof of that!
Too many Members of Congress have been made rich by that & are now voting on THEIR OWN own Tax Cuts! What's meant to be 'Public Service' to the nation is now a self-enriching, lifetime position. There's still a few who are there for the right reasons & trying to do what's best, to lead our Country & govern for all the people. But they are far out-numbered! We're losing good ones as they get out-spent by big money donors, buying those who will work for THEM, not us.
I bet you can name a few of the "good ones", cuz' they stand out against the background of a Congress that's forgotten who they're supposed to be representing & working for.
What has broken our democratic system CAN BE remedied. And it doesn't have to all be done at once. But it MUST be done! We need to start with 1 thihg that we CAN DO. Do that & then we can do more. But we have NO time to waste! It all begins with free & fair eiections. We need to start with something we can ALL get behind. Something "non threatening" to those who are most afraid of change. Having more choices is a good thing for most people to get behind. But, we need to act on it, not just talk about it endlessly.
"Ranked-choice voting reduces the power of money in politics, because so much of it is used for negative campaigning, which becomes less effective in such a system."
BTW folks, buy Hartmann's book at a LOCAL bookstore. Ours is here in Redmond, OR, Herringbone Books.
We've begun a boycott of Amazon, wife and I, since Bezos's destruction of the Washington Post.
This chapter from your book, Thom is rather like reading about elections in Rome.
We don't even know if there will be in an election in 2026 much less 2028, and if so will they be real elections or just a plebescite with for ordained results.
Is there even a real opposition party. In fact has there be a real opposition party, or just a Kabuki theatrical production, where all parties slop at the same trough.
The recent cloture vote, where Schumer and nine others sided with the Republicans is as about as much evidence as I need to cast a judgement, that politic is dead, and actually confirms my opinion post 1964 election, that both parties are two sides of the same coin.
And only a total depression, leading to a revolution where everyone is hurt, can change things.
When the MAGAts realize that theirs was a pyrrhic victory, and that their "victory: of owning the libs, killing DEIA, actually killed themselves, then things can change,
MAGAts have been hitting their thumb with a hammer, but because of delayed reflexes, and the time it takes for signals to travel the neural network to the brain, they just don't realize that they did.
But they are slowly coming to realize what they did, as farmers who voted for Trump because of DEI, realize that they can't pay the bills because USAID programs were cut, and Trusk believes that farm supports, SNAP and WIC are a waste of money that should go into Space X and Occupy Mars.
"Pertinent issues" seem to get lost in the dust in all scenarios. Pertinent issues are always changing. But what the public needs to know is what the more fundamental philosophy, thinking, and attitudes are of the people running. Unless we can know more about those things, I think it is a crap shoot. More exposure and sunlight or information is needed to have adequate discussions and choices. I suspect ranked choice would facilitate that, although we actually had Democrats arguing against it here in NV in this last election, while there was big money behind the proponents as I recall and understood what was happening.
That was my point, if I understand your question. If a candidate doesn't demonstrate a firm commitment to democracy, what they say about a tariff or tax is not worth debating about. But confusion about ranked choice remains.
Thank you! Yes, I'm convinced that if the US had been using ranked choice voting (RCV) in nationwide elections for the past several decades, we would not be in the severely polarized political mess we're in now. RCV tends, by its very nature, to weed out extremist ideas and candidates.
My home state of Virginia has been experimenting successfully with the use of RCV in local elections, but, thus far, efforts to extend the use of RCV to statewide elections have not succeeded. Pro-RCV legislation passed by Virginia's General Assembly in its recent session faces a likely veto from our Republican governor Glenn Youngkin. Republicans too often approach RCV in much the same way they approach what amount to voter suppression laws. Rather than offer popular ideas that will win over voters, they prefer to manipulate the voting population and methods in ways that they hope might favor their own anti-democratic agendas. In fact, however, RCV does not intrinsically favor one party over another.
Ranked-choice makes a lot of sense today because both the Republican and Democratic parties practically-speaking no longer exist. What we have is a fascist cult of know-nothings and everybody else - the greedy bullies and the bullied. I read yesterday that Granny Pelosi is telling Democrats to dump the Senate minority leader for not opposing the MAGA mob's CR as if she still calls the shots. Voting for individuals vs platforms is all there seems to be left.
As both parties have disintegrated so have their values and integrity. I watch as a US president hourly breaks laws and traditions without consequence or political opposition. Well, there are consequences for we citizens as money drains from our NYSE investments and into the coffers of fascist oligarchs. It is likely that our democracy will soon look like downtown Gaza - a useless pile of rubble that cannot be rebuilt - only replaced.
More depressing is "Russi-Russia-Russia." Politico reported last night that it was no hoax as Trump asserts. It is real. If we were woke enough, we might notice Moscow doing its happy-dance over Trump's willingness to force Ukraine into surrender while he dismantles NATO, and leaves open the global door to Russian imperialism. Sadly, the world's democracies have, wittingly or not, enabled all this.
Thom, Captain my Captain I may agree with all this on voting but people don’t like change even it’s a much better idea. You have to change a lot of minds when people don’t lie change. I, do agree with you though on all this. It makes sense Captain my Captain only you would have to explain something that is really quite understandable. Thank you.
Drumph (Trumps real name from when they ran whore houses) wasn’t elected in 2024 Greg Palast has proven it. The more people that take the time to watch Vigilante Inc., interviews with Thom and Kyle Kalinsky the weaker Drumph will be. In a civilized world that would be grounds for impeachment and installing Kamala. But, we don’t currently live in that world. However, dealing with voter suppression just might bring power back to the people.
Ranked choice voting is a great concept. The problem with it is that the best protection against fraud or errors in electronic voting systems is a post-election audit that manually recounts a statistically significant random sample of ballots actually cast by voters. And the complexity of ranked choice voting makes that impractical.
Good analysis. Every system has limits and RCV has some.
For one, it likely has a ceiling in terms of number of voters. It would be doubtful that it would work well in a national election.
Second, in some cases, a real runoff is preferable. This would likely be the case for a presidential election. Just look at countries like France.
Third, it does not fix a poor structure. A system of electing a monarch under the name of "president" would not be fixed. Instead, there should be a parliamentary system that can dissolve the government if there is misbehavior.
Last, it is not a substitute for representative democracy on complex issues. The limits of direct democracy have been seen quite often in large states with ballot initiatives and referenda. Consider Prop 13 in California as a start. The number of alternatives needing clarification in the making of legislation cannot be substituted by RCV.
Ranked-choice voting reduces the power of money in politics, because so much of it is used for negative campaigning, which becomes less effective in such a system.
This is not true because of this.
If no one wins outright in the first round.
The "If no one wins outright in the first round" massively incentivizes " power of money in politics" as it eliminates all future expenditures after the first round. Do the mental graph, seven candidates are in the primary defending and fending off competing issues and one candidate dominates all media and exposure with a small set of emotional issues and outright lies. Who wins. Oh, we have actually experienced that - money wins.
Agreed we need more than one party - the rank solution is just a rank tweaking inside the 2 party system.
Another approach to multiple parties is here.
The US needs 5 political parties. Say 2 national parties, as existing. And say 3 regional parties. One could be the upper Midwest party centered in Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. The other two regional parties are yet to be identified. The upper Midwest party would take its roots from the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL) and the North Dakota Democratic–Nonpartisan League Party The focus would initially be to gain one or two US Senators from each state in this regional party. Ten swing Senators, not beholden to the coffers of either the RNC or DNC would be the beginning of a compromising Senate. Leadership, initial, could be steered by Jon Tester, Liz Cheney and Tim Walz. This steering group would accept the caveat that they are no longer seeking elected public office. Warren Buffet could upfront the 1 Billion dollars required to set up and make viable a new political organization capable of competing in national politics from a regional perspective.
Although Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) may be the most widely known type of Ranked Choice Voting (RCV), it does not always elect the candidate who is most widely acceptable to voters. To achieve that, RCV ballots have to be tallied by the Condorcet method, which does not serially eliminate candidates with the fewest votes. Instead, when no candidate receives a majority of the first preference votes, it compares all candidates by a head-to-head tally in order find which one prevails most often. (For a detailed explanation of the process see https://www.equal.vote/minimax.)
For instance, Mary Pelota (D) prevailed over Nick Begich (R) and Sara Palin (R) in Alaska's 2022 IRV election (when many of Palin's supporters failed to name Begich as their second choice), whereas a Condorcet tally would have awarded the election to Begich because so many of Pelota's supporters named him as their second choice. In other words, a Condorcet tally would have accurately identified the underlying majority of moderate Republican voters in Alaska, and provided in 2022 the result that was subsequently reached in the 2024 IRV election by strategic withdrawal of two out of the three Republican contenders – a ploy which left the two party system (and Trump's patronage machine) perfectly intact.
I say again: “Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.”
― Joseph Stalin
22 Republican senators, dozens of Republican House members voted to fund Ukraine. Many of them call Trump a liar about Putin.
Now, in the continuing defense olf Putin, the State Department terminated a contract that was in the process of transferring evidence of alleged Russian abductions of Ukrainian children—a potential war crime—to law enforcement officials in Europe. https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-admin-nixed-contract-helping-175053334.html
Get those Republicans who oppose Putin on the record!
Impeach. Feathers of Hope. https://jerryweiss.substack.com/p/remove-impeach-impeach
I urge everyone to read the Yahoo article referred to, about the abduction of hundreds of Ukraine's children by Putin/Russia & the forced/coerced adoption of those children! Yale has been doing remarkable work tracking some of those children, the ones they could track (100's)! Now, there's a report & we have cancelled program to get that!
Maybe we're just afraid that it'll remind people of what we did to/with children at our S. Border during Trump's 1st term?! Many of those children still haven't been returned to their families & we "lost track of them!"
I recall Betsy DeVos was taking 17y.o. girls to her church, where she said there were families wanting to adopt them. Really? Adopting 17y.o. giris?? Never was able to find any follow-up info/reports on that, but I find it suspicious that it's just 17y.o. girls she was taking to be "adopted" by people at her church.
The Russia taking Ukrainian children during war IS DIFFERENT story, but VERY concerning!! Is that what 'we' do now ij wars? Yale did great job tracking all they could. Parents want their children back! "Duh!" Ukraine has said it has to be part of any peace agreement w/ Russia. Now, we've cut all funding to USAID, Yale group has the ihfo, but we don't want it anymore?! Yeah, guess it was just a Biden thing, huh? 1,000's of children missing from Ukraine! How would we feel if same done to our children!!?? Where are those kids now, dammit?? That's war crime, of course! Trump/Putin & Marco Rubio hoping that with the constant chaos Trump is known for, this will remain under-reported story & soon be forgotten.
WON'T BE forgotten by Ukranians, who Love their children! Who you elect has big repercussions & the Party that chose to run him should be held responsible for him, since SCOTUS stupidly gave him immunity for anything he does!!
Hashtag: "Where are the children, Putin?!?!"
-------->--------->
(I want to know more about this. Is this what we allow in wars now?!?)
Stalin was sure right about that! BOTH/ALL Parties must be present whenever ballots are counted (or tossed)! No more of this having just 1 Party controlling which ballots get counted, or not! Who can vote, or not! Due to intimidation & other such behavior of Repubs at polls, they were banned for 30yrs from being at polling places on Election Day! A wise decision that SCOTUS changed not that long ago. THAT was NOT a wise decision! This 2024 election seemed to be run by the MAGA/GOP ~ at least the "which ballots get counted, are legit" part. Where were Dems in those decisions? Repubs were very busy packing positions in 6 swing States. They started right after Jan. 6th & bragged about having Party loyalists in all the key posutions! Guess Dem Party too busy with Jan 6th aftermath, which all but 2 GOP refused to participate in, to voice much objection?!
I voted by mail, wanting to be observer at polls on Election Day (or any other assistance), but there was nothing to do?! "No need." I found that strange, unusual.
Thom covered this....we probably were screwed.
Compound the voting deficiencies outlined by Greg Palast by the voter and poll worker intimidation and the psy ops by the Russians. If one voter was intimidated it was a crime! Perhaps thousands. Here in Baghdad By the Sea dem voters were sent to the wrong polling address.
And did Trump admit that Musk fixed Pa for him? While speaking at a town hall in the swing state of Pennsylvania before the election, Musk repeated conspiracy theories claiming that voting machines rig elections. "I'm a technologist, I know a lot about computers," Musk told the crowd during the event. "And I'm like, the last thing I would do is trust a computer program, because it's just too easy to hack." https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/musk-pushes-debunked-dominion-voting-conspiracy-theory-campaign-appear-rcna175985
Later Trump spoke at a rally on Sunday, January 19, in Washington, D.C., “He journeyed to Pennsylvania, where he spent a month and a half campaigning for me in Pennsylvania, and he’s a popular guy. He was very effective,” Trump said. “And he knows those computers better than anybody. All those computers. Those vote-counting computers. And we ended up winning Pennsylvania like in a landslide. So it was pretty good, pretty good. So thank you to Elon.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-quffs4A_M.
Pennsylvania uses multiple types of voting machines, according to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania website. As of June 2020, according to its official website, all 67 counties had voting systems that produce voter-verifiable paper records and "meet 21st-century standards of security, auditability, and accessibility."
However, during the 2024 election, a software malfunction in Cambria County gained national attention after voters were unable to scan ballots, which were later manually counted by the Board of Elections. Ultimately, Trump won the state with 50.4 percent of the vote.
The only group I know of that's primarily focused on election fraud by way of rigging the "proprietary software" (rather than by voter suppression methods) is SmartElections.us. Regarding the 2024 election, they have identified an atypical pattern of "drop off ballots" - those with votes for President but not for down-ballot races like Governor or Senator - that (a) uniformly favors Trump, (b) is found in all seven swing States, and (c) is found ONLY in those seven.
How could this happen without a lot of voting machines being rigged, and being rigged in a slapdash fashion? Trump's insinuation about Musk's help with the voting computers in Pennsylvania might be the only clue we need: Elon, the self-styled slash and burn technocrat, has a disdain for detail that could very well account for how blatant the "drop-off ballot" pattern is in PA - as well as in the other six swing States.
So how is it that Harris and the Democrats are not only ignoring a very suspicious ballot pattern found in 2025, but also the fact that Trump operatives - in 2021 mind you - downloaded the proprietary software of Dominion and ES&S voting machines, tabulators & aggregators in Coffee County, Georgia? This theft obviously put the security and integrity of the 2022 and 2024 elections at risk, yet nothing was done. Nor was anything done when this and other concerns about possible vote rigging were brought to the attention of Harris in a public "duty to warn" letter sent by Duncan Buell and other computer security experts on 13 Nov 2024.
Granted, it does little of no good to demand a recount or audit when a full hand recount is not possible. But it IS possible to count votes attested by notarized affidavits from voters (without revealing who each voted for), and so find out if more votes were cast for the loser than the insecure and compromised machines counted on election day. This would be the kind of proof of election fraud that would stand up in court - and in the court of public opinion.
Thanks. Like I say, compound that with provable psy ops....
Your Hidden History book series needs to be in Every Classroom across the country. Thank You,Thom, for educating us, each and every day.
Important to beware of dangers of the the ranked choice system.
The ranked choice system during the primary almost gave Washington citizens two conservative choices for Commissioner of Public Lands in 2024. During the primary multiple candidates split the vote moderate and progressive vote, almost by only a tiny (very tiny) margin putting two conservative candidates on the November ballot. Fortunately after a recount the Democratic candidate literally squeaked onto the ballot giving Washington voters a choice between a candidate committed to climate protection and protecting legacy forests and one who would have been more favorable to the timber industry. It almost went the other way. Lots of choice in the primary can lead to no choice in November if there are lots of candidates for one political ideology and just a few for the opposing position.
In Colorado, we have struggled with how to structure the primary if RCV is used. This past November, an initiative was defeated that would have allowed an open or "jungle" primary with the top four going to the ballot in the general election. The phasing is an area that needs more thought.
Perhaps a limit on the number of possible candidates for each Party (say, 3 or 5) could make sure that 1 Party did not dominate most/all the choices/slots, due having all the money to "flood the market"(?) The voters would still have choices within each Party, but ALL Parties still represented & having chance to be heard/represent us.
Of course, if we DON'T REMOVE private donor money from elections, we will still have a gov't that is Of, By & For, those with all the money $$$$$ to BUY IT! Other, functioning democracies have already figured that out, along with having more than just 2 Parties.
Yes/No party line votes with just 2 Parties has made ours an "us vs. them" mentality & 'paralysis', where it's almost impossible for real, 'give & take' negotiations to come to agreement that works for us all.
True Democracy, 1 that works for a majority of citizens & best interest of our Country, cannot exist when private donors able to 'buy' the gov't that works [just] for them! It may take a while to corrupt democracy, but it WILL always corrupt it! The constant focus on giving wealthiest few (the big donors) ever more HUGE TAX CUTS, at the expense of everything & everyone else is proof of that!
Too many Members of Congress have been made rich by that & are now voting on THEIR OWN own Tax Cuts! What's meant to be 'Public Service' to the nation is now a self-enriching, lifetime position. There's still a few who are there for the right reasons & trying to do what's best, to lead our Country & govern for all the people. But they are far out-numbered! We're losing good ones as they get out-spent by big money donors, buying those who will work for THEM, not us.
I bet you can name a few of the "good ones", cuz' they stand out against the background of a Congress that's forgotten who they're supposed to be representing & working for.
What has broken our democratic system CAN BE remedied. And it doesn't have to all be done at once. But it MUST be done! We need to start with 1 thihg that we CAN DO. Do that & then we can do more. But we have NO time to waste! It all begins with free & fair eiections. We need to start with something we can ALL get behind. Something "non threatening" to those who are most afraid of change. Having more choices is a good thing for most people to get behind. But, we need to act on it, not just talk about it endlessly.
We have NO time to waste!
Whoa, didn't know this. It's important.
"Ranked-choice voting reduces the power of money in politics, because so much of it is used for negative campaigning, which becomes less effective in such a system."
BTW folks, buy Hartmann's book at a LOCAL bookstore. Ours is here in Redmond, OR, Herringbone Books.
We've begun a boycott of Amazon, wife and I, since Bezos's destruction of the Washington Post.
This chapter from your book, Thom is rather like reading about elections in Rome.
We don't even know if there will be in an election in 2026 much less 2028, and if so will they be real elections or just a plebescite with for ordained results.
Is there even a real opposition party. In fact has there be a real opposition party, or just a Kabuki theatrical production, where all parties slop at the same trough.
The recent cloture vote, where Schumer and nine others sided with the Republicans is as about as much evidence as I need to cast a judgement, that politic is dead, and actually confirms my opinion post 1964 election, that both parties are two sides of the same coin.
And only a total depression, leading to a revolution where everyone is hurt, can change things.
When the MAGAts realize that theirs was a pyrrhic victory, and that their "victory: of owning the libs, killing DEIA, actually killed themselves, then things can change,
MAGAts have been hitting their thumb with a hammer, but because of delayed reflexes, and the time it takes for signals to travel the neural network to the brain, they just don't realize that they did.
But they are slowly coming to realize what they did, as farmers who voted for Trump because of DEI, realize that they can't pay the bills because USAID programs were cut, and Trusk believes that farm supports, SNAP and WIC are a waste of money that should go into Space X and Occupy Mars.
It's a great book Thom.
"Pertinent issues" seem to get lost in the dust in all scenarios. Pertinent issues are always changing. But what the public needs to know is what the more fundamental philosophy, thinking, and attitudes are of the people running. Unless we can know more about those things, I think it is a crap shoot. More exposure and sunlight or information is needed to have adequate discussions and choices. I suspect ranked choice would facilitate that, although we actually had Democrats arguing against it here in NV in this last election, while there was big money behind the proponents as I recall and understood what was happening.
Pertinent: slave or free?
That was my point, if I understand your question. If a candidate doesn't demonstrate a firm commitment to democracy, what they say about a tariff or tax is not worth debating about. But confusion about ranked choice remains.
Thank you! Yes, I'm convinced that if the US had been using ranked choice voting (RCV) in nationwide elections for the past several decades, we would not be in the severely polarized political mess we're in now. RCV tends, by its very nature, to weed out extremist ideas and candidates.
My home state of Virginia has been experimenting successfully with the use of RCV in local elections, but, thus far, efforts to extend the use of RCV to statewide elections have not succeeded. Pro-RCV legislation passed by Virginia's General Assembly in its recent session faces a likely veto from our Republican governor Glenn Youngkin. Republicans too often approach RCV in much the same way they approach what amount to voter suppression laws. Rather than offer popular ideas that will win over voters, they prefer to manipulate the voting population and methods in ways that they hope might favor their own anti-democratic agendas. In fact, however, RCV does not intrinsically favor one party over another.
Ranked-choice makes a lot of sense today because both the Republican and Democratic parties practically-speaking no longer exist. What we have is a fascist cult of know-nothings and everybody else - the greedy bullies and the bullied. I read yesterday that Granny Pelosi is telling Democrats to dump the Senate minority leader for not opposing the MAGA mob's CR as if she still calls the shots. Voting for individuals vs platforms is all there seems to be left.
As both parties have disintegrated so have their values and integrity. I watch as a US president hourly breaks laws and traditions without consequence or political opposition. Well, there are consequences for we citizens as money drains from our NYSE investments and into the coffers of fascist oligarchs. It is likely that our democracy will soon look like downtown Gaza - a useless pile of rubble that cannot be rebuilt - only replaced.
More depressing is "Russi-Russia-Russia." Politico reported last night that it was no hoax as Trump asserts. It is real. If we were woke enough, we might notice Moscow doing its happy-dance over Trump's willingness to force Ukraine into surrender while he dismantles NATO, and leaves open the global door to Russian imperialism. Sadly, the world's democracies have, wittingly or not, enabled all this.
I’m grateful to be educated on this. Thank you Thom❣️
Thom, Captain my Captain I may agree with all this on voting but people don’t like change even it’s a much better idea. You have to change a lot of minds when people don’t lie change. I, do agree with you though on all this. It makes sense Captain my Captain only you would have to explain something that is really quite understandable. Thank you.
Drumph (Trumps real name from when they ran whore houses) wasn’t elected in 2024 Greg Palast has proven it. The more people that take the time to watch Vigilante Inc., interviews with Thom and Kyle Kalinsky the weaker Drumph will be. In a civilized world that would be grounds for impeachment and installing Kamala. But, we don’t currently live in that world. However, dealing with voter suppression just might bring power back to the people.
Ranked choice voting is a great concept. The problem with it is that the best protection against fraud or errors in electronic voting systems is a post-election audit that manually recounts a statistically significant random sample of ballots actually cast by voters. And the complexity of ranked choice voting makes that impractical.
Good analysis. Every system has limits and RCV has some.
For one, it likely has a ceiling in terms of number of voters. It would be doubtful that it would work well in a national election.
Second, in some cases, a real runoff is preferable. This would likely be the case for a presidential election. Just look at countries like France.
Third, it does not fix a poor structure. A system of electing a monarch under the name of "president" would not be fixed. Instead, there should be a parliamentary system that can dissolve the government if there is misbehavior.
Last, it is not a substitute for representative democracy on complex issues. The limits of direct democracy have been seen quite often in large states with ballot initiatives and referenda. Consider Prop 13 in California as a start. The number of alternatives needing clarification in the making of legislation cannot be substituted by RCV.
Ranked-choice voting reduces the power of money in politics, because so much of it is used for negative campaigning, which becomes less effective in such a system.
This is not true because of this.
If no one wins outright in the first round.
The "If no one wins outright in the first round" massively incentivizes " power of money in politics" as it eliminates all future expenditures after the first round. Do the mental graph, seven candidates are in the primary defending and fending off competing issues and one candidate dominates all media and exposure with a small set of emotional issues and outright lies. Who wins. Oh, we have actually experienced that - money wins.
Agreed we need more than one party - the rank solution is just a rank tweaking inside the 2 party system.
Another approach to multiple parties is here.
The US needs 5 political parties. Say 2 national parties, as existing. And say 3 regional parties. One could be the upper Midwest party centered in Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. The other two regional parties are yet to be identified. The upper Midwest party would take its roots from the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL) and the North Dakota Democratic–Nonpartisan League Party The focus would initially be to gain one or two US Senators from each state in this regional party. Ten swing Senators, not beholden to the coffers of either the RNC or DNC would be the beginning of a compromising Senate. Leadership, initial, could be steered by Jon Tester, Liz Cheney and Tim Walz. This steering group would accept the caveat that they are no longer seeking elected public office. Warren Buffet could upfront the 1 Billion dollars required to set up and make viable a new political organization capable of competing in national politics from a regional perspective.
Although Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) may be the most widely known type of Ranked Choice Voting (RCV), it does not always elect the candidate who is most widely acceptable to voters. To achieve that, RCV ballots have to be tallied by the Condorcet method, which does not serially eliminate candidates with the fewest votes. Instead, when no candidate receives a majority of the first preference votes, it compares all candidates by a head-to-head tally in order find which one prevails most often. (For a detailed explanation of the process see https://www.equal.vote/minimax.)
For instance, Mary Pelota (D) prevailed over Nick Begich (R) and Sara Palin (R) in Alaska's 2022 IRV election (when many of Palin's supporters failed to name Begich as their second choice), whereas a Condorcet tally would have awarded the election to Begich because so many of Pelota's supporters named him as their second choice. In other words, a Condorcet tally would have accurately identified the underlying majority of moderate Republican voters in Alaska, and provided in 2022 the result that was subsequently reached in the 2024 IRV election by strategic withdrawal of two out of the three Republican contenders – a ploy which left the two party system (and Trump's patronage machine) perfectly intact.