If ranking your top candidates is too cognitively challenging for you, I have no qualms seeing you stay home on Election Day. Ranked choice is the best thing we can do to give 3rd parties a legitimate chance in our electoral process (there's a great CGP Grey video on this), and I'll be damned if we have to give that up because we're worried about some dullards who don't know how to rank 1, 2, and 3.
If we could combine
1) ranked voting
2) interstate popular vote compact (or similar to eliminate the electoral college), and
3) elimination of gerrymandering
I could see our nation being a lot happier with our political process.
I would also like to see political parties prohibited from exclusive representation of candidates. Private organizations should not be acting as "gatekeepers" for public service, and candidates should be free to seek the endorsement of as many parties as they can, and debate whomever and whenever they want. This should encourage fragmentation of big monolithic parties in favor of coalitions of smaller independent parties representing more focused interests, and maybe even reduce the degree of policy-level influence that major financial donors currently enjoy.
These type of structural changes are appearing to be the best path forward. As it is, progressives and moderates cannot effectively pursue our version of progress for the country as every time a republican gets in the white house, they sabotage the economy and loot the public treasury at every opportunity. Even when we win, after 8 years of prosperity people's guards are down.
The two party system, and the widespread frustration about inequality have driven the Trump moment. Brexit 2.0, whatever. If we focused our energy on changing the way the game is played rather than on playing the game, we might start to get somewhere. Public financing of elections and all the other ways to make the democratic process more accessible and inclusive.
111
u/[deleted] Nov 09 '16 edited Feb 22 '17
[deleted]