North Carolina Congressional Map Ruled Unconstitutionally Gerrymandered

How bad is it when the Republicans can't even get Samuel Alito to intercede on their behalf?

Breathtaking arrogance. PA GOP now threatening to impeach state SC judges that ruled against them

No they aren't rare. The underdog just needs to be polling in a close 2nd place. The only guarantee that IRV makes is that adding a #2 won't hurt your #1. But voting for your #1 as #1 can hurt them. It's fucked. Only slightly less fucked is the variant (which I used to like a lot) where the candidate with the most last-place votes is eliminated at every round instead of the one with the fewest #1 votes.

Pretty much everything but Approval and Score Voting are terrible. Pairwise voting isn't too bad, but in practice it would probably produce few winners on its own, and combination systems are arguably too complex.

As much as I hate the concept, I'm beginning to think on a practical level that proportional representation is the only possible way to go. I hate it because it gives the parties way too much direct power. But maybe there's some way I haven't thought of yet that keeps the elected officials accountable to a constituency rather than the party.

Not really seeing the argument there, I said that it doesn't happen that much, you pointed out an example of when it can happen that most of the time doesn't. Just had a read of approval voting and while it seems pretty good you can still get lots of situations where you have to vote strategically.

Ultimately the details of what system is used don't matter so much as increasing third party viability.

In the modern world a move towards more proportional representation as you suggest does seem like the "best" solution, but it requires more of a fundamental shakeup of how the system works.

Have you looked at the Klingon system of honor duels?

More on this and other GOP efforts to kill the checks and balances that prevent them doing whatever the fuck they want:

https://crooksandliars.com/2018/02/republican-state-legislatures-weaken-state

That's fiendishly brilliant. Bring that law in, clear the bench, then put forward a bunch of 40 and 50 something judges so that your party rules the court for the next 25 years.

Take every voter in the state and randomly assign them to a virtual district, and do it for every Congressional election. You lose the notion of geographical districts, but there's less funny business. Congressman could never be certain which pool of voters in their state would be their constituents.


I'm only half-joking.

There's a lot of sense there. Sortition is another system we might want to consider - political office as social duty, like jury service. You're not in long enough for lobbyists to have much influence, and they can't predict or rig your appointment.

again, I demand a rep-reaction like this: