Legit, if you have never contacted your reps in Congress before to let them know that they should be supporting a bill this is the time to do it. Make as much noise as possible on this one. It has the potential to be more impactful on every issue than most any other bill concerning a single issue. The only contenders I could think of would be campaign finance reforms or possibly some prohibitive action against regulatory capture.
*Gerrymandering raises it’s hand.
There was (still is?) the Fair Vote Act that got introduced and immediately buried in committee for several sessions that addressed both RCV and gerrymandering. I’ve lost hope for it and stopped paying attention to it getting reintroduced.
RCV will still have an effect on gerrymandered districts. It disrupts the clear funding strategies of lining up behind a single/pair of candidate(s). It becomes either a lot less guaranteed that your funding dollars are being put to good use, or a lot more expensive to make sure that they are. [Caveat: this obviously assumes some depth of a viable candidacy pool in a given district/race.]
Great, now do the Senate and President as well. FPTP needs to die.
Everyone on the left who complains about the lack of choice in elections should take note of which party these three politicians are from.
I assure you, Republicans are happy to let first-past-the-post and two-party rule continue until they’re finally able to seize all the levers of power. The only feasible way to give third parties any power whatsoever is to take your medicine and vote for Democrats.
The left in the U.S. seemingly has such a poor grasp of coalition oriented politics despite needing exactly that in order to become viable at all as political entities. It’s maddening. If people on the left en masse could put their ideals on the back burner long enough (and we’re only talking a couple/few election cycles) to force through issues of vote reform and campaign finance reform by working through the Democrats they could spend the rest of their lives voting for people that a) actually represent their values and b) actually have a shot at being elected.
Edit: That time frame may be optimistic, but the point stands. Cooperation/consolidation amongst the genuine left as a voting block/political force, and doing so through the currently actionable political channels, is what it’s going to take to get to where we want to go.
Why do these three being Democrats excuse the rest of the party being to the right of Reagan these days? Those people taking note can also take note of the liberals in the party crushing this bill just as hard as their Republican counterparts. Progressives always take a back seat to the corporate loving war mongers that make up a bulk of the party.
This is the exact reason why we need ranked choice voting, so that progressives can actually get some representation for once.
What are your ideas for enacting ranked choice voting that don’t involve leveraging the Democrats to make it happen?
It could maybe happen in individual states that allow citizen introduced ballot measures. That would be great. The scope and efficacy of that idea is pretty stunted though. You’d have to hope the measure passes in the first place, and counting on it to act as a catalyst for every other state to adopt the same is unrealistic. I’d expect a much longer time horizon on that approach than engaging with Democrats as far as making it the standard for the country at large.
That’s the other alternative I can think of to get the foot in the door, but I’m very open to hearing anything else that’s feasible.
Nowhere did I suggest that Democrats can’t be leveraged to pass this. I simply stated that the actions of a few party members doesn’t absolve the rest of the party of their actions and that it’s likely their fellow party members will crush this bill so that they can retain our two party system.
Fuck yeah Peter Welch!
