The American political system punishes general election voters for not compromising on one of the two major parties. It lacks runoff elections, as well as range or preferential voting strategies so that voters are not so harshly punished by deviating from consensus candidates.
The ensuing dissonance upon understanding this punishment is what encourages our low voter participation rates, as well as hyper-partisan politics, tribalism. In addition, there's a pervasive "government sucks" that contemplating a state by state change in voting law, and it would have to be state by state, seems like dark comedy. It would take a lot of political committment way beyond that of voting 3rd party to fix the problem we have in the American political system. Americans are politically lazy, content to not vote, or vote 3rd party, and suffer the inevitable result, engage in political denialism, than the critical thinking required to fix it.
The effect of closed primary elections also enhances this tribalism and discourse problem. It's maybe 8-12% of the total eligible electorate that get a presidential primary candidate the nomination for the two major parties.
Both major political parties sabotaged the Electoral College by stacking it with party loyalists rather than, you know, smart people or even contemplative people or even randomly selected citizens. We could hardly do worse choosing dead people for Electors.
A case to watch is Gill vs Whitford before the Supreme Court next year.
The ensuing dissonance upon understanding this punishment is what encourages our low voter participation rates, as well as hyper-partisan politics, tribalism. In addition, there's a pervasive "government sucks" that contemplating a state by state change in voting law, and it would have to be state by state, seems like dark comedy. It would take a lot of political committment way beyond that of voting 3rd party to fix the problem we have in the American political system. Americans are politically lazy, content to not vote, or vote 3rd party, and suffer the inevitable result, engage in political denialism, than the critical thinking required to fix it.
The effect of closed primary elections also enhances this tribalism and discourse problem. It's maybe 8-12% of the total eligible electorate that get a presidential primary candidate the nomination for the two major parties.
Both major political parties sabotaged the Electoral College by stacking it with party loyalists rather than, you know, smart people or even contemplative people or even randomly selected citizens. We could hardly do worse choosing dead people for Electors.
A case to watch is Gill vs Whitford before the Supreme Court next year.