I am glad that this passed in California, but this whole thing makes me feel terrible for the outlook of the country. I’ve been interested in counter-gerrymandering and alternative voting methods like ranked choice voting for a while now. I had loved seeing some states like California and Colorado taking steps to better elections.
But of course, having better and better elections in blue states just allowed red states to have worse and worse elections to seize control at a national level. I don’t know how you fix this problem, other than to do what California did and beat them at their own game. I don’t see a constitutional amendment being passed to help any time soon.
allowed red states to have worse and worse elections to cease control at a national level
If only they’d cease 🥲
Americans, I highly encourage you to do everything you can to seize the means of federal elections, and put it in the hands of an independent federal electoral commission, instead of the nonsense state administration you currently have.
Maybe one day you’ll have a voting system as good as ours (one point we are very proud of).
Honestly, this is arguably the most significant thing for America for the night. Countering Texas’ Gerrymander is big, but it’s not as sexy of a story.
I find it very interesting that it was put up to a vote in California. In Texas, the legislators just took it upon themselves to cheat. “Going high” is going to bite the dems in the ass eventually, though.
Texas doesn’t allow for citizens to gather signatures to put something directly on the ballot. The politicians control everything.
CA citizens used a citizen-led ballot initiative to take the redistricting keys away from the legislature. Stuff like this has to go before voters in CA.
It HAD to go before a vote in Cali. We didn’t have a choice politically since our independent election map commission is enshrined into the state constitution. In Texas they don’t have anything remotely enshrined into their constitution so for us here in Cali we had to put it to the people and even then it’s sorta weak since it has an exact end date in 2030. It’s only here for one cycle before it falls off and goes back. Which could be dangerous if the other states don’t stop gerrymandering.
It’s preferable that it has an end date since it’s intentionally cheating the system for the greater good. I’d rather have it keep going up for a vote every 5 years so we can choose to put it back as needed.
No, they are cheating, just with the blessing of the public. Like gerrymandering isn’t a thing you should be able to do, fullstop, but it isn’t something normally possible to do in California.
Yes, there’s a California rule that states that redistricting is done by a non-partisan commission. This explicitly sidesteps that process. They’re breaking a rule with permission but they’re still breaking a rule.
If your DM rules that you can have two actions in a turn without reason, it’s still cheating.
I’d argue this is explicitly not cheating. Revising the rules though a democratic process IS democracy.
The D&D example is closer since it doesn’t explicitly call for buy-in from the whole table, but the first and only rule of D&D is to have fun with the DM being chief facilitator. The PHB and DMG are just suggestions. If this favoritism caused others in the party to feel slighted, then it would be ‘cheating’.
Yeah, I agree, that is also very important. But I still think that getting rid of Pelosi and the other ghouls in the DNC would/could be the most important thing right now. The Democratic Party desperately needs a renewal, a progressive reform and to embrace real left-wing, socialist politics to save the middle class from sliding down and help poor people to break out - as opposed to give in to every wish and whim of billionaire oligarchs who are stealing literally all wealth from the rest of society.
The whole ‘let’s follow the republicans further and further to the right to grab the centrist’s votes’ idea clearly is not working. It is not making peoples’ lives better (except for the oligarchs). And it is not even helping democrats win elections and secure power any more.
Appeasement didn’t work against the nazis, why would it work against MAGA?
But unfortunately Pelosi, Schumer, Jeffries and the rest of these cronies are all absolutely hellbent on keeping up with the appeasement. They all need to retire or get primaried, or the US is lost to fascism for who knows how many decades.
The way I always put it, moving left may not win us elections (and those imagining a quiet leftist supermajority need to talk to more normies), but sure as shit it’s been proven that neither will moving right.
Moving left will improve the country, while moving right will make it worse.
Ceteris paribus, the choice should be obvious: moving left isn’t a panacea for our electoral problems, but it is still very much the preferable choice. Caution may be called for on specific issues, but in general, the American electorate is not very ideological in any coherent sense. ‘Left’ and ‘right’ are feelings for them, and they’ll side with whichever ‘sounds good’ at a given moment.
Let’s purge the Dems of these ancient neoliberal ghouls and move fucking left. I’m so fucking tired. If we still lose, at least this time we’ll lose with a little basic fucking dignity. Which isn’t much, but still a hell of a lot better than selling out and losing anyway.
California passes Prop 50 in a landslide.
I am glad that this passed in California, but this whole thing makes me feel terrible for the outlook of the country. I’ve been interested in counter-gerrymandering and alternative voting methods like ranked choice voting for a while now. I had loved seeing some states like California and Colorado taking steps to better elections.
But of course, having better and better elections in blue states just allowed red states to have worse and worse elections to seize control at a national level. I don’t know how you fix this problem, other than to do what California did and beat them at their own game. I don’t see a constitutional amendment being passed to help any time soon.
If only they’d cease 🥲
Americans, I highly encourage you to do everything you can to seize the means of federal elections, and put it in the hands of an independent federal electoral commission, instead of the nonsense state administration you currently have.
Maybe one day you’ll have a voting system as good as ours (one point we are very proud of).
Love from Australia
Honestly, this is arguably the most significant thing for America for the night. Countering Texas’ Gerrymander is big, but it’s not as sexy of a story.
and its encouraged other blue states do thier own prop 50 too if the gop decides to “fully gerrymander” thier states.
I find it very interesting that it was put up to a vote in California. In Texas, the legislators just took it upon themselves to cheat. “Going high” is going to bite the dems in the ass eventually, though.
Texas doesn’t allow for citizens to gather signatures to put something directly on the ballot. The politicians control everything.
CA citizens used a citizen-led ballot initiative to take the redistricting keys away from the legislature. Stuff like this has to go before voters in CA.
The people are more in control in CA.
Texas has gone so far right, they might as well be 100% in control of every thing a person does at this point.
Every prop appears to have passed yesterday, and only a few are good ideas.
It HAD to go before a vote in Cali. We didn’t have a choice politically since our independent election map commission is enshrined into the state constitution. In Texas they don’t have anything remotely enshrined into their constitution so for us here in Cali we had to put it to the people and even then it’s sorta weak since it has an exact end date in 2030. It’s only here for one cycle before it falls off and goes back. Which could be dangerous if the other states don’t stop gerrymandering.
That or we’ll just leave next time.
It’s preferable that it has an end date since it’s intentionally cheating the system for the greater good. I’d rather have it keep going up for a vote every 5 years so we can choose to put it back as needed.
“Going high”, in this case referring to using democratic principles to govern? That’s not going high, that’s how the system is supposed to work.
Things are so bad that ‘not cheating’ is taking the high road, yeah
No, they are cheating, just with the blessing of the public. Like gerrymandering isn’t a thing you should be able to do, fullstop, but it isn’t something normally possible to do in California.
Working within a broken system isn’t cheating though. Cheating means you’re breaking the rules.
Yes, there’s a California rule that states that redistricting is done by a non-partisan commission. This explicitly sidesteps that process. They’re breaking a rule with permission but they’re still breaking a rule.
If your DM rules that you can have two actions in a turn without reason, it’s still cheating.
I’d argue this is explicitly not cheating. Revising the rules though a democratic process IS democracy.
The D&D example is closer since it doesn’t explicitly call for buy-in from the whole table, but the first and only rule of D&D is to have fun with the DM being chief facilitator. The PHB and DMG are just suggestions. If this favoritism caused others in the party to feel slighted, then it would be ‘cheating’.
Yeah, I agree, that is also very important. But I still think that getting rid of Pelosi and the other ghouls in the DNC would/could be the most important thing right now. The Democratic Party desperately needs a renewal, a progressive reform and to embrace real left-wing, socialist politics to save the middle class from sliding down and help poor people to break out - as opposed to give in to every wish and whim of billionaire oligarchs who are stealing literally all wealth from the rest of society.
The whole ‘let’s follow the republicans further and further to the right to grab the centrist’s votes’ idea clearly is not working. It is not making peoples’ lives better (except for the oligarchs). And it is not even helping democrats win elections and secure power any more.
Appeasement didn’t work against the nazis, why would it work against MAGA?
But unfortunately Pelosi, Schumer, Jeffries and the rest of these cronies are all absolutely hellbent on keeping up with the appeasement. They all need to retire or get primaried, or the US is lost to fascism for who knows how many decades.
The way I always put it, moving left may not win us elections (and those imagining a quiet leftist supermajority need to talk to more normies), but sure as shit it’s been proven that neither will moving right.
Moving left will improve the country, while moving right will make it worse.
Ceteris paribus, the choice should be obvious: moving left isn’t a panacea for our electoral problems, but it is still very much the preferable choice. Caution may be called for on specific issues, but in general, the American electorate is not very ideological in any coherent sense. ‘Left’ and ‘right’ are feelings for them, and they’ll side with whichever ‘sounds good’ at a given moment.
Let’s purge the Dems of these ancient neoliberal ghouls and move fucking left. I’m so fucking tired. If we still lose, at least this time we’ll lose with a little basic fucking dignity. Which isn’t much, but still a hell of a lot better than selling out and losing anyway.