As I have read about use of ranked choice voting, it sounds interesting as a way to improve voter choice. However, as one who supported term limits and has since seen what a disaster it has been, I am hesitant to try another “experiment”. Top two also got my support and, to me at least, seems to be somewhat successful but now has begun having other nonhelpful problems. I’ll keep watching and learning. Multimember districts seems, at this point, just too radical.
Citizens United has to go
This wretched decision has silenced the voices of all but the stupidly rich and greedy donors....
Ranked Choice has been considered an option before but I do not have enough faith in the California voter that he/she would respond to this option in any way that would producee better results. The basic problem is to get better candidates. candidatess
Right now, we have a duopoly between the Democrats and Republicans. As long as we don’t change the voting system, both Democrats and Republicans will blame third-party candidates for stealing their votes, so we can’t get better candidates because anybody running as a third-party candidate would only weaken the lesser-evil candidate and hand the win to the evil candidate.
Different voting system like RCV are meant to fix that problem. People can vote for a third-party candidate and also the duopoly candidates, so additional candidates aren’t handing the evil candidate the win over the lesser evil candidate. This should improve the quality of candidates.
I don’t understand why anybody ever supported term limits. It seems obvious that a term limit only disenfranchises the voters by making tried and true candidates unable to keep winning, no matter how many voters love them. Term limits encourages short-sightedness and motivates candidates to not care about how they perform during their last term.
Sorry, the ONLY people who benefit from lack of term limits are candidates stock portfolios and the 1%. You gave no way of removing big donors from office. A civics professor once told me that before you vote (especially for incumbents); do the math and follow the money. If you can’t, then they are up to no good. Another thing the professor told me, that the longer a politician is in office, the more loopholes they learn about (from older politicians) to screw over thier constituents. He also said that that my vote was like a tip at a restaurant. It isn’t anyones obligation to give one, and you should only give it for good service, not for poor service, or for getting no service at all. My granny once told me that politicians were like the trash, if you don’t take them out often enough they start to stink. That being said, name one politician in either party who did not leave office (dead or not) a millionaire/billionaire on less than 200k a year? Or if they already were, that the 200k a year (average) was all they earned in office. (example) Diane Feinstein (her dad was a doctor, her mom an alcoholic) was worth an estimated 88 million when she passed, and had been in politics since 1955, straight out of college. My parents are younger than that. 68 years of (alleged) service. Quick math, we will do averages and assume that state and local representatives make more or less the same as federal representatives at the same level, knowing that she flipped offices alot.
Congresspeople get paid what? 170k (now)? 170,000×68=11,560,000 over 68 years.
The salary in 1955 was between 12 and 22K, so 17k average. That is 1,156.000 for 68 years.
So if we calculate half her alleged “service” at the 1955 salary, that would be 78k.
And the other 34 years at the modern salary that would be 5,780,000. 5780000 + 78000= 5,858,000.
Where did the rest of her over 82 million come from??
Tax dollars, and whichever blue antique representatives people have been voting for because the DNC told them to are taking just as much.
At an extra 82 million each x 535 members of congress is 43,870,000,000. Nearly 44 BILLION goes to people making 170k. (??)
The federal education budget is around 160 billion. So 535 congress people are sponging nearly a third of the federal education budget.
According to a quick search there are about 500,000 elected politicians (most local) nationwide.
You can do the fiddly math about how much those politicians are sucking out of your states tax dollars, but if each of the 500k “”earn”” only half of Feinsteins estimated 88 million that is 500,000 x 44,000,000 = 22,000,000,000,000. They don’t stay in office to serve thier constituents, just thier stock portfolio.
Liars, cheaters, narcissists, sheep, malcontents and red/blue sycophants are incredibly expensive aren’t they? Imagine what we could do if we could apply all that to education and health care?? Oh right, but Feinsteins CA 60’s hippy, palm-reader, psychic and Tarot card reader side hustle was likely quite lucrative I am sure. My uncle had chicken pox as a kid, and shingles twice as an adult, both before he was 50. You bet your a55 everyone in my family over 50 is vaccinated. Feinstein had NO business even going back to DC after that, especially not at 90 but the DNC wouldn’t cut her loose to pass away with what little dignity she had left. I have been nonpartisan since age 18 because I actually paid attention in civics classes.