111–120 of 222 posts
The fascinating bromance between Steve Jobs and Ross Perot https://www.cake.co/conversations/DwwvjtB/the-fascinating-br... is a fun read.
https://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/27/business/the-irritant-the...
I had no idea he was that interesting!
Many remember Perot as the goofy rich guy who ran for president in 92, but what many don’t know is that he funded NeXT computer - Steve Jobs’ post-Apple venture that was later acquired by Apple and transformed computing for the next decade. Interface Builder and the NextStep core libraries were arguably one of the biggest catalysts of the iPhone App ecosystem. In many ways iOS exists because of NeXT. So while it was…
It really glosses over and ignores the actual history of OSX by going directly from describing NeXT, to iphone stuff. The first releases of OSX were basically NeXT with a weird half baked apple GUI on top of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Server_1.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Public_Beta As OSX has evolved as its own product, of course it's been diverging from its roots, but even as recently a…
In the popular vote, it was 44,909,889 for Clinton, 39,104,545 for Bush, and 19,743,821 for Perot. While Clinton still had the majority, more than half the votes cast for President were not for him -- in other words, the majority of voters did not want Clinton to be elected President.
Some sort of system which uses "rounds" to narrow the field down to two candidates could work; but, it's hard enough to get people to vote once, much less several times.
Perot's Presidential candidacy is a good example of why we need the Electoral College and cannot simply go with the "winner" of the popular vote. Clinton had 370 Electoral College votes, Bush had 168, and Perot had 0. Not only did Clinton win easily, he had a majority of ALL the Electoral College votes. In the popular vote, it was 44,909,889 for Clinton, 39,104,545 for Bush, and 19,743,821 for Perot. While Clinton st…
Perot's Presidential candidacy is a good example of why we need the Electoral College and cannot simply go with the "winner" of the popular vote. Clinton had 370 Electoral College votes, Bush had 168, and Perot had 0. Not only did Clinton win easily, he had a majority of ALL the Electoral College votes. In the popular vote, it was 44,909,889 for Clinton, 39,104,545 for Bush, and 19,743,821 for Perot. While Clinton st…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ranked choice might work for parliaments, but it would just create unwelcome surprises in the US. I cannot help but think what happened in a sport (NASCAR) with its switch from winner take all to a series of rankings would mean if it were something as important as voting. You might find sports is not a serious argument, but this is the US and the reaction shows some tendencies towards other aspects of life.
FPTP is one of the most efficient and fundamental enemies of democracy, plaguing the USA. Everyone agrees partisanship is bad, people looooove a “bipartisan” bill, but FPTP mathematically converges on a two party system, always. It fuels tribalism and us-vs-them mentality like nothing else and perpetuates a political aristocracy through perverse incentives and hamstrung competition. To see this in effect, consider th…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q7rzqJ0YS8
https://rangevoting.org/Duverger.html
There are better single-winner systems that truly fix this problem, of which the clearest example is approval voting.
Perot's Presidential candidacy is a good example of why we need the Electoral College and cannot simply go with the "winner" of the popular vote. Clinton had 370 Electoral College votes, Bush had 168, and Perot had 0. Not only did Clinton win easily, he had a majority of ALL the Electoral College votes. In the popular vote, it was 44,909,889 for Clinton, 39,104,545 for Bush, and 19,743,821 for Perot. While Clinton st…
Perot's Presidential candidacy is a good example of why we need the Electoral College and cannot simply go with the "winner" of the popular vote. Clinton had 370 Electoral College votes, Bush had 168, and Perot had 0. Not only did Clinton win easily, he had a majority of ALL the Electoral College votes. In the popular vote, it was 44,909,889 for Clinton, 39,104,545 for Bush, and 19,743,821 for Perot. While Clinton st…
Electoral college is a valuable part of US elections but gerrymandering and winner-take-all states destroy the institutions usefulness.
Alternative:
1. End "winner-take-all" allocations of electoral votes
2. Any party that gains the minimum population/electoral vote (Wyoming puts that at ~200k) in any state is guaranteed at least one electoral vote in that state
3. All remaining electoral votes are allocated proportionally based on general election votes
4. If no majority winner exists, the party with the least number of electoral votes casts their vote to other party/ies and this repeats until a winner obtains 270. If a rather obstinate third party refuses to proxy their votes, those votes are dropped when calculating majority.
This should remove the spoiler effect, function within the current voting system, and off-set any perceived difficulty in rank voting to the actual parties. It would also provide a strong leverage point for third parties to have a say in government policies which is probably why it would never be adopted willingly.
Perot's Presidential candidacy is a good example of why we need the Electoral College and cannot simply go with the "winner" of the popular vote. Clinton had 370 Electoral College votes, Bush had 168, and Perot had 0. Not only did Clinton win easily, he had a majority of ALL the Electoral College votes. In the popular vote, it was 44,909,889 for Clinton, 39,104,545 for Bush, and 19,743,821 for Perot. While Clinton st…
I think it's very unfortunate how high the bar is for third-party candidates to be competitive.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ranked choice might work for parliaments, but it would just create unwelcome surprises in the US. I cannot help but think what happened in a sport (NASCAR) with its switch from winner take all to a series of rankings would mean if it were something as important as voting. You might find sports is not a serious argument, but this is the US and the reaction shows some tendencies towards other aspects of life.
FPTP is one of the most efficient and fundamental enemies of democracy, plaguing the USA. Everyone agrees partisanship is bad, people looooove a “bipartisan” bill, but FPTP mathematically converges on a two party system, always. It fuels tribalism and us-vs-them mentality like nothing else and perpetuates a political aristocracy through perverse incentives and hamstrung competition. To see this in effect, consider th…
Partisanship is generally good,or at least not bad, in democracies.
Having two big-tent parties that shift platforms in search of a minimal winning coalition renders partisanship into empty tribalism, which is bad.
> people looooove a “bipartisan” bill
Bipartisan bills are the worst because they typically represent consensus of the (otherwise fragmented) elites against the people.
> but FPTP mathematically converges on a two party system, always.
FPTP creates structural incentives toward a two-party system, but voting behavior and party membership is not mathematically-determined behavior and thus no vote counting system “mathematically converges on” any party arrangement.
> To see this in effect, consider that a major party is incentivised to fund fringe opposition parties which will steal votes from the main rival.
And yet they rarely do; more often, and mor perniciously in practical effect, is that they are incentivized to negative campaigning since getting someone who would otherwise vote for the opposition to not vote is just as good as getting someone who is undecided to vote for you.
> There are many alternatives and RCV might not be your first choice, but make no mistake about it
IRV is very nearly the worst even semi-seriously advocated method that isn't FPTP (I won't call it RCV, since there are many ranked choice methods and IRV is worse than virtually all the rest.)
It is so little of an improvement over FPTP that I suspect the harm it would do to the entire idea of electoral reform through the disappointment it would produce in failing to fix the problems motivating a change in voting system would outweigh the very slight improvements it would produce.