PandaDoc employees arrested in Belarus after founders protest against violence

I mean, you now have a few more people to go to.

Like, I used to live in Kansas City, Missouri. I used to have exactly one representative I could go to, but his reelection is almost surely guaranteed as long as he wants to keep running. He has run the exact same campaign against the exact same opponent, Jacob Turk, since 2006, besting him by 10-20 points and taking the seat. One of the larger roads across the center of the city is named after Cleaver. With a proportional house I could instead be heard by 8 different folks.

More importantly, in a proportional house my vote can really matter to Cleaver. Maybe he is just a beloved politician and will be the top of the party list no matter what his party is: so maybe his re-election is always guaranteed no matter whether he runs a one-off race against Jacob Turk or not. But he still cares because my vote can be the difference between an extra ally in the House or not. So if I come to him and say “hey I normally vote for your party but we have had a ridiculous heat wave and the scientists are telling us this is our new normal under anthropogenic climate change” he is much more likely to think “oh yeah, I need to care about that because Missouri is being wracked by heat and droughts.”

> Unfortunately, history tells us that almost all major gains in freedom come, at one point, through violent conflict/sacrifice.

No, it doesn't. Recent history tells us exactly the opposite:

1) Rise of democracy in Latin America in the 70s and 80s (Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Brazil)

2) Collapse of communism on Eastern Europe in the 80s and 90s.

3) Democracy in Eastern Asia in the 80s (Indonesia, Korea, Philippines, Pakistan).

4) Nigeria, Spain, Greece

These were achieved through pacific means. The cases of dictatorships that became democracies through violence are very few: Portugal, Romania...

Prior history of violent conflict is precisely what led to dictatorships hardening (leftist guerrilla groups in Argentina, Chile, Brazil and Uruguay, tentative coup in Indonesia, etc.)

Also, violent reaction against dictatorships quite often leads to other dictatorships (e.g.: Nicaragua, Cuba, Iran).

Edit: again, my point is that violent reaction against oppressive regimes is foolish and leads to the opposite of freedom. Violence is the authoritarians' favorite game because it provides them an excuse to do what they do best: brutal repression. You are already loosing when you play their preferred game.

Yes, in general the ones that left are more pro EU than russia (though the ones that left for Moscow are more pro Russia).

And I agree that EU should put more pressure on the whole subject. I see the eastern countries like Lithuania, Poland and Latvia trying to make waves/raise concerns, but central and western Europe not so much (ask a Portuguese where Belarus is, and he won't know) and are more invested in the BLM issues than what is happening at the EU borders (in Portugal, most don't event know what is going on there when I talk with them.

I wish all the best to the belarussian people, and they have shown to the world their desire but also their alues by their way of correctly and peacefully way to protest and demand change. I hope it is not for nothing.

The states are free to choose their way of allocating their House representatives so long as they are directly elected. I don’t know if Proportional Allocation would count as directly elected, and to force all states to go along with it you definitely need an amendment.

You're much more likely to get "your" representative in this model.

In geography-based districting, you only have a chance to vote for someone who represents your interests if they run in your district. Gerrymandering is often perpetuated under claims that we need to draw districts to group like voters so they can have representation.

Example: Black majority districts were drawn to allow for Black representatives, but also are used to concentrate Black votes and remove them from other districts. With no districts Black voters instead could still support black candidates across a state and get representation that way. Even better, with multi-seat districts they can vote for multiple candidates for different reasons, including policy; effectiveness; honesty; faith or lack-of; gender, race, sexual-orientation representation; etc...

Proportional representation allows voters to support representatives regardless of proximity, so even smaller minority groups - including minority viewpoints and parties - can effectively pool votes to get representation. If ~10% of the population is socialist, they'll almost never get a socialist representative with districts, but you could expect ~10% representation with proportional representation.