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Its hard to ascribe individual responsibility in that way when the only two choices were existentially awful. "You elected an idiot president...", the choices

Its hard to ascribe individual responsibility in that way when the only two choices were existentially awful. "You elected an idiot president...", the choices were Communism, or Fascism; which is recoverable and better for people. Certainly not the former, but to be clear neither are a real choice when you vote for democracy, and not voting is a vote for both fascism/communism at the same time. Such was a similar failure and rise of demagogues that ruined Rome. First-passed-the-post voting is fundamentally flawed, and so is ranked choice...

malnourish 1y ago
I am legitimately surprised that someone who can write complete and cogent sentences believes that a vote for one of the two presidential candidates was a vote for communism.
- yoyohello13 1y ago
  These days, any sort of tax on the wealthy at all is seen as full blown communism.
dragonwriter 1y ago
[flagged]
TheBicPen 1y ago
> First-passed-the-post voting is fundamentally flawed, and so is ranked choice... What voting system so you think is best? None are perfect but IMO ranked choice is the best as it keeps the good attributes of FPTP without suffering from the spoiler effect
- JoshTriplett 1y ago
  When most people say "ranked choice" they seem to refer to IRV, which is broken in multiple ways, but most notably that it has the property that ranking someone higher can make them lose and ranking someone lower can make them win. That happens because IRV ignores all of someone's preferences except their top choice, until their top choice is thrown out, at which point IRV looks at their next preference. There are much better systems: approval (for simplicity, at the expense of more accurate preference information) and Condorcet (for accuracy, at the expense of making it more difficult to explain tie-breaker corner cases to the average person).
- trod1234 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - nemomarx 1y ago
    you're getting the karma for calling Harris a communist not for making the very normal observation that first past the post is a bad system Harris was promising to be tough on border and crime and to expand the military, she was basically a bush Republican
    - trod1234 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - ProjectArcturis 1y ago
        You should reexamine your media diet, because it has you believing absolutely insane things.
        trod1234 1y ago
        Well, you should stop being evil and rather be specific and unambiguous in what you are communicating instead of the vile sort of things you are doing; that is only if you want to demonstrate you are operating from a place of good faith and earnest sincerity. The absence of such specificity in general correspondence following such is both admission and confession. Most of what was said is strongly supported by established facts. What you say is just your hollow-opinion and downvote power to muzzle. As far as I can tell you are simply play-acting and utilizing common tactics found in political warfare, what most people call "Identity Politics" or political nullification, where you label someone as part of a group falsely, and then use that group as false justification to disregard/nullify anything they may say in their defense while continuing to criticize and gaslight through distorted reflected appraisal you create in a purposeful trauma loop. Just so you know, if you haven't figured it out yet I'm at a point where downvotes aren't going to muzzle me because you don't muzzle truth and rational thought and remain a good person. The circumstance described is ironically distinctly different though seemingly similar from risk management in existential situations given the absence of information but presence of strong indicators supporting a likelihood (children often are just like their parents). There are many places where recognizing nuance is important. While I conveyed a risk assessment, you are doing so with the effect to attack the person exercising their rights to convey truths through speech and idea. I find that morally bankrupt and reprehensible. Be specific about what you call people, and the things you call insane, most would say this reasoning is quite conservative given the risk, known knowns and known unknowns that directly go to character, and by extension outcome. We live in a world of mutually assured destruction, what happens when crazy people call the rational people crazy, purge them, and get themselves into a position to push that proverbial button. MAD doesn't work under the irrational and insane. Its far easier to destroy than to create, and evil people don't even realize that is what they are doing through small, mindless but iterative action ever marching forward to a single unthinkable outcome. Extinction is a very real possibility that few deeply consider the ramifications of. Discerning people fact check for credibility both with words and in context, and liars of the most vile kind eventually must pay the piper in the consequences they set in motion through their own choices and action. The same goes for platforms that through design choice of systems, emerge outcomes that discard truth/reason promoting disunity, falsehoods and deception. There's a reason there's a growing movement of people leaving HN. The crazies often don't recognize that they are crazy unfortunately, and they certainly don't base their communications or reasoning on objective measurable support or established facts.
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  Ranked Choice Voting (aka Instant Runoff Voting) is the single worst of the very many seriously proposed ranked ballots method; it retains most of what is bad about FPTP. It is somewhat easier to tally than the best (in terms of the logic of who wins) ranked ballots methods (methods satisfying the Condorcet criterion), but not particularly good even on that among all ranked ballots methods, e.g., it can be improved in that dimension by just adding all preferences of the next rank until a candidate crosses the maiority threshold without elimination, which also reduces the degree to which the system is prone to paradoxical effects (promoting a candidate causing them to lose by changing the order others are eliminated.)
  - unethical_ban 1y ago
    River method is better, but any ranked method is better than approval for sure, and literally any multiple-choice method is better than FPTP. >adding all preferences of the next rank until a candidate crosses the maiority threshold without elimination I don't follow, what method is that?
mindslight 1y ago
"Don't blame me, I voted conservative" Funny how all the people who would traditionally trot out that phrase immediately forgot it as soon as the other team had the conservative candidate.
triceratops 1y ago
> the choices were Communism, or Fascism Which was which? I see both right now.
bryanlarsen 1y ago
By European standards, Biden & Harris are solidly right-wing. Bernie would be centre-left.
CursedSilicon 1y ago
Do...do you know what communism is? It's not "the government does stuff and I don't like it"
unethical_ban 1y ago
No, a choice for Harris was not a choice for Communism. By no means. Now, I would like to hear your specific recommendations for alternatives to FPTP or ranked choice voting. Approval? Multimember?

malnourish 1y ago

I am legitimately surprised that someone who can write complete and cogent sentences believes that a vote for one of the two presidential candidates was a vote for communism.

yoyohello13 1y ago
These days, any sort of tax on the wealthy at all is seen as full blown communism.

dragonwriter 1y ago

[flagged]

TheBicPen 1y ago

> First-passed-the-post voting is fundamentally flawed, and so is ranked choice... What voting system so you think is best? None are perfect but IMO ranked choice is the best as it keeps the good attributes of FPTP without suffering from the spoiler effect

JoshTriplett 1y ago
When most people say "ranked choice" they seem to refer to IRV, which is broken in multiple ways, but most notably that it has the property that ranking someone higher can make them lose and ranking someone lower can make them win. That happens because IRV ignores all of someone's preferences except their top choice, until their top choice is thrown out, at which point IRV looks at their next preference. There are much better systems: approval (for simplicity, at the expense of more accurate preference information) and Condorcet (for accuracy, at the expense of making it more difficult to explain tie-breaker corner cases to the average person).
trod1234 1y ago
[flagged]
- nemomarx 1y ago
  you're getting the karma for calling Harris a communist not for making the very normal observation that first past the post is a bad system Harris was promising to be tough on border and crime and to expand the military, she was basically a bush Republican
  - trod1234 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - ProjectArcturis 1y ago
      You should reexamine your media diet, because it has you believing absolutely insane things.
      - trod1234 1y ago
        Well, you should stop being evil and rather be specific and unambiguous in what you are communicating instead of the vile sort of things you are doing; that is only if you want to demonstrate you are operating from a place of good faith and earnest sincerity. The absence of such specificity in general correspondence following such is both admission and confession. Most of what was said is strongly supported by established facts. What you say is just your hollow-opinion and downvote power to muzzle. As far as I can tell you are simply play-acting and utilizing common tactics found in political warfare, what most people call "Identity Politics" or political nullification, where you label someone as part of a group falsely, and then use that group as false justification to disregard/nullify anything they may say in their defense while continuing to criticize and gaslight through distorted reflected appraisal you create in a purposeful trauma loop. Just so you know, if you haven't figured it out yet I'm at a point where downvotes aren't going to muzzle me because you don't muzzle truth and rational thought and remain a good person. The circumstance described is ironically distinctly different though seemingly similar from risk management in existential situations given the absence of information but presence of strong indicators supporting a likelihood (children often are just like their parents). There are many places where recognizing nuance is important. While I conveyed a risk assessment, you are doing so with the effect to attack the person exercising their rights to convey truths through speech and idea. I find that morally bankrupt and reprehensible. Be specific about what you call people, and the things you call insane, most would say this reasoning is quite conservative given the risk, known knowns and known unknowns that directly go to character, and by extension outcome. We live in a world of mutually assured destruction, what happens when crazy people call the rational people crazy, purge them, and get themselves into a position to push that proverbial button. MAD doesn't work under the irrational and insane. Its far easier to destroy than to create, and evil people don't even realize that is what they are doing through small, mindless but iterative action ever marching forward to a single unthinkable outcome. Extinction is a very real possibility that few deeply consider the ramifications of. Discerning people fact check for credibility both with words and in context, and liars of the most vile kind eventually must pay the piper in the consequences they set in motion through their own choices and action. The same goes for platforms that through design choice of systems, emerge outcomes that discard truth/reason promoting disunity, falsehoods and deception. There's a reason there's a growing movement of people leaving HN. The crazies often don't recognize that they are crazy unfortunately, and they certainly don't base their communications or reasoning on objective measurable support or established facts.
dragonwriter 1y ago
Ranked Choice Voting (aka Instant Runoff Voting) is the single worst of the very many seriously proposed ranked ballots method; it retains most of what is bad about FPTP. It is somewhat easier to tally than the best (in terms of the logic of who wins) ranked ballots methods (methods satisfying the Condorcet criterion), but not particularly good even on that among all ranked ballots methods, e.g., it can be improved in that dimension by just adding all preferences of the next rank until a candidate crosses the maiority threshold without elimination, which also reduces the degree to which the system is prone to paradoxical effects (promoting a candidate causing them to lose by changing the order others are eliminated.)
- unethical_ban 1y ago
  River method is better, but any ranked method is better than approval for sure, and literally any multiple-choice method is better than FPTP. >adding all preferences of the next rank until a candidate crosses the maiority threshold without elimination I don't follow, what method is that?

mindslight 1y ago

"Don't blame me, I voted conservative" Funny how all the people who would traditionally trot out that phrase immediately forgot it as soon as the other team had the conservative candidate.

triceratops 1y ago

> the choices were Communism, or Fascism Which was which? I see both right now.

bryanlarsen 1y ago

By European standards, Biden & Harris are solidly right-wing. Bernie would be centre-left.

CursedSilicon 1y ago

Do...do you know what communism is? It's not "the government does stuff and I don't like it"

unethical_ban 1y ago

No, a choice for Harris was not a choice for Communism. By no means. Now, I would like to hear your specific recommendations for alternatives to FPTP or ranked choice voting. Approval? Multimember?