Beketov

Depends where you look. Some have called it, Others haven’t. CBS, NY Times, and CNN all haven’t called Arizona yet

Two unless it’s Pennsylvania. Or did he get Arizona?

6 out of the last 7 if I’m not mistaken actually.

6 out of the last

No Boom, Thank you.

My hunch says none. NDP being official opposition in 2013 is likely the closest we’ve had.

It also helps that he’s technically just another MP. Prime Minister just means leader of the governing party so they could toss him out of the party and someone else would just be PM. It’s not like requiring a full impeachment or anything, it’s the party’s choice and if the party doesn’t make it, like you said, the others can. The president being his own branch of government definitely makes things a little more complicated.

Arguably they are still using it, just annoyingly they’ve had the same guy at the top multiple times. The system isn’t completely broken really, it would work fine if Putin’s political opponents didn’t keep turning up dead.

I’m not saying that. I’m saying that the system needs to be better balanced. It can’t just be “popular vote wins” because that’s purely urban controlled and it can’t be balanced as it is now because that’s purely Rural controlled. There’s definitely a balance point to be had where control is a bit more urban than it is now but not overboard. First Past the Post that we have in Canada helps as well because within the provinces we can still get representation. In the US if 1 urban area votes one way but the rest of the rural areas vote another that urban area tends to get screwed because it’s all or nothing. In FPTP you would have a representative for that urban area and then other representatives for the rural areas. So to keep it simple it the electoral college votes in a state are 10 right now you get all 10 or 0. Assuming a straight conversation of EC votes to FPTP seats you could get all 10 but you could also get 4 or 6 or anything. It helps to balance things.

Putin hasn’t actually turned it into the dictatorship that it feels like but he has taken advantage of the fact that Russia has a Prime Minister and a President by being both and using the power of each to extend the term for the other. So basically when he was PM he extended the Presidential term then he became president and extended the PM’s term, then he became PM again. Something like that. He’s basically gaming the system to remain in power but the system as it’s designed would function very well in the US. The president has actually very little authority, the “house” and “senate” control the country with the “senate” being made up entirely by representatives of the provinces, with each one getting 2. So there’s never a senate flip or anything, they just all have to work together because their numbers will always be the same and they don’t align to a specific party. I don’t remember all the details but it’s actually a pretty solid system of government. Takes the best parts of the US system with the best parts of FPTP.

Have you read my other comments or just the responses to you? I’ve touched my n more or less all of this. The original one that got us down this path was in response to someone directly stating a “popular vote wins” method which is why I started stating that it was problematic. I’ve also said several times that the winner takes all approach of the electoral college is severely flawed and that the numbers need to be adjusted to more accurately represent populations without going too far the other way.

As I stated elsewhere in here the electoral college is far from perfect because of that “all or nothing” issue. It’s a bit less apparent with FPTP because we have regional representatives so the people we vote for are actually the ones representing us. In theory however the electoral college could work but it’s numbers need to be re-aligned to current populations. You do need to give a certain amount of votes to less populated states because their vote needs to matter as well but currently some states have far more control than their population dictates they should have. On paper: nothing. In practice, plenty. I don’t have the numbers but probably 50% of Canadians love in Ontario and BC. So in theory you could win an election only by looking at the needs of Ontario and BC. On paper that’s fair, they have the population, but in practice it means that the other 11 provinces and territories needs could be completely ignored because they don’t have the population to make an impact. Do you think any politician would ever care about what the farmer’s of PEI need? They can get more than that entire province by hanging out in just Quebec City for a day. That’s the inevitable problem. Larger places automatically get representation while smaller places get completely ignored. There’s a balance that must be struck (which Canada is closer to than the US but still not great) but you can’t purely say “popular vote wins” or else people who live away from the main population centres get 0 representation.

It can’t be that simple though, unless you want a few select places to dictate the elections for everyone. Take Canada for example. The cities of Toronto, Montreal, and Calgary alone have a population of ~6 million people. The entire country has ~37 million. So by your metric 3 cities would control 1/6th of the entire country. It disproportionately represents people in large areas because those would be the only places politicians would care about. Why bother going to the province of NB (population ~776k)to campaign when you could go to just the city of Montreal and reach ~1 million MORE voters. The US would be even more harsh. The state of California alone has over 10% of the country’s population. One state shouldn’t be able to dictate that much realistically. Breaking it up by location is important to ensure that everyone at least gets some say instead of just the major cities getting all the campaigning and focus.

The forum is a much more civil place than discord

That was my response haha. Ignore what Putin has more or less turned it into and look at how it’s meant to run, with a president and a prime minister. It’s quite functional in theory.

Oh it completely is a generalization, I don’t disagree with that. I even said it was an oversimplification. My point though is that even if Republican voting would be your best interest you aren’t voting for them. Why? Because you are considering the ramifications of what their policies do that don’t directly affect you. So in this sample size of 1 my oversimplification is correct. There are 100% outliers but it has often been what I’ve seen.

Oh 100%, the current system isn’t perfect either, no system is. I just personally have never found ranked choice to be better. It just ends up with a middle ground and honestly middle ground politicians tend not to do much while they try to please everyone. My wife actually has a political science degree and I asked her one day what electoral and government system she’d put into place in the US if it was just about efficiency and no one would push back. Her response was Russia’s ironically enough. You should take a look at how their government is set up, it actually would work very well for the US.

Tbh ranked choice has its own set of problems. The main one being that basically no one gets what they want. People on either side will always put the candidate they like as #1 and the guy in the other side at the bottom. This splits both ways and ends up with everyone getting, at best, their second choice. Sounds fine on paper but ultimately means no one is happy with the choice, everyone just settles.

As an oversimplification of left and right politically I’ve always looked at it as Liberal leaning people are more likely to consider the experiences of others and conservative leaning people are more likely to consider only their own experiences. This is not strictly true all the time but is often how things end up going. For example, all the conservatives who will for Republican across the board every time because they are in the “pro life” camp. To them personally it doesn’t matter if abortion access is legal because they never plan to have one, so they will vote with their belief that it shouldn’t be allowed. The other side has plenty of people who don’t believe in abortion themselves, IE they would never choose to have one, but they are a ale to consider that someone else might require one and therefore should have that right.

It’s not just an issue with the 2 party system but how your system runs in general. First past the post that we have in Canada is not perfect by any stretch but at least you have a better shot at representation because you are voting for your local representative. My province has I think 13 seats so there’s no guarantee all of those will go to the same party, this would be the case even if we had only two parties. With the electoral college, however, majority in the state gets the entire state so what’s good for an individual county doesn’t necessarily get represented. You see this in stuff like Austen, TX that tends to lean blue but the state always goes red or Northern California that’s the opposite. The “all or nothing” mentality of the electoral college is more of a problem than just having two parties to vote for.

SUMMARY

Game 5 going live!

That would check out

What is this league and who are these teams you’re talking about?

This sounds like the best podcast