Congressional Bill for Ranked Choice Voting Would Outlaw Top-Two Systems

A bill to require ranked choice voting for all congressional primary and general elections has been introduced in both houses of Congress. The U.S. Senate sponsor is Peter Welch (D-Vermont). The two chief sponsors in the House are Jaime Raskin (D-Maryland) and Don Beyer (D-Virginia).

It would require ranked choice voting in both primaries and general elections, so that the current top-two systems in California and Washington would need to be revised. Furthermore, it says that if a state uses systems without party nominees, at least three candidates must be allowed to advance to the general election.

The bill says that if a state defines a qualified party in terms of how many votes it received in the last election, that state must give the party credit for the round of voting which produced the highest number of votes.

Here is the text. The bill doesn’t have a bill number yet.


Comments

Congressional Bill for Ranked Choice Voting Would Outlaw Top-Two Systems — 74 Comments

  1. Blanket federal proposals for voting reform that impose wholesale requirements or prohibitions are NOT the way to go. Our federal system should leave a lot up to each state to decide. Let states and parties experiment with different systems. Parties should be able to choose what sort of voting to use in their own primaries, which may or may not be what the state authorizes for the general election.

    At a minimum, states should be allowed to form multi=member districts, which they are NOT currently allowed to do, provided that a voting method is used that encourages different constituencies to be represented in the district. And, parties should be granted some sort of control over who may use their party label in any primary or general election.

  2. @Phil

    On the contrary, the fact that commies are willing to sponsor such an anti-commie bill, tells you exactly how little chance it has of passing.

    @Walter Ziobro

    “Blanket federal proposals for voting reform that impose wholesale requirements or prohibitions are NOT the way to go.”

    Not the American way, at any rate.

    “Our federal system should leave a lot up to each state to decide.”

    Agreed.

    “Let states and parties experiment with different systems.”

    States certainly; parties… I don’t know about that.

    “Parties should be able to choose what sort of voting to use in their own primaries, which may or may not be what the state authorizes for the general election.”

    Still not quite sold on this. But I’m open to convincing.

    “At a minimum, states should be allowed to form multi=member districts, which they are NOT currently allowed to do, provided that a voting method is used that encourages different constituencies to be represented in the district.”

    Multi-member districts are a good idea in general. But which voting methods will encourage representation of constituencies, and to what extent, will be an endless point of contention.

    “And, parties should be granted some sort of control over who may use their party label in any primary or general election.”

    A party’s freedom of association trumps that of an individual candidate? No.
    A much better solution would be to do away with parties and party labels altogether – if not in all election, then at least in federal elections.
    Let candidates run on their own merits rather than being boosted by partisanship. And do away with ballot access via parties.
    At most parties, could be allowed to endorse their favored candidate, but such endorsement would not appear on the ballot.

    Better yet, would be to get rid of representation altogether and move to direct democracy; or best of all, drop the facade that is democracy and embrace anarchy.

  3. Yea, I’m all in favor of alt-right, alt-White anarchism of the likes of Nuña the Nutter at the end.

    And, he’s constitutionally wrong on other issues. Shock me.

  4. NOOO PRIMARIES

    PR – REPS

    TOTAL VOTES/TOTAL MEMBERS IN STATE = EQUAL VOTES TO ELECT EACH REP

    APPV IN SENATE UNTIL PR IN SENATE ALSO
    —-
    NOT IN USE FOR 2026 ELECTION – LIKELY FATAL

  5. Just to clarify, individual candidates should always have the right to bypass any party primary or convention, and have some reasonable method of getting on the general election ballot.

  6. Political parties are private associations. They cannot be prevented from holding caucuses or conventions, or running their own private primary.

    The state can only regulate primaries that the state runs and pays, but they cannot compel any party or candidate to participate in them, nor should they prevent any party from nominating, or candidate from being nominated directly to the general election.

  7. Ranked choice voting is awful. In the 2022 Alaska house race, 15,000 ballots were thrown out to make the majority. There’s a reason why everywhere that’s tried it has gone back or had serious discussions about going back.

  8. Rhode Island 100% certifies Party Party of Rhode Island onto Presidential Ballot, nominates Robby Wells/Tony Jones for President and Vice President.

    Look here: https://vote.sos.ri.gov/Candidates/CandidateSearchSummary?OfficeType=790&Election=18061
    Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_Party_of_Rhode_Island

    New Era Party USA forms, nominates William Lee Hunt/Casey Blood for President and Vice President, and aims to get on 4 state ballots by 2028.

    See there websites: https://www.newerapartyusa.org/
    https://nepflorida.univer.se/
    See Hunt Nomination: https://www.newerapartyusa.org/about-us/endorsements

  9. The “stop trolling” bot, much like the AZ bot, should be ignored. These malicious bots feed on your interactions.

  10. “The fact it’s being sponsored by commies tells you exactly how evil RCV is.”

    There are at least two reasons why this is so. One is that anything which makes vote counting more complex makes it easier to cheat, and it’s way too easy as it is already. Another is that commies are better than individualist voters at gaming these sorts of things. They operate more in unison, being collectivist by nature, and aren’t honest or open about their intentions (except a token vanguard of open communists).

    The real communist movement in non communist nations operates in disguise and slowly chips away at freedom over the years and decades relentlessly. This is part of their evil subterfuge of elections.

  11. “Blanket federal proposals for voting reform that impose wholesale requirements or prohibitions are NOT the way to go. Our federal system should leave a lot up to each state to decide. Let states and parties experiment with different systems. Parties should be able to choose what sort of voting to use in their own primaries, which may or may not be what the state authorizes for the general election.”

    Yes, except states are also too big. The medium population US county is about the right size.

  12. “minimum, states should be allowed to form multi=member districts”

    As Max used to point out, legislative districts should be a moot point. The problem is that the laws are many orders of magnitude too numerous, complex, and easily and frequently changed.

    Since ignorance of the law is no excuse, the laws should be short, simple, and easily understood enough by all competent adults and older children to memorize. Thus, they should be very difficult (but not impossible) to change. A constantly elected and frequently meeting legislative branch runs counter to this.

    Laws should be more like a constitution, but shorter in total than the US Constitution and in plain language that doesn’t require specific judicial education to interpret. The process of changing laws should be more like a constitutional convention.

  13. “And, parties should be granted some sort of control over who may use their party label in any primary or general election.”

    Under the Standing Count set of proposals they have total control and it’s natural and organic to the system/proposals.

  14. Parties which don’t control who represents them are meaningless ballot labels.

    Not printing any party labels on the ballot gives an advantage to the largest, best organized, well financed and well connected parties/factions/candidates via a vis others, as well as to those favored by the largest media outlets and incumbents.

    Smaller parties and less well organized or financed candidates lack the resources to inform enough voters of who their candidates are and what they believe. Thus, they rely much more than establishment parties and candidates on the party ballot label to communicate that far better than individual campaigns can, thanks to the cumulative work of that party’s past campaigns and outreach efforts.

    While we still have ballots, party names are more approximate to voting on ideas, which is better than voting on individuals. Voting on individuals tends to devolve to voting on looks, charisma, and the ability to bs / lie / persuade effectively regardless of actual results. It also helps incumbents more.

    So, voting by party only > voting by candidates identified with party (as long as the party has control of who uses its label) > voting by individuals (“hot or not” or beauty contest / school elections).

    It’s also better than all voters voting on all issues all the time. Most voters don’t have the time, inclination, or background to constantly study numerous political issues in depth, leaving them open to organized and surreptitious manipulation and giving too much power to the tiny number of people with sufficient time and interest plus those best able to organize to manipulate others.

    We shouldn’t force all voters to legislate for the same reason we should not force everyone to fix their own cars or toilets. Division of labor is a good thing.

  15. Under the Max standing count idea who represents a party is self executing – those who stand with a party at the deadline for the count on election night are that party. The winning party picks the officeholders for the following year as it sees fit and replaced them as it sees fit throughout the year.

  16. As for anarchy, show me evidence it wouldn’t turn into chaos followed by dictatorship in a modern society. I’ve actually read quite a bit of different kinds of anarchist arguments and have not found them convincing. Even if I did, the average person would not give those the time of day to even potentially be convinced.

    Direct democracy suffers from the short time horizon problem. That’s why there are numerous checks and balances – to keep lynch mobs from taking the passions of the moment and running rampart. Unfortunately, the safeguards were not nearly strong enough so the US has steadily gotten worse since its founding.

    To fix this, imagine moving in opposite directions on the ways the US evolved.

  17. * rampant not rampart.

    “I’m all in favor of alt-right, alt-White anarchism of the likes of Nuña the Nutter at the end.”

    If alt white is meant to signify racism, please present evidence. I disagree with Nunya on lots of things, and (s)he thinks I’m a jackbooted thug just because I’ve worked in law enforcement.

    We have laws – someone has to enforce them. Even under anarchy, if it could ever be peaceful, someone would have to enforce social peace and baseline order or whatever you would call the equivalent of mala in se crimes under such a system. It’s dirty work, but necessary, and given that someone will do it, I’d rather not leave it entirely to people who don’t mind being called jackbooted thugs.

    But, regardless of anti blue prejudice, since LEOs are not actually a race despite what some LEOs seem to believe, I’ve seen no evidence of racism from Nunya. If I missed something, what was it?

  18. Government run primaries are also a bad idea. Short of standing count, parties should nominate by whatever method they choose – primary, caucus, lottery, musical chairs, you name it – as long as they pay for and administer it themselves.

    The real world effect of nominally nonpartisan elections is not theoretical. Most municipal elections are nominally nonpartisan, but it’s well known which candidates are with which parties. Nothing bad about parties goes away if their candidates aren’t identified on the ballot, but busy or otherwise occupied voters are denied useful information.

    In Tennessee, it’s very difficult for parties to qualify, but very easy for independent candidates for president (and I think other offices e.g. Governor, Senate etc). This just leads to a bunch of names that mean nothing to the vast majority of voters being printed. Those candidates lack the resources to reach most voters and most voters don’t have time or inclination to research them on their own. Such campaigns do nothing to build a brand that carries over to future campaigns.

  19. @Solipsistic Dungfly
    “alt-right, alt-White anarchism of the likes of Nuña”
    Explain what you mean by “alt-right” and “alt-White” that could possibly apply to me.

    “constitutionally wrong on other issues”
    Name one.

    @AZ
    “EQUAL NOM PETS”

    Speaking of Springfield’s new residents:
    https://pjmedia.com/paula-bolyard/2024/09/12/breaking-ohio-sos-uncovers-fake-haitian-voter-registrations-springfield-n4932487

    Real uncovering of voter fraud, or more of RINO LaRose’s antics trying to look like he takes voter fraud seriously?

    @Walter Ziobro
    “Political parties are private associations. They cannot be prevented from holding caucuses or conventions, or running their own private primary.”

    That’s fair enough. But why should parties be able to exclude candidates from running under their label? E.g. why should the Missouri GOP get to forbid Darrell McClanahan from running as a Republican? Why should the Alaska Democratic Party get to forbid Eric Hafner from running as a Democrat? Why should the DNC get to forbid RFK running as a Democrat?

    Freedom of association works both ways: if a candidate wants to associate themselves with a party but the party does not want that, the party can block them from being nominated during caucuses and conventions, can prevent their name from appearing on primary ballots (assuming the primaries are privately funded and organized), can take out ads distancing themselves from them so that everyone knows that situation, can endorse their own candidate, etc.
    But why should the party be able to forbid the candidate from using their party label, if they so choose?

    A political party’s name is not a trademark, so trademark law does not apply. Copyright does not apply. Stolen valor does not apply. The only problems that arise are, if the state only allows one candidate on the ballot to use the same party label, and (the reason behind that) if the state automatically gives a party’s ballot line to any candidate identifying themselves with that party’s label. Both of those things can be easily amended, and should be fixed regardless, for completely unrelated reasons.

    “The state can only regulate primaries that the state runs and pays”

    I think that is something we need to get away from anyway. Primaries should not be publicly funded or organized. There should be no matching funds for anyone. Stop wasting tax funds on politics, as much as possible. Of course, the general election would still have to be run and paid for publicly.

    But if parties want to run fraudulent primaries or nominating conventions, let them – and let the defrauded expose them – let both the defrauded candidate and the party’s pet run under the party’s label and try to convince the public of whether or not there was fraud.

    @Allen Sousa @Phil in the blanks
    Ranked-choice voting isn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But it is closer to an exhaustive run-off election, than first-past-the-post is, and therefore I would argue it is less bad, by which I mean less anti-individualist.

    See also:

    https://ballot-access.org/2024/09/03/one-of-the-four-candidates-in-alaskas-u-s-house-race-is-currently-in-prison-in-another-state/#comment-1248716

    and the August 30th comments @ https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2024/08/august-2024-monthly-news-open-thread/#comments

    @Standing Count Stan

    “Since ignorance of the law is no excuse, the laws should be short, simple, and easily understood enough by all competent adults and older children to memorize. Thus, they should be very difficult (but not impossible) to change.”

    Agreed.

    “Under the Standing Count set of proposals they have total control and it’s natural and organic to the system/proposals. […] Parties which don’t control who represents them are meaningless ballot labels.”

    Then I would argue, doing away with parties and party labels is a better solution than doing away with individual candidates.

    “Not printing any party labels on the ballot gives an advantage to the largest, best organized, well financed and well connected parties/factions/candidates via a vis others, as well as to those favored by the largest media outlets and incumbents.

    Smaller parties and less well organized or financed candidates lack the resources to inform enough voters of who their candidates are and what they believe.”

    I don’t think this is necessarily the case.

    “Thus, they rely much more than establishment parties and candidates on the party ballot label to communicate that far better than individual campaigns can, thanks to the cumulative work of that party’s past campaigns and outreach efforts.”

    But past campaigns can be diametrically opposed to current ones. For example, what do Ron Paul and David Bergland have in common with the likes of Chase Oliver and Jo Jorgensen? Or what do Alan Keyes and Howard Phillips have in common with the likes of George Wallace, Lester Maddox, Chuck Baldwin or Tom Hoefling? Politically active, thinking people will necessarily always vote for individual candidates, rather than for parties/party labels.

    “While we still have ballots, party names are more approximate to voting on ideas, which is better than voting on individuals.”

    No, the exact opposite. The individuals better approximate voting for ideas than parties and labels do. Of course, direct democracy is preferable to representative democracy, because that would actually allow people to vote on ideas.

    “Most voters don’t have the time, inclination, or background to constantly study numerous political issues in depth, leaving them open to organized and surreptitious manipulation and giving too much power to the tiny number of people with sufficient time and interest plus those best able to organize to manipulate others.”

    That manipulation is no less a problem in representative democracy, where the representative even has the power to go completely against the will of the people.

    “We shouldn’t force all voters to legislate for the same reason we should not force everyone to fix their own cars or toilets. Division of labor is a good thing.”

    Again, no, the exact opposite. People should be able to fix their own cars and toilets. People should able to legislate. Division of labor has made us weak and dependent on each other – we have ceased being fully rounded people in the image of God.

    “As for anarchy, show me evidence it wouldn’t turn into chaos followed by dictatorship in a modern society.”

    The closest real-world analogies – which are very imperfect, but the best we have – currently or in living memory, are countries like Donetsk and Luhansk prior to merging into Russia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Adjaria under Aslan Abashidze, Artsakh before the Armenian betrayal, or the Sahrawi Republic.
    But all of them are unfortunately attacked by neighboring powers that wish to invade and occupy them, resulting in them (effectively) becoming a protectorate of another neighbor, and in them unfortunately rebuilding some form of (very) limited archy.

    “I disagree with Nunya on lots of things, and (s)he thinks I’m a jackbooted thug just because I’ve worked in law enforcement.”

    Hey, if it’s any consolation – not that I expect you set much store by my opinions you disagree with – the fact that you aren’t currently working in law enforcement means I think you are a retired jackbooted thug, which I guess is ever so slightly less bad 😉

    “Even under anarchy, if it could ever be peaceful, someone would have to enforce social peace and baseline order or whatever you would call the equivalent of mala in se crimes under such a system.”

    Everyone would have to, which in practice means everyone who could should.

    See also:
    https://ballot-access.org/2024/06/16/2024-libertarian-presidential-convention-was-first-in-twenty-years-not-to-nominate-the-candidate-who-placed-first-in-the-first-ballot/#comments

    “I’ve seen no evidence of racism from Nunya. If I missed something, what was it?”

    Thank you, sincerely. The only argument to be made for my being racist, is if you consider (national) socialist terrorist organizations like “Palestine” and “Ukraine” with no more than a century of history to their names to be races, which they objectively are not. And even if you do, it is laughable that someone so antisemitic and russophobic as solipsistic dungfly would try to put anyone else down as racist.

    “Nothing bad about parties goes away if their candidates aren’t identified on the ballot, but busy or otherwise occupied voters are denied useful information.”

    It does if you allow anyone – or at least, anyone registered with that party – to run as that party’s candidate, whether the party likes it or not. Let them fight it out in the public space for people to make up their own mind.

  20. ZILLION CURRENT LAWS ARE DUE TO SPECIAL INTEREST GANGS PICKING THEIR PUPPET HACKS IN CAUCUSES / PRIMARIES / CONVENTIONS IN RIGGED GERRYMANDER AREAS— AND THEN ELECTING THEM

    RESULT — 1/2 OR LESS VOTERS X 1/2 MEMBERS = 1/4 OR LESS VOTERS ELECT BARE MAJORITIES OF LEGIS BODIES
    —-
    NOOO CAUCUSES/ PRIMARIES/ CONVENTIONS

    EQUAL NOM PETS / FILING FEES

    PARTISAN PR — TOTAL VOTES / TOTAL MEMBERS = EQUAL VOTES TO ELECT EACH

    — VIA PRE-ELECTION PUBLIC LISTS OF CANDIDATES RANKING ALL OTHER CANDIDATES

    >>> REAL INDIRECT MAJORITY RULE IN LAW MAKING

  21. Evidence that proportional representation would result in better laws is lacking. Simply pointing out problems with current laws doesn’t make a given proposed alternative better rather than worse. You could be jumping from frying pan to fire. Other countries have proportional representation and bad laws.

    However, I don’t think any country has “all candidates ranking all other candidates,” which just sounds like an unworkable mess.

    Majority rule doesn’t mean things would get better either. Masses are asses. Many terrible policies are or have been popular. Perceived self interest and actual self interest often don’t align, and generally voters mostly go for whatever sounds good in the short term at the expense of the long term. They’re also quite easily manipulated.

    Even if most people were capable of correctly gauging self interest or common interest or less short sighted and emotionally manipulated, minority rights would be in danger.

    Some minority rights include the especially hard working and talented. Lazier, less gifted and or less lucky masses of voters might correctly perceive that redistributing wealth would make them better off for the moment. The down sides would be less obvious to them, since they were probably pretty lazy and or stupid in school as well (or forgot their lessons after the test, or were taught by communist termites).

    Democracy can often mean crabs in a bucket or a race to the bottom, idiocracy, two wolves and a sheep voting on what to eat…a lynch mob is the purest form of direct democracy.

    Common prejudices and group effect panics easily and often manifest through unrestrained democracy.

    Total absence of democracy can often be dangerous, but so can its excess.

    Balanced systems combining elements of different kinds of rule may be our best bet, kind of like diversifying investments, diversifying the gene pool et c

  22. Citizens for Proportional Representation (CPR)
    http://www.usparliament.org

    Free and Equal uses the wrong math.

    Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) in single-winner election districts (used in California abd six other state-level election districts) is a one-party system.

  23. @several people

    Parties can be private organizations with full control over their membership and nomination.

    Or, parties can be public factions of electors, where no private organization has any control over membership or nomination.

    Or perhaps somewhere in between.

    We have 50 states and 50 decisions to make on this issue. We already have variance among the states.

    @Standing Count Stan
    If membership in the party is based on who shows up at the election (“self executing” as you said), but all you did was a head count, how do you know who’s in the party and who’s not? Like, how do you know which people get to choose the officers?

  24. NONSTOP MINORITY RULE IN ENGLAND — LATE 1200S — LATER GREAT BRITAIN — LATER UK — AND LATER USA — ALL STATES AND LATER USA REGIME VIA MINORITY RULE GERRYMANDERS — 700 PLUS YEARS

    CURRENT RESULT – EXTREMIST LEFT/RIGHT MONARCHS — USA PREZS / STATE GUVS / LOCAL EXECS-MAYORS —

    WITH THEIR TOTAL CONTEMPT FOR LEGIS BODIES AND THE COURTS — SEE ESP 1922 MUSSOLINI AND 1933 HITLER

    INSANE GOVT ANNUAL DEFICITS AND TOTAL GOVT DEBTS — HYPER-INFLATION TIMEBOMB.

    PARTISAN PR — MAJORITY RULE — INDIRECT DEMOCRACY – SHORT TERMS — MAX 2 YEARS — PREFER 1 YEAR TERMS
    NONPARTISAN EXECS/JUDICS. – APPROVAL VOTING
    TOTAL SEPARATION OF POWERS

  25. Adam Cerini, thanks for asking. If I recall what Max said about this correctly,

    1. It would be more than a head count because it would also be on video – live as well as recorded – so the individual voters could be easily identified.

    2. The winning party would most likely caucus to pick initial officeholders and create a membership roll and vacancy filling or substitution procedures while everyone is still there at the conclusion of the vote.

    3. Who ever administers counts might also be charged with creating an official record of party memberships for the coming year from the videos.

    4. Some parties might choose to preselect initial officeholders ahead of the vote as a selling point.

    5. Under the full Max plan, the voters would all be very well known to each other. Obviously, that’s not what would happen if a scaled down version was rolled out step by step, so see other points above.

    6. The Max plan is a flexible thought exercise, so different localities might implement different parts of it and feel out what works and what doesn’t. Theory can only get you so far.

    One of the worst aspects of overly dogmatic approaches is that they respond to real world failure by doubling down, becoming less tolerant of dissent, blaming failures on internal and external enemies etc, but never acknowledging that they could be wrong, in part or even in whole. Obviously, this applies to totalitarian systems like communism and fascism, but it applies to some extent to enlightenment liberalism as well, which encompasses both the progressive socialist brain disease and classical liberalism.

    As I recall Max explaining, while the so called enlightenment corrected certain excesses of the medieval/antiquity/feudal order, it overreached by going too far and too fast, and the speed of its “progress” only increases regardless of any feedback ad to results from real world application. We should resist any impulse to overcorrect in the opposite direction, especially too quickly.

    Local variation is important, both to compare what works better as well as because some things may work better in some areas than others.

  26. If all governments are minority rule we have no basis to believe majority rule would yield better results. If debt and deficits are the gauge, the real world evidence indicates the opposite: in the U.S., and I think in other countries too, as the electorate has been expanded, government has grown faster and faster, far outstripping population growth.

    Government has come to overtake or heavily interfere with more and more aspects of life, and voters tend to incentivize this because the tendency in a democracy is to believe government can fix problems and government agencies, rules, entitlements etc are much easier to create than to shut down.

    Voters also tend to incentivize debt and deficits. They want the goodies or perceived benefits and they don’t want to pay. Politicians who promise lots of government benefits and lower taxes tend to get rewarded by being elected and reelected. Those who promise government cuts and or tax hikes so debt is paid down tend to lose.

    See above re short time horizons. Look at how many people drown themselves in credit card debt, mortgages, payment plans, loans,etc. Those same people elect politicians in a democracy.

    Relatively few voters even understand the difference between deficit and debt. Many might claim to be for debt relief, but voting behavior – both by voters and politicians – indicates otherwise.

  27. Clearly they either let him out or he escaped. I’m pretty sure he didn’t come back from the dead.

  28. Minority rule didn’t start in the 1200s.

    Majority rule has only been tried at very small scales, with far from consistently excellent results.

    Even ancient Greek city states which experimented with something closer to direct democracy still barred most adult residents – women and slaves – from voting, and I’ll need to refresh my memory but I seem to recall they weren’t big on immigrants voting either.

    Even if that wasn’t true, they were at a much smaller scale than e.g. the U.S. Or even US States, and many aspects of life and government were very different then.

    And, the experiments didn’t continue and Spread as we might expect they would have if they had been a great success. We shouldn’t assume they were.

    Past that, pure democracy has only been tried at e.g. the commune level, also with very mixed results.

    We shouldn’t assume that different = better.

  29. Deficits and debt have only grown faster as democracy has expanded both in the sense of expanding the electorate and inn the sense of government poking its nose into more and more things to try to solve social problems or perceived problems democratically.

  30. I agree with the screaming (flesh?)bot on no (government administered) primaries, caucuses etc – one election day – and one year terms.

    Approval voting has a poor track record as far as I’ve seen, and is bad for the same reasons as rcv, pointed out further above.

    Nonpartisan elections, as explained above , don’t really get rid of parties – they only get rid of party labels, thus further increasing the advantage those who already have the advantages of incumbency and or relatively more resources to reach voters have over those who don’t. Further tilting the playing field toward the already haves when it comes to political power doesn’t seem like a great idea to me.

    Total separation of powers hasn’t worked. It helps slow change down, and that’s good. But ultimately it just helps different parts of government blame each other for problems and failures, all with some degree of truth.

    Real separation of powers would be to limit government strictly to guarding against foreign invasion and against mala in se crimes and nothing else. The safeguards against it expanding into other areas again would need to be much more iron clad than anything we’ve ever had.

    As Max proposed, the biggest safeguard against government overreach would be that there would be no career politicians. People would enforce laws as a temporary duty to the community, more like our jury duty than like our political or law enforcement systems today. The people filling these roles would have much more important roles in their lives in their families, churches, businesses, charities, various social and fraternal organizations etc so abusing temporary government power would be far less of a temptation.

    There would be other safeguards, such as the voting and law enforcement elite being well trained for it leading up to that stage of their lives, laws being very difficult to change, voters being community leaders who know each other well, and stable systems where people rarely move, especially long distances.

    There is more, but that’s what I’m remembering right now.

  31. Getting rid of party labels on candidates doesn’t alter the contents any better then getting rid of food content labels. The same mix of healthy and unhealthy ingredients is still there, voters / consumers just have to work harder to find out what’s what and most won’t exert the time and effort.

    Allowing candidates to use party labels without party approval makes those labels meaningless just like allowing companies to use other companies labels on grocery store shelves would.

  32. Area / population scale of governments and complexity of laws are important elements. Our current systems are too big and too complex, which makes it effectively impossible to exercise effective oversight , analyze, assign blame properly, much less fix anything.

    But, that same scale and complexity work against a Max style fix, since it’s not obvious how to defuse the current maze of wires in our ticking time bomb of a government system (basically regardless of what country) without screwing up, i.e. getting from here to there.

  33. https://www.yahoo.com/news/john-roberts-secret-trump-memo-143303014.html

    CJ ROBERTS’ MEMO MACHINATIONS – ESP RE TRUMP

    NEW AGE SWISS CHEESE COURT SECURITY

    —-
    THE ***RELATIVELY*** FREE ELECTION SYSTEMS IN ENGLAND [EVEN WITH EXTREME MINORITY RULE UNTIL THE GREAT REFORM ACT OF 1832] AND SWISS LAND SET THE STAGE FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF THE MANY MONARCH/OLIGARCH TYRANT REGIMES IN EUROPE.

    1642-1649 ENGLISH CIVIL WAR — KING’S HEAD CHOPPED OFF [CHARLES I] — END OF DARK AGE FEUDAL SYSTEM — MORE MONARCH HEADS TO ROLL LATER

    1688-1689 PURGE OF ENGLISH KING [JAMES II] >>> 1689 ENGLISH BILL OF RIGHTS


    MAJORITY RULE IN TAX/SPEND/DEFICIT/DEBT LAWS — WILL OBVIOUSLY CHANGE — LIKE ENDING ABSOLUTE MONARCH REGIMES —

    FRANCE 1789 / GERMANY 1918 / JAPAN 1945

    IT IS THE MINORITY RULE IN MANY LEGIS SYSTEMS [AND FATAL SOP VIOLATIONS] THAT PRODUCES THE EXTREMIST LEFT/RIGHT MONARCHS.

  34. @L&F,

    Thomas Jones is essentially advocating for statewide STV for a legislature. If you had a House with 150 members, you could easily have several hundred candidates. STV would simply be a process of producing 150 equal stacks of ballots by transferring ballots from one stack to others based on later preferences. If candidate A has more votes than the quota (1/150 of the total statewide vote), then you would transfer the excess (the surplus) to additional candidates based on later preferences.

    The reason you have exhausted votes under STV (or RCV) is that some voters did not express full preferences (rank all candidates). Jones recognizes that a voter would not rank several hundred candidates. So instead a voter would vote for a single candidate in a smaller area (district). If this area had 5/150 of the statewide electorate, then it would be expected that there would be sufficient votes to elect a few Democrats and Republican, but not enough for a Libertarian, Green, etc. But if the votes can be transferred outside the area then the Libertarians could elected some members of the legislature.

    The Australian Senate is elected by State-wide STV. There are typically a few dozen parties. The big parties might run enough candidates to elect all 6 or 12 senators from a State, the smaller parties, two (or whatever the minimum required). Voters could rank all candidates without regard to party, and were required to rank a very large number (50?).

    Or voters could vote for a party. Each party would have a ranking list (or two). The party would rank all their candidates first, and then rank all the remaining candidates. These lists would be public, so you could evaluate a smaller party based on lower preferences. More recently, each party only ranks their members, and the voter can rank the parties.

    All these systems can be manipulated.

    If you wanted proportionality, you wouldn’t try to equalize all the stacks of ballots, but would let each candidate keep their votes. If Larry received 12,347 votes and Frieda 8,193 votes that would be how many votes they would exercise in legislative decisions. A voter is in essence granting a proxy to the candidate.

  35. @AC and Stan,

    The full Max plan would have polities of around 100,000 persons (range of one magnitude or 10,000 to 1,000,000). There might be 200 men who would assemble annually, and choose the officers for the coming year. Their authority would primarily be to preserve order. Government would not provide services or welfare.

    What the plan did not explain is how these polities would come about, or if they did not, how the standing count would work in a state or country with millions of adult voters.

  36. Normally I would consider supporting this, but Raskin has his name on this bill. I don’t trust that guy at all. Plus, this is a partisan bill which means something bad is hidden in it.

  37. On July 11th 1804 Burr Fatally Shot John Hamilton

    Former vice president Aaron Burr usually isn’t credited as a Founding Father, but there is one instance where Burr directly helped to change the Constitution—by impelling the passage of the 12th Amendment after the constitutional crisis created by the 1800 election.

    On June 15, 1804, New Hampshire voted to ratify the 12th Amendment after it was passed by Congress on December 9, 1803. New Hampshire assured the amendment’s addition to the Constitution as the 13th state approving its text.

    The Constitution as originally ratified in 1788 allowed for presidential electors to cast two votes. The candidate with the most votes became President and the second-place finisher was named the Vice President. That wasn’t a big issue when George Washington was elected by unanimous consent.

    However, when bitter rivals John Adams and Thomas Jefferson finished first and second in the 1796 election, Adams was left with his biggest opponent as his Vice President.

    The situation went from awkward to much worse in 1800, when Adams and Jefferson faced off in a rematch. Jefferson’s campaign included New York deal-making politician Aaron Burr as his intended Vice Presidential running mate. It is generally accepted today that the idea that the Jefferson-Burr electors would cast one less vote for Burr, ensuring Jefferson was the President and Burr the Vice President.

    However, no one coordinated the voting and the two running mates tied for first place in the election. After the electoral votes were counted, Jefferson and Burr each had 73 votes, and tied as the winner. Worse yet, Article II sent the tie election to the House, which was controlled by Adams’s Federalist Party.

    The House members could only vote for Jefferson or Burr, and not Adams, and then Burr made the controversial move to try to take the election from his own running mate, Jefferson.

    The contingent runoff election between Jefferson and Burr was a true constitutional crisis. Jefferson ultimately won the House election on the 36th ballot after a week of voting. Alexander Hamilton, Jefferson’s long-time enemy, used his influence to support Jefferson instead of his old rival from New York, Burr.

    Vowing to clean up what was clearly a flawed presidential election system, Congress made the 12th Amendment its first order of business in October 1803. After two months of debate, the House approved the 12th Amendment by a two-thirds margin, followed by the Senate.

    During the state ratification process, the amendment was rejected by Delaware and Connecticut. After New Hampshire became the 13th state to ratify, the newly minted 12th Amendment was certified by Secretary of State James Madison in September 1804 in time for the next election, which Jefferson easily won.

    The 12th Amendment made sure that separate electoral votes were counted for Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates.

    “The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate,” the first part of the Amendment read.

    Burr wouldn’t run for elected office again and the intervention of Hamilton in the 1800 election was one of many issues between the two men. On July 11, 1804, Burr fatally wounded Hamilton in a duel in Weehawken, New Jersey.
    * * *

  38. MODEL STATE CONST – PART

    Sec. 3. (1) The Electors shall elect for [2] year terms at partisan elections:
    (A) [101] state senators in the state legislature in [odd] years and
    (B) an odd number of members (at least 5) in a city council in each city in [even] years.
    (2) As nearly as possible, each legislative election district shall have 2 (rural) to 5 (urban) times the number of Electors in the legislative body area at the last regular election of the governor divided by the total members in the body, be 1 or more cities or a part of 1 city and be contiguous and square.
    (3) Each legislative body candidate shall receive a list of all other candidates in all districts grouped by party names by [63] days before the election day.
    (4) Each candidate shall rank such all other candidates (using 1 (highest), 2, etc.) and file such list by [5 P.M. 56] days before the election day.
    (5) The lists shall be made public the next day.
    (6) If a valid list is not filed, then the candidate’s name shall not be on the ballots.
    ————–
    Sec. 6. (1) Each Elector may vote for 1 candidate for each legislative body.
    (2) The Ratio shall be the Total Votes for all candidates in all districts divided by the Total Members, dropping any fraction.
    Ratio = TV/TM
    (3) A candidate who gets the Ratio shall be elected.
    (4) The largest surplus more than the Ratio shall be moved to 1 or more candidates in any district who do not have the Ratio and who are highest on the candidate’s rank order list.
    (5) Only the votes needed to get the Ratio shall be moved to any 1 candidate.
    (6) Repeat steps (4) and (5) until all surplus votes are moved.
    (7) If all members are not elected, then the candidate with the least votes shall lose.
    (8) Such losing votes shall be moved to 1 or more remaining unelected candidates in any district who are highest on the candidate’s rank order list and subject to (5).
    (9) The moving order shall be original votes and then the earliest surplus or other loser votes.
    (10) Repeat steps (7-9) until all members are elected.
    (11) Example 100 Votes, Elect 5
    Ratio = 100/5 = 20
    Surplus Moved
    C1 25-20 = 5 Surplus
    C2 19+1 = 20
    C3 14+4 = 18
    Final
    C1 20 = 20 Elected
    C2 20 = 20 Elected
    C3 18+2 = 20 Elected
    C4 17+3 = 20 Elected
    C5 15+5 = 20 Elected
    Sum 90+10 = 100
    Losers 10 are moved to elected persons.
    (12) Each member shall have 1 vote in the legislative body and a YES majority of all members shall be required to enact legislation.
    (13) Each legislative body may meet any time in person, by written proxy or electronically and shall appoint its officers provided by law.

  39. Citizens for Proportional Representation
    http://www.usparliament.org

    Two or more names elected simultaneously is the correct way to use the math under ranked choice voting (RCV) and simgle-winner elections under RCV is the “one-party system” and must be prohibited at all costs. No way to the one-party system foe names.

    The two-party system using “click or no click” i.e. Google Search is no good.

    The correct math for elections of names with no exceptions is below:

    The Sainte-Lague seat allocation for the USA Parliamnet (AKA United Coalition)

    1. Divide the election’s total number of votes of 6456 (number of seats). This is the first quota.

    2. Divide the quota into each candidate’s votes, and round off to the nearest whole number. That’s that candidate’s seata allocation.

    3. If, due to roundin, this awards a number of seats different from the desired number of 6456 seats, then adgust the quota slightly up or down, til, when “pararaph 2.” is carried out, it will award exactly 6456 seats.
    * * *

  40. June 27th: Biden gives a poor showing at the CNN presidential debate.
    July 13th: Attempted assassination of Trump
    July 21st: Democrats force Biden to drop out of the race
    September 10th: Harris gives a terrible showing at the ABC presidential debate.
    September 15th: Attempted assassination of Trump
    ??? : Democrats force Harris to drop out of the race

    I can see why Trump isn’t keen on further debates embarrassing the Democrats to the point where they feel the need to try and kill him.

  41. HOW MANY SQUARE MILES FOR A MERE 6,456 MEMBERS (AND THEIR SEATS AND ANY DESKS) AND PATHWAYS IN/OUT ???

    TELESCOPES NEEDED TO SEE ANY PRESIDING OFFICER FROM MAX REAR ??? — OR MINI-TV SETS ON EACH DESK ???

    LESS THAN 10-50 COUGHS PER SECOND IN FLU SEASONS ???

  42. Screaming (flesh?)bot rant yesterday at 9:43 am: there’s zero reason to presume the so called dark age was worse than our “enlightened” modernity. Something in between would probably be optimal, with plenty of local variations to find the right balance. Both have had plenty of tyranny.

    There is nothing obvious about majority rule fixing tax/spend/deficit/debt laws. If anyone who agrees with the bot that democracy solves those problems rather than exacerbate them wants to try having an actual conversation, I’m open to it. I’ve already explained above why the opposite tends to be true. That doesn’t mean I support absolute monarchy or any other kind of tyranny. Majority rule can and often is a form of tyranny as well.

    If anyone has real world evidence that more pure democracy correlates with lower taxes and spending and less debt/deficit, try to make your case. Screaming that it’s obvious doesn’t convince anyone, including yourself, which is why you kept screaming and getting nothing accomplished until you died of covaids, old age, or who knows what during the so called pandemic (plandemic, scamdemic) and turned into a bot or screamed yourself into becoming an indistinguishable flesh facsimile thereof.

    There is plenty of real world evidence that unrestrained majority rule only makes government overreach worse. And plenty of logical reason why this is so I’m willing to discuss it with people who show any semblance of open mind and sane conversation. I skimmed some of that above, and repetition gets boring fast.

  43. Jim Riley yesterday at 11:39 am:

    It’s possible that AZ is Thomas Jones and is only pretending to be a bot, or the other way around – but it doesn’t matter, the resulting output is the same.

    Neither voters nor candidates can competently rank all candidates. Even just picking one per office out of several is a crapshoot. They lie constantly, or are incompetent or both. Then shift blame. And they’re not wrong: There is plenty of blame to go around and nobody has enough pull to fix the systemic problems.

    In some ways that’s a good thing, because anyone with that much power would also have the power to make things even worse, and power and arrogance go hand in hand. But even if they didn’t, the information problem of central planning would still apply.

    The problem with everyone being able to point fingers at others for anything wrong is that’s exactly what happens. At least with single member districts you get some minimal constituent services and some level of accountability to local opinion, as imperfect as that already is. It gets lost completely with the multimember and proportional representation schemes. Anything that is not any one person’s responsibility to get done is way less likely to get done. If anyone is unfamiliar with what constituent services are, please look it up.

    Voters (yes, including candidates themselves) don’t show competence to choose one candidate per office, much less rank all of them. Vote counting officials don’t show competence (or honesty) to prevent widespread fraud even under the relatively simpler vote counting we have. Making vote counting even more complicated, which all of these schemes do, makes vote counting fraud and errors even easier to get away with than now.

    For those who disbelieve in widespread vote counting fraud, vote manipulation is easier under more complicated voting schemes.

    Voting and vote counting needs to be less complicated, not more. Politicians should be more directly accountable for specific results, not less. STV, RCV, proportional representation, approval voting, multimember districts, and all these other schemes thus move things in the wrong direction. Government and voting need to be radically simplified and localized. Failing that, incremental moves in those directions are good, and all these schemes move things in the wrong direction.

    To the extent that I have to empower anyone to make political decisions for me, I want it to be someone I personally know, can get a hold of, and follow up with. I want them to be personally responsible for making sure some things get done. I want my input on hiring or firing them at election time or in between to not be so trivial as to be safely ignored. Anything moving us further away from that is a move in the wrong direction.

    A lot of voters are stupid and or lazy. You need frequent interactions with a broad cross section of the general public to fully appreciate this. But even if every one was really smart and hard working, they have lots of priorities besides politics, so manipulation comes into play, and the buck stops nowhere.

    You can disagree but voting is also political power, whether you’re a politician or just a voter who helps pick the politicians. Since voters have zero personal accountability for which politicians they elect and politicians have myriads of ways to point fingers to avoid blame, we get what we get. Personal accountability does not mean physical violence, which should remain illegal as a form of political accountability, Hoppe’s arguments notwithstanding.

    But there should be some accountability like the potential to lose jobs, friends and social standing due to lazy or incompetent voting. Otherwise, we just incentivize more of that, and voters respond accordingly.

    It’s not even stupid or irrational of them – with as little input as we individually have in political decisions, it actually is more rational to be a low information voter or nonvoter. For those of us who are nevertheless compelled to pay too much attention to political antics, even if rationally knowing how to defuse this mess were possible, we’d just get outvoted by low information voters and dumbasses and outgamed by the various political and information manipulators.

    Besides being unlikely to be implemented, all those schemes just make what is a bad problem already even worse. The last thing we need is making voting and government even more complicated and even less local and or with even less individual personal accountability for results

  44. Jim Riley: that’s my understanding of the Max plan as well.

    There’s no one way to get there. Different places might try different elements of the plan and see what works where and when. Full-scale implementation anywhere all at once would be highly disruptive rapid change and this would create a lot of collateral damage in various senses of the term. It’s an open question whether continuing in the opposite direction will result in even more, but overconfidence in rapidly implementing major systemic changes is a big problem. The calculation problem of central planning again.

    So the best thing is probably slow and gradual experimentation with adopting different elements of the plan in different places.

    As a practical matter, full scale adoption all at once anywhere either won’t happen or will happen only if and when there’s major systemic collapse first. But gradual moves towards it can, and I think likely will, happen – different aspects at different rates in different places, as it should be.

    As for the standing count element, we’ve been over this before a number of times but maybe you forgot. The standing count would take place in each voting location same as under full implementation. Tallying between voting locations would be no different than now. Winning parties in every local voting area would pick their local law enforcement officers, and until we simplify the current government enough to get rid of them the various current elected offices. They might also have to elect representatives to travel to regional, state and federal levels respectively to elect the offices at those levels in similar standing count fashion.

    Then devolve power downwards in levels of locality, simplify laws over time, and eventually get rid of the various extra levels starting with federal and then on down until we arrive at Max level government units.

    I think it will happen because with coming advances in 3D printing anything and everything including at the nano level and better communication technology to facilitate various kinds of automation and remote work more effectively will do away with the need or perceived need to move people and physical resources around so much, thus creating the ability to do nearly everything locally again. With stable long term local populations and the long term experience of the corresponding overreaches of the so called dark ages as well as the so called enlightenment era respectively, slow experiments with finding the right balance or synthesis for each local area can take place over several generations.

    Max proposed a hypothetical endpoint, but also said real life feedback is important. That seems correct to me. Nobody can come up with a perfect plan, particularly for major changes. At best, we can stumble in what we hope is the correct direction.

    The overreach of the “enlightenment” is that we can rationally plan everything and disregard tradition, faith, and various longstanding and customary nongovernmental institutions or methods of solving social problems, move people and things all around the world rapidly, and effectively govern at massive scales – as opposed to the prior overreach in the opposite direction, which made any kind of physical or social movement or change too difficult.

  45. Screaming bot at 2:05 pm yesterday,

    American Indian nations should become nations in the full sense, completely independent of the US federal government and its state and county governments . Those governments would cease to have any jurisdiction over anything that happens in Native nations. They would also stop providing their so called help in the form of various kinds of welfare. That welfare dependency is the worst thing possible for any group of people.

    American Indians could then choose whether to live and vote in the U.S. or whichever Native Nation they would live in. At that point, voting in US elections might be much less of an issue, especially for Indians living in their own nations.

    It might still be somewhat of an issue due to economic interdependence and because dual citizenship and voting abroad do exist. But ultimately they should move to standing count systems where those things first stop being so prevalent and then go away or basically go away with rare exceptions such as diplomats phased out over time.

    People living and working in countries other than where they vote and where many generations of their ancestors lived and worked should and I believe will become rare again. Some people might still travel, but probably far fewer, because virtual travel will become increasingly like the real thing with realistic full sensory 3D immersion and the ability to assemble anything locally from the atomic/molecular level. Star trek never explained why with holodecks, warp speed communication, beaming technology and (I forgot what their 3D atomic manufacturing machines are called) all that physical travel would be necessary or desirable.

    Although it was fairly prescient to predict the technological evolutions, it predicted social evolution that goes hand in hand with technology far less well, usually reverting to cultural Marxist ideology for imagining such a future instead of using the same imagination they applied to technology. Marshall McLuhan did a relatively better job at that.

    In any case, American Indian nations should stop being reservations and become true nations in every sense. They’d actually be pretty good places to experiment with full scale Max plan.

  46. Apologies for filibuster. Last thing:

    Congrats to the Teflon Don for surviving yet another in the series of endless attempts to take him out, with two recent ones being literal physical attempts to kill him. But long before that, the swamp, deep state, fake news axis of evil tried to virtually take him out over and over every which possible way they could, always failing to do so.

    They wouldn’t be doing all those things to stop him if he wasn’t a threat to them. So, I’ll vote for Trump if I bother to vote. I probably won’t since it’s a waste of time. I might send his campaign a few bucks as my middle finger to all those shadowy creeps instead. I was thinking about sending Randall Terry campaign a donation, but where are the ads they promised being broadcast other than online? We’re well into the 60 days now. Are they even being pushed anywhere online or just available if you search for them?

    Randall Terry knows how to get media attention when he wants to. He’ll need to do that if he wants his campaign to get any of my fudderall refry ones and zeroes. Otherwise those are going to Trump. And really, a pox on all of them – Jesus Christ was the only human ever competent to hold such a job, and he manifestly turned down its then equivalent.

    Trying to be chief executive of millions of federal employees which incompetently misgovern a nation of hundreds of millions of people with civil service job and pension security (near Soviet level difficulty in firing anyone much below cabinet level – scratch that, worse than Soviet), multiple alphabet agencies, poor incentives endemic to anything in the government sector anywhere, powers curtailed in all manner of ways. And folks expecting the POTUS to fix all the country’s and world’s problems or at least fix a system that has been more and more broken for longer than Trump has been alive. Good luck with that.

    What can any POTUS realistically actually do besides rant and rave to a larger audience? There are various theoretical powers, but just how constrained are they in the real world in all sorts of ways few people fully appreciate, if any?

    I honestly can’t imagine wanting that job, much less twice. I can understand why Perot sabotaged his own run back when he actually stood a chance early on in 1992.

  47. ONLY KNOW-IT-ALL POLITICAL M-O-R-O-N-S CAN WRITE THAT THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MAJORITY RULE AND MINORITY RULE GOVTS — ESP IN THE LONGTERM MAKING OF LAWS. — AND THE EXEC/JUDIC ENFORCEMENT OF THEM —

    AS IF 4,000 PLUS YEARS OF ROTTED MONARCH/OLIGARCH REGIMES IS THE SAME AS P.R. REGIMES IN SOME NATIONS SINCE 1840.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation

    [ DOES NOT [YET] SHOW 1/2 X 1/2 = 1/4 GERRYMANDER MATH OR TV / TM MATH REMEDY ]
    —-
    PR — HAVING 2 OR MORE LEGIS REPS PER AREAS = COMPETITION — AS WITH CARS / TRUCKS / FOOD STORES / ETC / ETC

  48. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering

    USA — ABOUT 80 PCT DOWN PAGE

    LARGER POPS / SEAT = EASIER TO RIG RESULTS — IE ESP USA REPS IN THE MINORITY RULE GERRYMANDER CONGRESS —

    RESULT – NONSTOP PREZS WITH THEIR CONTEMPT FOR THE CONGRESS — ESP SINCE 1933 —
    GOVTS BY NONSTOP ***EMERGENCIES*** — EXEC ORDERS / EXEC REGS.

  49. Evidence that proportional representation regimes are better is still lacking. Sure, some regimes that didn’t use that scheme were and are horrible, as are some that do. You need a lot more to prove such a case than calling anyone who disagrees or hasn’t decided know it all morons just like a know it all moron would.

    Obviously there are differences. Whether they are on net positive, negative, or a wash is a lot less clear. I see one creepy retireded cop at least tried to make a case for negative – who has a case to make for positive? Name calling is not a case, retards. It goes without saying the AZ 666 BOT can’t make a case and wouldn’t know what a case is if it was inside one, so others are welcome to make its case if there’s a case to be made.

    I’m undecided. Convince me.

  50. Whether presidential contempt for congress had anything to do with Gerry and his salamander is a somewhat interesting question. I’m not sure an answer is even possible. Political pseudoscience sure isn’t any help. You may as well study chicken entrails (which at least might have some nutritional value, unlike bullshit piled higher and deeper by the learned elders of political pseudoscience and woke pedo retards as further interpreted through the troll moron Az 666 bot matrix).

    I hold congress in contempt regardless, much like e.g. The Knesset or any national proportional parliament that springs to mind.

  51. Majority rule regimes are always better. As anyone who was bullied in school already knows. Strength in numbers and lowest common denominator combine with xenophobia and intolerance for optimal results, especially if you consider idiocracy to be optimal. Obviously!

  52. Might makes right. Proportionally, bigger crowds are fully righteously justified in lynching scapegoats and throwing minorities down wells. Everyone knows this. Act like you know or we will make you regret it, capice?

  53. I didn’t abandon the “Max Plan” thought exercise. I abandoned trying to discuss it to death in mind numbingly repetitive ways here. Very early on I abandoned any notion that it’s headed towards an action plan on an electoral politics time scale. I rather think it will work itself out and trust in the Lord to show us the way.

    Many things hold out greater hope than any megastates electoral politics or military actions – cutting edge technology, religious revival, localism, pan-nationalism, perhaps extraterrestrial human settlement, and many things I haven’t even the first clue to imagine. I find what is generally known as the dark enlightenment to be of interest. Historical revisionism is also of some interest, if the term is applied broadly rather than to European events of the 1930s and 40s. Entrepreneurial efforts are far more promising and satisfying than political – the latter are far more reminiscent of repeatedly running head first into the same walls. Spiritual and family concerns and nature walks round out most of my schedule, and discussion with folks I’ve actually at least met in person at some point. When time avails, there is art and music and literature and the like to enjoy.

    I’ve ceased voting in government elections , and wouldn’t vote in the UK or US or any other Byzantine KafkaState if I could vote in any of those I can think of. Kindest regards for continuing discussion of my thought experiment. If I think of anything new or interesting to add, I might weight the temptation to do so against the likely resulting time sink. Otherwise, may God bless and keep all of you.

  54. Stanley appears to understand my plan at least as well as I do, so I’m not the premiere authority on it anymore. I’m not disinheriting it, just past the point of active parenting. What’s the central plan for freedom?

  55. Gospodin Maxim Maximovich,

    Tak tochno!

    There is no central plan for freedom. There is a north star to guide us and many pathways into a dimly viewable future which has many dangers and opportunities.

    Let us pray.

  56. @Max,

    A couple of questions you may know something about.

    (1) There was a story about Yabloko candidates being knocked off the ballot in Saint Petersburg. It said that they only had 83 candidates for the current (recent) election, much fewer than previous elections. The article said there were more than 100 local councils. What is the nature of these local councils and what powers do they have. I’m assuming Moscow has similar governance – though that might not be true.

    (2) Do you know the meaning of “mauvais ton”?

    (3) President Putin in endorsing Kamala Harris said that according to translator that she had an “infectious laugh”? I google-translated into Russian and back to English, and it came back as “contagious laugh”. Infectious and contagious mean essentially the same thing, but “infectious laugh” has a different connotation. Does Russian use two words, or did the translator know to translate “contagious laugh” as “infectious laugh”?

  57. Kamala Harris is the name of the Marxist who is dreaming
    Of killing freedom and listening to it screaming

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