Yeah, it's not going to happen. Status quo above all.

The dude saying the U.S. is the "stabilizing superpower of the world" still like we haven't systematically driven off our allies, courted dictators, shown ourselves to be a paper tiger(even before Iran), and started just taking over other countries, kidnapping the leaders of other countries, bombing random small boats in the middle of the ocean, and that we keep trying to permanently end the global dollar economy via reckless debt spending and deregulation. 👀

Also "Do non-partisan / bi-partisan redistricting commities work?" The article literally just goes: "What if they don't?" THEY DO. I LIVE Michigan. Things are infinitely more fair now that we have one in our state. They're just better. They just are.

Also also "Make sure you mention Donald Trump. That'll really get them on our side."

The entire argument is "there will be issues" like the last 250 years of U.S. politics hasn't been us desperately trying to duct tape over the massive issues in our constitution rather than reasonably updating/replacing it. They literally mention the Gore / Bush race and don't mention the PARTISAN Supreme Court literally just handed the election to Bush. SURE LET'S KEEP THE CURRENT SYSTEM, IT'S CLEARLY BETTER.

I don't generally get worked up about fluff pieces but man this one is just like, agregious.

So just get rid of texas.

The only reason to have 2nd thoughts is that without Texas the electoral college is basically unwinable for Republicans

Asshole. What did he think lying about it would do?

It's worse than favoring Republicans. It favors wealthy land owners. Those exist regardless of party alignment. You could demolish the Republican party today, ban it, make it illegal, and put its architects in prison, and tomorrow the opulent minority would launch a new political party or take over the Dems completely.

The problem isn't the party, it's the people.

“If the whole idea is that the national popular vote is fairly counted, it’s hard unless there’s buy-in by the counters everywhere, including in red states.”

Expecting Republican states to bypass a system that favors them is asinine. It's already only going to reach 270 if enough swing states join, some of which would selfishly prefer it if more attention were paid per capita to their citizens and issues during presidential elections, the exact opposite of what a fair and proportional representative democracy should be.

The least glitchy version is the one I imagined in 2001. My specific proposal involves a lot of interstate uniformity, and using an independent bipartisan mechanism. But it means going back to square one in each of the states.

That's far less likely to occur than even a constitutional amendment. Again, the problem is that using the popular vote is not a bipartisan issue; not only is the Electoral College designed to boost states with small populations, favoring Republicans, but many of those same Republican states intentionally suppress voter participation by various means to diminish the importance of the popular vote.

Manufacture that consent, Vox.

Don't put rats down like that, they are cool. These "people" are more like a multidimensional psychological terror from beyond the edge of the universe.

I'll bet there was a stain!

Holy crap that is the purest, most distilled form of cringe we've seen in years.

Zero love for the TPUSA douchebags, but this guy has really played hisself.

"Sorry officer i was backed into a corner"

Nothing to see in a screenshot, it's video.

Here's a better link!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT4Dlduq_OE

I don’t use FB, can you screenshot it for us please?

This must be those strong christain values they are always talking about.

TPUSA came to my university a couple weeks ago. I was picketing them and a lot of the crowd was calling the speaker, Alex Stein, a rapist.

I'm utterly shocked and astonished that these accusations turned out to be correct.

Right? I'm shocked that the video was posted at all. They could've raised awareness on the issue without posting the actual assault.

Initially I thought it was TPUSA themselves that posted the video. Questionable decision either way.

Gotta fight fire rape with fire non consensual distribution of sexual assault material.

Took a quick look for the video so I could see what went on. Found this TPUSA genius getting arrested instead:

https://www.facebook.com/reel/951140554529215

I think this needs to be reworded..

The clip was posted by the Unf*ck America Tour, a campus tour backed by the Democratic-aligned National Ground Game PAC.

Oh thank god, that tour is to raise awareness against TPUSA.

Truly unclickable title and thumbnail. If it's not tabloid shit, don't make it look like it

tl;dr: Shit's going down publicly that makes me think public opinion doesn't matter anymore, and cryptographic voting methods exist to test if the dems in the House are serious or not.

More and more these days I see shit that I'm certain wouldn't have played out publicly 20 years ago; internal infighting and an outward united face has always been (and will always be) the way groups of people organize. Cutting a backroom deal with an opposing group to get something you want/need is always what it's been about, and scoring a deal that forces someone on the opposing to vote against the will of the people that elected them is part of it: "nevermind that people's lives are at stake, I got X person to vote against Y people!"

The between politics and professional wrestling only get easier to make. One side, with their organization top heavy with dominionists and their project 2025 playbook are out in public telling the crowd, "We're going to cut the US federal government up into tiny pieces, make it unusable, make people's lives miserable, and bring about the book of revelations so jesus can come back." The crowd laughs and cheers because they sure are sticking it to the other guy. Only when gas gets expensive do people start to react, but by that time it's too late. The plans are in place, you knew about them ahead of time, agreed to them by voting for it, and if you get pissy and loud about how it affects you, well you just won't get election funding for the next turn.

The democrats seem hell-bent on maintaining that politics (the wrestling matches) don't have the outcome decided ahead of time, but enough people have enough access to better news sources to know what's going on. Everyone caught on to when that jobber from Maine was going to vote against the repubs, and those predictions about which way she'd vote held up. Then, from under the ring, Thomas Massie with the articles of Impeachment! It's a slam dunk! Oh my god, the dems are shaking hands with the bad guys (eleven democrats didn't show up for the vote)! The explanation (they were busy) might play out in kayfabe, but in the real world that's MORE of the gapping of our expertise in admirals and generals and more of a pivot away from our edge in soft power in favor of an edge in willingness to charge machinegun nests. This was a big concern a month ago, and Massie was convinced he had the votes. Why?

It feels like something went off script in the ring, and the dems in the House are using weaksauce lies to justify it because that's what they think will work. The Senate may take the chance to oust Schumer (a good move IMHO even if only in the sense that it passes the torch to the next generation), but the House is trying to be business as usual? They're doing the thing that people elected the democrats to STOP doing? It doesn't make sense in-ring because it's not going to be a good storyline, and it doesn't make sense in the real world either unless all the allegations about corruption, lobbying, and bribery are completely true.

Whatever. Maybe we're all just smarks who've gone off script (our job is to believe the script), but if politicians are truly serious about citing a Serious Issue about why they need campaign donations, then they can be serious enough to do a cryptographically verifiable public/secret vote.

Yeah iirc exit polls had Government Corruption ranking just behind the economy in importance for voters. With it being the most important issue among Democrats. Combine that with the immediate push for new leadership among the Democratic Party from the voters and yeah that tracks.

almost comically racist

Well... it was - and still is - being funded and supported by the most comically white supremacist nations to ever exist.

I guess that should have been a clue, eh?

For no reason at all, did you know that cryptographers have been working on public votes with private ballots for a while? If one were so inclined one could hold a nonbinding (public, filmed) election using existing ballot methods, then immediately after hold another nonbinding (also public, also filmed) election using a cryptographicly enforced method where the results were tallied so that nobody's vote was exposed, but every vote was counted accurately. If OP is right then the two tallies will be the same and everyone's fears were misguided, business could carry on knowing everything was above board, and the big tent party is speaking with one voice.

Of course going through with this would destroy the ability to cut nonpartisan backroom deals because politicians couldn't negotiate behind the scenes to trade something now for a vote in their constituents' favor later. It's not something to consider lightly, but we shouldn't have to pretend that there are no solutions to the problems.

By the way, one of the contributors to that particular system is Lawrence Lessig which you might remember from his pivot away from tech and copyright law to corruption in politics.

It seems to me like the 2026 US midterm results were at least a little due to a loss in confidence in the process itself. The Senate appears to be moving to take care of business (if we're reading articles about Schumer possibly replaced by Van Vollen then something is happening), and there is clearly an apetite in the House to get out from under something that nobody seems willing to discuss.