Legit, if you have never contacted your reps in Congress before to let them know that they should be supporting a bill this is the time to do it. Make as much noise as possible on this one. It has the potential to be more impactful on every issue than most any other bill concerning a single issue. The only contenders I could think of would be campaign finance reforms or possibly some prohibitive action against regulatory capture.
*Gerrymandering raises it’s hand.
There was (still is?) the Fair Vote Act that got introduced and immediately buried in committee for several sessions that addressed both RCV and gerrymandering. I’ve lost hope for it and stopped paying attention to it getting reintroduced.
RCV will still have an effect on gerrymandered districts. It disrupts the clear funding strategies of lining up behind a single/pair of candidate(s). It becomes either a lot less guaranteed that your funding dollars are being put to good use, or a lot more expensive to make sure that they are. [Caveat: this obviously assumes some depth of a viable candidacy pool in a given district/race.]
And multi-winner ranked choice with larger districts makes gerrymandering much less impactful.
Great, now do the Senate and President as well. FPTP needs to die.
“Congressional Elections” includes The House of Representatives and The Senate.
Everyone on the left who complains about the lack of choice in elections should take note of which party these three politicians are from.
I assure you, Republicans are happy to let first-past-the-post and two-party rule continue until they’re finally able to seize all the levers of power. The only feasible way to give third parties any power whatsoever is to take your medicine and vote for Democrats.
The left in the U.S. seemingly has such a poor grasp of coalition oriented politics despite needing exactly that in order to become viable at all as political entities. It’s maddening. If people on the left en masse could put their ideals on the back burner long enough (and we’re only talking a couple/few election cycles) to force through issues of vote reform and campaign finance reform by working through the Democrats they could spend the rest of their lives voting for people that a) actually represent their values and b) actually have a shot at being elected.
Edit: That time frame may be optimistic, but the point stands. Cooperation/consolidation amongst the genuine left as a voting block/political force, and doing so through the currently actionable political channels, is what it’s going to take to get to where we want to go.
Truly underrated comment. Most political conversations devolve into ranting about republicans, without any real concept of just what it will take to actually affect a change.
Fuck yeah Peter Welch!
