• astral@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I’m sorry to tell you but that is the entire history of the US presidential election system. Before the mid-1800s some states didn’t even let the public vote, the legislature of the state selected their electoral representatives who picked the president.

    “Voting isn’t marriage, it’s public transport. You’re not waiting for “the one” who’s absolutely perfect: you’re getting the bus, and if there isn’t one to your destination, you don’t not travel- you take the one going closest.”

    • kautau@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      And Biden is 80 years old. Trump is 77. I believe we should have upper age limits on presidents the same way there is a lower age limit. The country doesn’t need more old corrupt white men running it.

      • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Many years ago I was invite to sit on a board of a charity I was involved with. Everyone else was about that age. Congress made a lot more sense to me after that experience.

        • kautau@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          That problem is more easily solved by congressional term limits, which I also believe should be a thing. Too many people in congress spend their time staying in congress and collecting bribes than being the public servants the position is supposed to be

          • SCB@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Congressional term limits would dramatically increase risk of corruption in elected officials

            • Acat114@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Any reason why you believe that? Just more turnover and knowledge sharing?

              • SCB@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Freshmen members of Congress have few/no connections and ability to make deals. They often network via more senior members. Without these structures in place, and especially without long-term accountability to their constituents, they are highly incentivized to simply follow the money and cash out.

                People always like to say politicians are dishonest thieves in the pocket of various interests, but politicians vote with their constituents an overwhelming percentage of the time and regularly enjoy high levels of support from constituents even when Congress’s approval ratings are in the toilet.

                People like their representatives, and want the rest of Congress to be more like them, more often than not

              • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Think about who would have the time and money to run for office when there’s high turnover. It’s the wealthy fucks.

                I think a better approach is improving candidate quality. More of us need to run for office.

    • QuadratureSurfer@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      And this is precisely why we need to vote in candidates at lower level elections that support making modifications to how we vote.

      Bring in Star Voting, Approval Voting, Ranked Choice Voting, etc… Pretty much anything but the current system. The Forward Party is primarily focused on this goal of overhauling our current voting system to help fix this problem of being force to vote for candidates that we don’t really want.

    • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Politics in those so-called democratic countries with mathematically rigged representative-allocation systems that create power duopolies, looks a lot like a play in many sports (the soccer version is called the “one-two”) were two players pass the ball back and forth to cross the opposing team’s defense: bad defenders will try to go after the ball, good defenders see it as the play for the other team to score that it is.

      Sure, it’s years between ball-passing but it’s still the same principle of passing the ball back and forth whilst maintaining the same direction of travel and aiming to score for the same side.

      Looking at it like that, it’s no surprise that all during those years of voters “choosing the lesser evil” the overall level of evil in politics has slowly kept going up.