• Instigate@aussie.zone
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    7 hours ago

    One thing alone would help shift the Overton Window MASSIVELY in a country like the USA - mandatory voting. If everyone who had the right to vote actually voted, Republicans would never hold federal government ever again and would only be able to hold onto a couple of states and a few dozen local governments across the nation.

    Without mandatory voting, Republicans can become more and more egregious in seeking to rally voters while simultaneously painting the whole establishment as broken which essentially disenfranchises the non-voting centre. With it, they’d have to seriously moderate their platforms to have any hope of forming government ever again. It would likely cause a party split that would then coalesce again into a two-party coalition on the right, starting the efforts to break down the two-party system.

    If you introduce ranked choice voting as well, that’ll speed up the dismantling of the two-party system, but just mandatory voting alone would prevent Trump and his ilk from ever being in power again.

    • Credibly_Human@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      One thing alone would help shift the Overton Window MASSIVELY in a country like the USA - mandatory voting. If everyone who had the right to vote actually voted, Republicans would never hold federal government ever again and would only be able to hold onto a couple of states and a few dozen local governments across the nation.

      The problem with “solutions” like this (and I actually don’t even think this would fix things vs any number of other solutions in a similar vein), is that these aren’t solutions. These are vague wishlist goals, and very much so have all the hard parts of getting there removed.

      Like I think every country having proportional representation would improve the quality of their politicians and government massively, but good luck getting the establishment politicians who benefit from the old system to give that up.

      If you introduce ranked choice voting as well,

      Im always super shocked at why anyone likes ranked choice voting. It doesnt actually solve the 2 party system at all.

      Proportional voting is what solves that. Ranked choice just means that 2 party system has a slightly higher chance of changing who the 2 parties are.

      • djsoren19@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        52 minutes ago

        This is the part that always gets me laughing. At the level of effort that would be necessary to actually get voting reform, we might as well just overthrow the government. That is how difficult it would be, it would require a nationwide coordinated mass movement hitherto unseen in the United States, and it would only really solve one of our problems.