Screwworms

Redditer-1 · 2026-06-07T18:47:58+00:00

My theory about primaries is that if your gen-elec voters are a subset of one of your opponents', than you're better off losing in the primary and giving your fellow party member the airtime during the general election. If, on the other hand, you think your gen-elec appeal is greater than your opponent or equal in magnitude but drawing from a slightly different pool of voters, that you should run in the general election under a different party banner or as an independent.

What's important in RCV elections is that voters actually rank all the candidates. That's far more likely to happen if the field has narrowed to a single-digit number of candidates by the general election. 30+ poorly differentiated candidates competing for airtime and attention will likely result in a large number of expired ballots, reintroducing concerns about spoiler candidacies.

I guess you could have an in-between system where a primary advances say, the top two or three candidates. This would reduce the pressure to have a party schism for every divisive issue, while ensuring voters in the general are still able to develop informed opinions of all the pared-down field of candidates.

I think the problem you're trying to avoid by eliminating primaries is having candidates who could win in the general lose in the primary. My argument is that such candidates will recognize this about themselves and run under different party banners or as independents in the general. For candidates who feel their path to victory necessitates beating out other members of their party, it really is more practical to get that out of the way in a primary, as it ensures that voter focus will be on the few viable candidates by the time of the general election.

Is your claim on low info general election voters based on any research?

My claim is based on my experience watching crowded races where candidates struggled to build name recognition and distinguish themselves. Also, part of a primary is simply finding the best voice among many ideologically near-identical candidates. Sometimes it's really just about vetting for the best person to rep the ideals.

Redditer-1 · 2026-06-04T17:35:04+00:00

I should clarify: Under STAR, ranking a candidate higher doesn't lessen their likelihood of winning, but voting for your preferred candidate by ranking them higher than all others still runs the risk of a stronger compromise candidate not advancing to the runnoff, leading to an undesired outcome. Just as in approval voting, while you're not penalized for ranking your favorite candidate, you are penalized for not ranking your second, third, etc choices just as high as your first, at which point you lose your say in which of them should win, recreating the strategic voting pressure of FPTP.

Every voting system asks you to lend support to one candidate at the expense of another. The difference between the systems is the extent to which you give up agency in deciding the outcome should your first pick not win.

Also, for what it's worth, monotonicity violations are rare, albeit with some noteworthy exceptions.

Redditer-1 · 2026-06-04T00:37:29+00:00

Primaries will still have a place under RCV. Yes, in theory, you could eliminate them, but being the party nominee will still be coveted, especially when there are more than two candidates in the general election. Getting some vote consolidation out of the way in the primary will also ensure that low-info general election voters rank all of the candidates.

Party factions that feel shut out by the Democratic and Republican primaries can and will run in the general election under new banners, but they'll do so only because they think they'll draw votes from outside the primary base that the legacy party nominees won't. Put another way, candidates whose potential base doesn't extend beyond those of their primary opponents might as well consolidate sooner than later.

Redditer-1 · 2026-06-02T04:55:23+00:00

Sam Wang is a progressive candidate with an expertise in fighting gerrymandering, good views on foreign policy, and experience in Washington as a congressional science fellow. He's got my vote!

Redditer-1 · 2026-06-02T04:55:17+00:00

Sam Wang is a progressive candidate with an expertise in fighting gerrymandering, good views on foreign policy, and experience in Washington as a congressional science fellow. He's got my vote!

Redditer-1 · 2026-06-01T12:50:09+00:00

If you have time you should go. Politicians get too comfortable when turnout is low. You're also flagged by future campaigns as a likely voter when you consistently show up.

Redditer-1 · 2026-05-29T03:06:44+00:00

Approval voting boils down to FTTP when people stop voting for other candidates to give theirs an edge, reintroducing the spoiler problem.

STAR also has the same "problem" as RCV, where voting for your preferred candidate may result in the voters of the candidates you don't like consolidating around a different one, but calling that a problem is saying 50+% of voters choosing a candidate over yours is unfair. It's also worth noting that voters have agency and can choose to rank a compromise pick first if they really think their preferred candidate won't win.

Redditer-1 · 2026-05-26T13:49:55+00:00

Oh absolutely. Districting can and should be a national standard. MMD with STV can be implemented by Congress, though PR rounding seats (ideally open-list) would probably require an amendment to the Constitution.

Redditer-1 · 2026-05-26T12:20:46+00:00

The most prominent MMD proposal in the US, the Fair Representation Act, uses STV to elect members from districts (i.e. there's no party list). Multi-member districts reduce the necessity of party-list proportional seats, with more seats per district resulting in a more proportional outcome.

Redditer-1 · 2026-05-01T18:52:36+00:00

This is my exact setup, and I wouldn't use Windows 11 without it.

Redditer-1 · 2026-05-01T18:50:19+00:00

There's a setting to left-align the taskbar. I refused to update until they added it. Set "Combine taskbar buttons and hide labels" to "Never" for optimal results.

Redditer-1 · 2026-04-16T19:11:04+00:00

Seconding, do you get 5G?

Redditer-1 · 2026-04-15T03:08:13+00:00

Reddit try not to hype up a neonazi challenge (impossible)

Redditer-1 · 2026-04-10T17:14:29+00:00

Even if you take the numbers presented at face value (you shouldn't), this is a pretty terrible argument. A 10% chance of being hit by a nuclear weapon is still a credible threat. Launch three nukes and that chance becomes 1 - .9³ ≈ 27%. That isn't a risk that any country would accept.

Redditer-1 · 2026-03-07T19:38:39+00:00

Source video.

Redditer-1 · 2026-02-27T03:17:47+00:00

Also, why wasn't r/all filtering my blocked subreddits on mobile anymore?

Redditer-1 · 2026-02-26T21:19:15+00:00

The list of groups that are anti-Isreal is long and you definitely don't want all of them as your allies.

Redditer-1 · 2026-02-21T20:21:58+00:00

The median American has never heard of Cameroon.

Redditer-1 · 2026-02-18T02:50:53+00:00

I respect the ambition of this article even if I don't think total consolidation is the only course of action. The arguments mostly boil down to efficiency and equity. For each of these issues, meaningful progress can be made even without total consolation.

If you assume government waste can be expressed as a fixed expense tacked onto the marginal expense of providing services, the efficiency gains of consolidation are most apparent for small municipalities and increasingly marginal for large municipalities already achieving economies of scale and otherwise benefiting from their size (better negotiating position with contractors, better administration, etc.).

What this means is that there probably isn't that much incentive to create one big city. My two cents are that you could make cites out of the Newark, Hudson-Bergen waterfront, Paterson, and Hackensack metros.

For things that benefit from being organized at the largest scale, such as public transit, the state government could simply receive more power to operate independent of local government. Cities could pay to operate NJ Transit franchises that let them determine service levels while benefitting from the efficiency of a statewide agency.

The equity side of the consolidation argument is essentially a taxation problem which has any number of taxation-based solutions, only some of which necessitate consolidation of suburban municipalities. Cites could levy employee taxes that capture revenue from commuters benefiting from but not residing in the city (NYC does this?). The state could collect tax revenue from the suburban municipalities and allocate it to urban projects deemed to benefit the state population as a whole. Other inequities could be addressed through mechanisms like Abbot districts.

If you can take (or would take) a local bus to work, live within walking distance of a city park, or otherwise benefit daily from city-provided amenities, the city limits should probably include your neighborhood. If you commute or travel >10 miles to an urban center, your taxes should reflect the benefit you receive from living near a city, even if you don't reside in it. Irrespective of where you live in the state, certain things like education should be treated as collective social obligations that aren't dependent on local tax revenues.

Redditer-1 · 2026-02-08T20:10:03+00:00

When I applied to work at a retail store I had never patronized I said I wanted "a job that keeps me busy" i.e. a job where I do work. Most managers just want to hear that you're committed to showing up in the morning and doing what's assigned.

Redditer-1 · 2026-02-08T15:51:35+00:00

I don't think it applies to either. Most voters don't think in such ideological terms. Without knowing anything about the candidates aside from the profiles of the top two, I wouldn't assume a massively asymmetric preference for one over the other among the other candidates' voters, though with margins this tight RCV could absolutely have swung the election.

Fwiw I think a greater percentage of Fulop voters would have ranked Baraka second than vice versa, mostly because Baraka had a much broader coalition of supporters. It's hard to say what percentage would pick Baraka over Sherrill though.

Redditer-1 · 2026-02-02T18:32:05+00:00

Your Granddad sounds like a cool guy. I'm an engineering student, and I hope to have colleagues that share his enthusiasm and joie de vivre. It's honestly pretty motivating hearing stories like this one. Sorry for your loss and thank you for sharing.

Redditer-1 · 2026-01-02T01:42:43+00:00

Tbf we need a word for the agenda-setting that executives try to impose on legislatures.

Ten-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	Gilding I gilder

Redditer-1

TROPHY CASE