Now we wait for the US to stage the coup.
Hitler Mussolini Simeón Flores is centrist, actually
They were already trying during the election, and surely wont stop after
Brazil might be a hard ask. Particularly if there has been trickle down imbecility at the three letter agencies, as I suspect there has.
Lula is far from a progressive.
This is why I really like the run-off system of the non-instant variety. It gives people a clear choice and a chance to think. People that might not have voted the first round see a stark choice and may think “yeah I better go vote or we’ll have another Bolsanaro running things and I don’t want that.”
Congrats to Brazil!
Agreed, I like it.
But why multiple election days when you can have a preferential voting system that has runoff inbuilt?
Thank goodness for this outcome though.
Because it provides for the opportunity to strategically vote based on the results of the previous round.
But it’s still down to two and you have one preference. What’s the strategy?
Energize people that may have avoided the initial round of voting but are not faced with a binary decision where they may have a very strong preference rather than a large field of candidates.
I was also on instant running voting as being a superior system but this thread is making some interesting arguments about the role time can play in an election.
The two-round system is actually very similar in its dynamics to instant runoff voting or FPTP with primaries. All these systems feature a centre squeeze. FPTP without primaries is actually a better system, albeit obviously still vastly inferior to a proportional system, which is what all top-tier democracies (and economies for that matter) use. In the FPTP-without-primary era, the US still had statesmen with broad support as presidents (e.g., FDR, Eisenhower, Theodore Roosevelt), and the election of a Trump would have been unfathomable (at least, on the Republican ticket).
Proportional representation gives all power to the parties and they decide policy in backroom deals when forming coalitions. It’s the system Israel has. Do you really want to have Israel’s system of government? A lot of oppression can happen when a party has to to make deal with radical nutjobs to form a coalition. Why do you think that’s a superior system? Do you like oppression?
“First Past the Post” is a term coined by intellectually dishonest people that say they want “electoral reform” when really they just want to change the system so their preferred party will have more power. We should call it what is really is, a community representation system. Because you’re voting for someone to represent your community. But that sounds nice and is more difficult to argue against, isn’t it?
I’m well aware of instant runoff system, and I think that would be ok. But a two round system is better than instant runoff. S-tier is two round community representation, instant run off community representation is A-tier, one round, one selection traditional community representation is C-Tier.
Israel style proportional representation only seems good to people who think of things from the perspective of a spreadsheet (the numbers all line up… yay) and have no understanding of power dynamics… F-Tier. Close your spreadsheet and look at how proportional representation works in the real world. How much oppression will you tolerate just so that two columns in a spreadsheet will have the same numbers in them?
The problem in Israel is not that it has a proportional system, but that Palestinians in the occupied territories have no voting rights. If they did, a two-state solution would have come out of the Knesset a long time ago.
A lot of oppression can happen when a party has to to make deal with radical nutjobs to form a coalition.
Yes, that can happen, but it’s still not as bad as having a single party of radical nutjobs not having to compromise.
Close your spreadsheet and look at how proportional representation works in the real world.
That’s a good suggestion, I advise you to follow it. Take any quality-of-life ranking and look at what kind of political system they have.
In the Social Progress Index, we find the first non-proportional democracy, Ireland, on 8th place. But even Ireland has a semi-proportional system with multi-member districts. The first two-party system is in 13th place, Australia, which uses ranked-choice voting.
In the inequality-adjusted HDI, the first non-proportional is again Ireland in 9th place, with Australia, the UK and Canada from 12th place.
You could also have a look at indices for democracy and rule of law. The V-Dem Democracy has Ireland on 5th place and France (which uses a two-round system) on 9th.
As you were typing out your comment, who will be leader of Israel will be determined by whether or not an Arab party will be accepted into a governing coalition. They always exclude Arab parties from being in the coalition. Because racism and shit.
That’s proportional representation. You have lots of options for who to vote for, but if the majority wants to lock out a minority group from power they can. All power is determined by backroom deals between parties.
But there is a chance the Arab party may be allowed to be part of the government. It all depends on whether the leaders of a bunch of parties are willing to allow Netanyahu to continue to rule over them or allow an Arab party to join them. Nothing anybody can do about it, the lives of a lot of people and the future of the middle East depends on the results of some backroom deals.
Fuck proportional representation. It’s so obviously a stupid system. If Netanyahu didn’t get enough votes to continue to be PM but he may still continue to be PM because of some bullshit backroom deal, while you watch him do whatever he’ll do next, will you still say “but proportional representation of good?”
It’s so obviously a stupid system.
How is that “obvious” when proportional systems are so utterly dominant when it comes to the most prosperous societies?
Lula in, Vucic out. Today was a good day for democracy.
HELL YEAH! 🥳 🥳 💫
Omg yes.
Much needed after BC.
BC was a decision between a center-left candidate (who was doing some stupid election shenanigans) and a center-center candidate (who is by all reports the most boring politician they could find) in a province in Canada.
This is not any way comparable to a country of over 200M people potentially falling to fascism.
Do they need to be comparable for me to feel a certain way about their respective outcomes? Both matter to me.
To feel like it’s relevant in a thread about an election in another country, yes, it should be comparable.
You should probably work on your empathy a little more if over 200 million people facing fascism gives you the same feelings as a province electing a boring centrist.
Thank you, I am working on it right now.
Boring centrists, especially conservative ones, lay the groundwork for fascists by eroding the public sector and services.
Dehumanizing people by just thinking of everyone as categories and not as individuals is what lays the groundwork for fascism. Isn’t that what you’re doing right now?
I’m not saying it is always intentional. But the very ideals they believe in will do that eventually it has nothing to do with intent and everything to do with the mechanics of neoliberalism.
Conservative describes a set of beliefs and beliefs can be faulty.
Only the “radicalized” think of politics in religious terms. The radicalized are capable of doing horrible things to people because they have a cult-like zealotry that makes them think any action against the supposed enemy is justified.
The radicalized left and radicalized right are the same kind of people. The enemy is arbitrary. The point of a radicalized movement is to make people stupid enough they will give the demagogue leader all power to defeat the enemy. But in the end it’s all the same, people being oppressed by an authoritarian.
I have less concern about the most boring man in BC politics oppressing people than I have about people like you who think of politics as being similar a holy crusade against the evil other.
The Tories are still going to fuck up treaty negotiations, wreck sex education, push old growth logging, and sell off our health system. They’ll probably also repeal the single-family home zoning ban.
Going to be a rough FO cycle.
The BC event really made me sad. :/
