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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • So First Past the Post and the electoral college aren’t mutually exclusive.

    The electoral college is voting logistics, a relic of a time when sending paper ballots in a sealed box from Vermont or Georgia to Washington was a months long horseback ride through dangerous territories. It was a clever solution to solve the logistics of running a democracy on the technology they had at the time.

    First Past the Post is a simple voting system where each persong gets one vote with one name on it. Whichever candidate gets the most votes wins. The problem with it is it tends toward 2 parties through the spoiler effect. If there are 2 parties that run similar enough platforms, that splits the voting base, because either party will satisfy those issue needs, but the opposition to those issues would be one big voting bloc. Thus the 2 losing parties will siphon off voters from the other losing party until eventually one party remains.

    It’s why the Dems in this country range from vaguely progressive corporate neoliberals (think Biden or Pelosi) or to highly progressive further left wing* people (think Bernie or AOC. And Republicans range from conservative corporate neolibs (think Romney or McCain) to reactionaries and outright fascists (think Boebert and Marjorie Green).

    *compared to the rest of our representatives in America