Scott Rigell becomes first GOP congressman to endorse Gary Johnson - Polidicks

Sry scorpious too slow [url]http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/07/us/politics/gary-johnson-libertarian-scott-rigell.html[/url] [quote]Representative Scott Rigell of Virginia says he plans to vote for the Libertarian Party’s presidential ticket, becoming the first member of Congress to express support for Gary Johnson’s third-party campaign. In an interview on Friday, Mr. Rigell, a Republican, said he had settled on Mr. Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico, as the best option available. “I’ve always said I will not vote for Donald Trump and I will not vote for Hillary Clinton,” Mr. Rigell said. “I’m going to vote for the Libertarian candidate.”[/quote]

The more GOP congressmen endorse Gary the higher the chances are that Georgia will go blue for the first time since 1992.

Scott Rigell becomes first GOP congressman to persuade the democratic party to split its vote in two so that the republicans will win the election.

[QUOTE=bitches;50841037]Scott Rigell becomes first GOP congressman to persuade the democratic party to split its vote in two so that the republicans will win the election.[/QUOTE] Uh, I'm pretty sure no Democrats consider the endorsements of a Republican Congressman when deciding who to vote for. Not to mention, the Libertarians are a lot closer, ideologically, to Republicans than to Democrats. Outside of anarchist-leaning Bernie bros, there's not many Democrats who would prefer Johnson over Clinton. The Greens would be a lot more likely to soak up the dissatisfied Democrat voters.

We might be seeing the very last days of bipartisanship in the US. If Trump loses catastrophically it might deal a mortal blow that the GOP won't recover from.

[QUOTE=Big Bang;50841060]We might be seeing the very last days of bipartisanship in the US. If Trump loses catastrophically it might deal a mortal blow that the GOP won't recover from.[/QUOTE] I hope the US adopts a new voting system, it'd be interesting to see what new political parties would come into power under a more proportional system.

[QUOTE=Big Bang;50841060]We might be seeing the very last days of bipartisanship in the US. If Trump loses catastrophically it might deal a mortal blow that the GOP won't recover from.[/QUOTE] I don't see why. If anything this will cause the GOP to rally behind a "safer" bet like Cruz or Kasich.

[QUOTE=Erfly;50841078]I hope the US adopts a new voting system, it'd be interesting to see what new political parties would come into power under a more proportional system.[/QUOTE] Not going to happen. The only people who can change it are the same people who benefit the most from keeping it as-is. Long story short, we're fucked.

[QUOTE=Big Bang;50841060]We might be seeing the very last days of bipartisanship in the US. If Trump loses catastrophically it might deal a mortal blow that the GOP won't recover from.[/QUOTE] In its current form maybe, but both parties have endured defeats much larger than this election looks likely to offer (1964 and 1984)

[QUOTE=Big Bang;50841060]We might be seeing the very last days of bipartisanship in the US. If Trump loses catastrophically it might deal a mortal blow that the GOP won't recover from.[/QUOTE] Not going to happen, unless some fundamental changes are made to the system. First-past-the-post always devolves into a two-party system. Either the GOP will get their shit in order, and the Libertarians go back to being forgotten, or the GOP goes away and it becomes a Democrats-vs-Libertarians two-party system. To get a multi-party system working in the United States, we would need some sort of preference voting system, like STV (which in this case is the same as IRV, since there's only one winner). You'd go to the polls, and get a list of all the candidates, and then number them by your preference. Eg. if all the primary candidates this year had been national candidates for different parties, I would vote #1 Sanders, #2 Stein, #3 Clinton, #4 O'Malley, and leave the rest blank. Votes would initially go to your #1 pick, then the lowest-performing candidate would be eliminated, and all their votes transferred to their #2 pick, repeating this process until someone has 50% of the vote. This eliminates the need for strategic voting by explicitly building it into the system, so the true preferences are captured. At the same time, we'd also need election reform in Congress (and also at the state level). I'd go with proportional representation, at the state level for the House and at the national level for the Senate, in order to keep some level of geographic representation in the system but still capture national opinion. So you'd cast a vote for a particular party, and then that party would be awarded representatives/senators proportional to how many voters picked them. This would make smaller parties viable, giving them a political base to build on for the Presidential election. Other systems could do this as well - there's no reason STV couldn't work here, or any of the other proportional or preference voting systems. But hey, we've been stuck with the fucking Electoral College for a few centuries now, there's no way we're getting rid of FPTP without some sort of national catastrophe at this point.

[QUOTE=gman003-main;50841164]Not going to happen, unless some fundamental changes are made to the system. First-past-the-post always devolves into a two-party system. Either the GOP will get their shit in order, and the Libertarians go back to being forgotten, or the GOP goes away and it becomes a Democrats-vs-Libertarians two-party system. To get a multi-party system working in the United States, we would need some sort of preference voting system, like STV (which in this case is the same as IRV, since there's only one winner). You'd go to the polls, and get a list of all the candidates, and then number them by your preference. Eg. if all the primary candidates this year had been national candidates for different parties, I would vote #1 Sanders, #2 Stein, #3 Clinton, #4 O'Malley, and leave the rest blank. Votes would initially go to your #1 pick, then the lowest-performing candidate would be eliminated, and all their votes transferred to their #2 pick, repeating this process until someone has 50% of the vote. This eliminates the need for strategic voting by explicitly building it into the system, so the true preferences are captured. At the same time, we'd also need election reform in Congress (and also at the state level). I'd go with proportional representation, at the state level for the House and at the national level for the Senate, in order to keep some level of geographic representation in the system but still capture national opinion. So you'd cast a vote for a particular party, and then that party would be awarded representatives/senators proportional to how many voters picked them. This would make smaller parties viable, giving them a political base to build on for the Presidential election. Other systems could do this as well - there's no reason STV couldn't work here, or any of the other proportional or preference voting systems. But hey, we've been stuck with the fucking Electoral College for a few centuries now, there's no way we're getting rid of FPTP without some sort of national catastrophe at this point.[/QUOTE] this article by 538 is really eye opening. [url]http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-political-process-isnt-rigged-it-has-much-bigger-problems/[/url]

This year could actually mark the start of electoral reform in the United States, with Maine [url=https://ballotpedia.org/Maine_Ranked_Choice_Voting_Initiative,_Question_5_(2016)]deciding whether to adopt ranked-choice voting[/url] in a referendum this November. The change would affect their US Senate and Congressional elections as well as all state-level elections, and they'd be the first state to switch away from FPTP. It actually looks pretty likely to pass as well, although there haven't been many polls and we can't know for sure.