JubilantJaguar

I'm beginning to understand why people clamor for better blocking features. I am just expressing a viewpoint and I have never so much as downvoted anyone else here, you included.

With your hysteria and insults and false accusations you are poisoning this discussion. I'm done here. Others will judge for themselves.

Please stop insulting me and accusing me of things I didn't say. Thank you.

Chill. Your arguments would be more persuasive that way.

I did mention it, "majoritarian" means FPTP.

My point is that this system is not necessarily undemocratic, and indeed that it can even be too democratic. It all depends on the internal setup of the two parties. The Republican party is definitely a "sham of a democracy" in that it has too much of it. In Sweden no Trump figure can take over the government because the parties will stop him. In the USA in the past, the Republican party would have served the same purpose.

This is where is gets more complicated. To pol-sci specialists of authoritarian breakdown, American parties are in fact too democratic. The smoke-filled-room elitism of super delegates, and so on, has historically been a very good way to stop demagogues gaming the system. The essential reason you guys are having to suffer Trump is that the Republican party couldn't stop him. The party had become an empty shell, a brand waiting to be taken over by whatever unscrupulous demagogue could win its primary. The Democrats, with their supposedly undemocratic super-delegates, are at this point America's only genuine political party. It's not a bug that the DNC leadership can assert a direction as you suggest, it's a feature.

Outside America, many of us really wish you guys would just stop and consider the importance of your election beyond this single issue of the Middle East. Seriously. There's only so much the USA can do about that, anyway.

Much, much more important is the signal you would send by re-electing an obvious wannabe dictator who has already tried to steal an election. Like it or not, for two centuries America has been the world's model for openness, democracy, freedom. In the last decade those things have taken a serious hit around the world, and the connection is obvious with Trump's first election. Democracy and its associated blessings - rule of law, unpoliticized civil service and institutions, press freedom etc - are really fragile. If America gives up on them it's permission for everyone else to do so, and that's going to lead the world to some very bad places. The Gaza issue is a complete sideshow by comparison.

It would require a separate nominative register for the blank votes, sure. But the whiners complain that they are unheard. This solves that. If you want your "no preference" added up and counted, then sure, but you have to be ready to be elected yourself. Seems fair to me. Democracy does not work without participation. People who opt out are effectively voting against democracy and they should own that fact.

Voting for a third party in a majoritarian electoral system is functionally the same as abstaining. A majoritarian system is intended to produce a binary choice. And this situation is not "undemocratic" if the two parties are internally democratic, with factions and primaries and so on.

Here in Europe we have mostly PR systems with lots of parties in the final round - and we still have voters who whine that nothing's good enough for them. Here they sometimes campaign for official recognition of blank votes, as if that would solve anything.

Personally I'm in favor of the proposition by which, if you abstain or vote blank, your name gets put onto a special lottery ballot and you risk finding yourself personally elected. Seems appropriate. After all, apparently these people think they can do better than everyone else.

Not for comments.

Once, as a teenager in the 90s, I walked into the Capitol building and, seeing a scrum of VIPs and reporters, barged my way through and shook hands with Bob Dole (the Republican beaten by Bill Clinton in 1996). I was a tourist, I'm not even American.

The openness of America's political system is special. You should protect it.

Depends if you like their politics, obviously.

It's a shame that things became this way. In a properly functioning democracy we would respect elected leaders, if only because we respect the office that they temporarily hold.