Comment on YSK that Gerrymandering allows politicians to choose their own voters. In many countries, it's illegal. Gerrymandering is common in the United States

• pupbiru@aussie.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  yup, so it’s different with RCV and representative: in australia we have this, where we still have a mostly 2 party system that’s representative but we have RCV, so you can preference other parties first, and still have your vote eventually flow to the major party of your choice

  in this case, perhaps enough votes are lost that they loose a seat (we’ve had at least 1 green rep in parliament for a few elections in a row)

  also we track “primary vote” - the number of people who ranked you #1 - as an important election metric with real consequences… there are limits to private donations for elections, and a significant portion of funding for elections comes from the government itself. any party that gets over 4% of the primary vote is eligible to claim a proportional amount of financing for next election… so you can punish them in a way that really matters without actually putting anything real on the line

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  • merc@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    That sounds good in theory, but I’ve heard a lot of Australians complain about politics there. Maybe that’s just because people complain about politics everywhere. But, it also seems like Australia has a lot of problems that aren’t getting solved (like housing cost).

    It definitely doesn’t seem like a place that has things all figured out.

    Switzerland is the only country where people seem pretty proud of their system. It has its issues, but that’s mainly because they have some pretty awful voters and a direct democracy system that has caused some real headaches. For example, voters voted for some laws that were incompatible with the treaties the country had signed as part of the EU, and had they gone into effect it would have meant cancellation of their work with France on CERN, for example. I can’t remember how that was eventually resolved, but it was a real mess.

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    • pupbiru@aussie.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      I’ve heard a lot of Australians complain about politics there. Maybe that’s just because people complain about politics everywhere.

      i think this is true no matter what: nz and germany are both more proportional systems and similarly people dislike politics

      it also seems like Australia has a lot of problems that aren’t getting solved (like housing cost).

      absolutely… some problems are incredibly tricky: getting people to vote against their interests (eg with housing, any effort to reduce house prices directly decreases the value of peoples assets - perhaps not investments, but their primary home even)

      how to achieve some societal good things is really tricky in any democracy i think

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