Liz

Literally exactly what this person just said is the advice I give to you: use the correct tool for the job.

I mean......I guess. That's kinda a solution. Ish.

If we remove the Republicans, things get better. If we remove the Democrats, things stay the same. It's not a question of who is better, but who is worse. Until we change the voting and representation systems (hello Approval Voting and Sequential Proportional Approval Voting) picking the lesser evil is the only logical and moral choice.

I suggest moving to proportional representation. Essentially, proportional systems try to ensure that if a party gets 5% of the votes, they get 5% of the seats. It's obviously not a solution for single-winner elections like mayor, but it's a great system for councils and legislatures. That way, it's much more likely that voting for a minority party candidate will actually get you some representation in office. (There's a million ways to it, with some trying to place an emphasis on local representation and others trying to get as close to proportional as possible, but they're all leagues ahead of pure single-winner systems.)

Now, you might be saying "you didn't solve the problem for single winner methods!" Never fear, we can use a voting system that satisfies the sincere favorite criterion. My favorite is Approval Voting, but any of them will do. The sincere favorite criterion says that the optimal voting strategy should always include giving your true favorite maximum support, whatever that means under that particular voting system.

No voting system by itself will do much. We need to switch to a proportional system or else minority parties won't have a fair shot at representation. If a party gets 2% of the vote, they should get 2% of the seats. Not possible with single-winner methods.

Tbf, that's not really fair, is it?

Strategic voting can be an optional strategy under ordinary approval voting. If I don't like either of the top two candidates, it's still in my best interest to vote for the runner-up, if I hate them less than I hate the front-runner.

And look man, I'm honestly not interested in picking over the details. Any proportional system is better than single-winner. By miles.

Okay, actually though? Keep the mustache, drop the beard, and cut weight (fix your diet) and you would be killer. You look great now, but I can see an even hotter version of you in your future with just a little hard work.

1. While this complaint is technically true for SPAV, the likelihood that a popular candidate would fail to win a seat because everyone thought they were too popular is just.... Not gonna happen. We already know from real-world AV elections that voters largely prefer to vote honestly, there's no reason to think they would get more strategic when it gets harder to figure out the optimal strategy.

2. This is a problem inherit to nearly all systems designed to produce proportional results. I honestly can't think of a worthwhile system that doesn't have this problem. Anyway, the goal is not to make the parties take turns. It's to make it possible for minor parties to win seats in the legislature. In the end, no single party would ever have a controlling majority, and they would be forced to form coalitions to pass legislation.

Hey! You come back here with that irrelevant commentary!

Yeah but the entire philosophy of Framework would be one phone construction standard and then you swap out the radio chip. Granted, there's never been a hard phone standard, and the parts have never been designed for swapping. They would be the ones designing and commissioning these standards. Anyway, so I'm gonna be waiting very patiently.