• stoy@lemmy.zip
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    1 month ago

    Sigh, just get rid of FPTP and Gerrymandering will immediately stop being a thing, and as an added benefit, third parties will finally be able to establish themselves in the US again.

    • jeffw@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 month ago

      The entire issue is that half the country wants to gerrymander and the other half wants to take the high ground, kneecapping their own progress

      • stoy@lemmy.zip
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        1 month ago

        That is part of it, but I believe it is simpler than that.

        The Republicans love FPTP/Gerrymandering, it is how they stay in power. So keeping FPTP/Gerrymandering is treated as a question of survival for them.

        The Democrats would win big on getting rid of FPTP/Gerrymandering, but in the long term getting rid of FPTP would mean new parties popping up and actually getting in power.

        So both parties would see reduced influence if FPTP got dropped in the US, so outside of idealistic reasons neither party has any reasons to kill it off.

        The only way I can see it possibly working requires a highly idealistic supreme court snd boils down to:

        A public information campaign about the problems with FPTP which triggers a big movement in the public demanding change, after decades of the campaign running it somehow gets acted on and signed into law that FPTP may not be used, Republican states take the matter to the SCOTUS, which in this scenario actually approves the law getting rid of FPTP. This is highly unlikely.

        Note that I am not an American, this is just my perception about how the issue might be solved.