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Comment by chiefalchemist | Hacker News Reader

We elected the electable, not necessarily those most appropriate for the role.

Furthermore, in the majority of cases, we are only allowed to elect those who are pre-approved by The Red Party or The Blue Party. Both parties have biases. Worse they, like the examples mentioned, tend to leans towards self-serving (the party) and/or serving their own mwmbers (i.e., don't offer the best possible representation). It's like cliques in high school all over again.

What I'd like to see is simple. Add "None of the above" to every race. Let The People fully express themselves. Let them give the parties direct feedback about the products they're marketing. Yes, that's kind of what not voting it. Unfortunately, the fact is, the parties don't recognize that as a possible "Crap products" votes. They can phantom that. NotA would stuff it right in their face.

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The point about pre-approval is tremendously important. Elections are a two-step process, nominations+vote. The fact that the first step is controlled by a small elite of party apparatchiks and the rich and influent is ENORMOUSLY important and very underappreciated. By the time citizens go to the polls, opaque party politics have already picked a handful of candidates (at best) for the public to choose from.

A nice quote about this, from a corrupt 19th-century NY politician and businessman: "I don't care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating"

Very nice speaker about this: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=PJy8vTu66tE

Ranked choice voting will help but the most important thing is to limit the amount of money you can spend on elections.

Agree on ranked choice. But NotA should still be a choice in that approach. It's a signal. It's the voice of (some) people. NotA shouldn't be repressed any more than any other group of votes should be repressed.

Congressional approval is regularly in the teens, and even presidents are now toeing into the thirties. The latter part being particularly unprecedented since there's no cognitive dissonance of the sort "Yeah congress is terrible, except my guy." The people ostensibly responsible for putting singular figures into office are now disapproving of even those figures. And the powers that be couldn't care less and are just doubling down even harder on divisive rhetoric, and frequently unpopular actions. So I don't think having a substantial None-Of-The-Above would have any positive impact.

Beyond that there's also another issue related to the above. Because of aforementioned divisive rhetoric many people are no longer even voting for people they like or even want to win, but voting against a bogeyman of an opponent. They aren't voting for "their" side, but because they fear "the other side" winning would be catastrophically worse. I suspect very few people willing to vote in the first place would intentionally and actively "waste" their vote simply to make a point. And if you get some very small chunk of NotA then suddenly the powers that be might even claim that's an endorsement of them.

Voting third party achieves the same as your ideal without the possible perverse inverse messaging of approval.

Because of aforementioned divisive rhetoric...

The divisive rhetoric is part of a deliberate campaign to spread unrest by China and Russia, among other actors. The Citizens United ruling gave them unlimited spending power.

Don't take my word for it, this guy could see it coming 12 years ago:

And you’d think that reducing corporate and even foreign influence over our elections would not be a partisan issue. But of course, this is Washington in 2010. And the Republican leadership in the Senate is once again using every tactic and every maneuver they can to prevent the DISCLOSE Act from even coming up for an up or down vote.

--BHO

"last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests - including foreign corporations - to spend without limit in our elections"

In response to this criticism of their recent ruling, Justice Samuel Alito shook his head and appeared to mouth "Not true."

--BHO

Imagine a world where there was no other country but the United States, and even feel free to go back to 2010 or even earlier, if you want. Would politicians now somehow stop actively agitating and otherizing? Would the media stop doing the same as well? After all, it sells.

And on the individual (or grassroots) level it's really no different. Post bias affirming rage-bait drivel and get all the dopamine-hit-generating upvotes in social media one might ever want. Measured analysis? Meh, who cares about that.

And in the "real world" as well. As but one example higher educational attainment is strongly associated with dramatic increases in the perception gap [1] in society. And that gap is one of the primary driving factors in the divisiveness at all levels from politicians on down to you and I.

[1] - https://perceptiongap.us/

The conclusion? Americans have a deeply distorted understanding of each other. We call this America’s “Perception Gap”. Overall, Democrats and Republicans imagine almost twice as many of their political opponents as reality hold views they consider “extreme”. Even on the most controversial issues in our national debates, Americans are less divided than most of us think.

This would be a great time to explain why More In Common is not part of the propoganda effort. You have offices in France, Germany and the UK (according to your web page) yet you focus on the USA. You also have an 8 month old account with a few non-sequitur posts.

TL:DR; I've been doing this since 'palestine' would clumsily summon the I***i bots.

Yet it's funny how BHO's party whipped up the Trump + Russia connection, fed that fiction to their left leaning media co-conspirators, and both enties played pile on (the BS).

Yet BO didn't have anything to say about that. He's a great spokesperson. A great orator. But there are too many instance where credibility is questionable. The Paris Climate Agreement immediately comes to mind.

NoTA does not solve any problem. It just gives one more avenue for the parties to play with. E.g., parties will try to push voters of their opponents towards NotA. Also it leads to worse outcomes as dreamers/perfectionists choose NotA instead of voting for the best option available, while hardcore supporters go and vote for their favorite candidate.

I didn't say it would solve The Problem, at least not immediately.

But if you say "Any given winner must have 40% of the total vote" and NotA is included in that universe, then there is an incentive of Party X and Party Y to field viable products. Then there is an incentive for - what's currently written off as - "disinterested voters" (i.e., not, it's crap product being sold) to have a say.

We are told, voting is a means for We The People to express ourselves and influence our representatives. Suppressing the NoaA vote is just that, voter suppression.

The bottom line: NotA is a simple means to a better ends. Without much effort, it addresses a handful of the flaws in the current system.

True story: I live in NJ, just outside the Phila, PA market. We saw *all* the Fetterman v Oz ads (for PA's Senate seat). If I called it a cluster f*k I'd be giving cluster and f*k a bad name. There is simply no way voting for either one of them way sending a message to anyone. If nothing else, it gave both major parties a free pass. It made thousands of voters complicit in the X + Y cartel.

I can see this might be true in highly corrupt countries.

I think it's easy to preach this idea that political parties only serve itself and don't care about anything else.

In truth it's something that is more or less required to be effective since voting is only 1 part of it (someone had to write the legislation and do investigations).

Of course the party cares what their members think otherwise what would be the point of being a member of said political party.

And lastly it needs to be stressed if a political party or candidate don't listen to their voters then (if it's a fair election) they won't be re-elected.

> Add "None of the above" to every race.

You already have that by turning in the ballot without marking that race.

Are those tabulated? And published? Are they promoted as a proactive vote? Are they perceived by voters as a vote?

Saying "no thank you" is not the same as not answering.

> The Red Party or The Blue Party

Incidentally, these color associations only became fixed in 2000, before then different media outlets used different color mappings. The fixed mapping is a creation of corporate media who wanted to simplify the presentation of American politics so even people with their brains completely turned off (e.g., sat in front of a television) could follow along.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states_and_blue_states#Con...

That's fascinating. I always wondered why the political colours were backwards in the USA. The left is historically associated with red globally, and conservatives normally adopt blue, but in the US it's the other way around. Had no idea that was such a recent thing.

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