Yeah. Yeah. None of them genuinely want to serve the people. You are right. It's a lost cause. Might as well not vote.
Actually it's the opposite. The people need to get together to get power back and make sure it stays in the hands of the people. With enough people supporting PR, it could happen.
Supporting PR?
PR is Proportional Representation.
Proportional representation - Wikipedia
Here's the wikipage to explain it. If you have any questions about why PR is a superior system than the US system, how it works in other countries, how it could work in the US, feel free to ask.
I'm cool with studying other systems.
But we have an election in 10 months. Let's not pretend that it's useless to vote in the system we have.
Okay, I'll show you how useless it is to vote in the US election compared to the German election.
In the Presidential election in 2016 there were only 11 states which had a difference of 5% or less. One of these was Maine which splits the vote anyway, with one half not close and the other half not close.
So, 10 states.
Of the states that were 5% or over, you have Georgia at 5.13%. Georgia hasn't changed vote since 1992.
You have Virginia which has voted Democrat the last three times and would get included in swing states potentially.
You have Ohio which basically votes for the President and has done for a long time. Another swing state.
You have New Mexico which has switched once since 1992.
You have Texas which hasn't switched since 1976.
You have Iowa which switches.
So, you've got some states which switch, you're looking at about 13 of the 50 states, which is about 20% of the US population. 29 states haven't switched party since 1992. No one bothers with these states. These are core states that will basically vote one way or another. There is chance in the future they'll change, but not right now.
Some states have switched for a reason. Like Arkansas isn't there, it voted for its own in 1992 and 1996, otherwise it's a Republican state all the way.
Basically all the money, all the attention goes into those larger states with lots of EC votes that could potentially swing.
This means the voters in many states are essentially voting for nothing.
If a Republican in California votes Republican, what's the point? There's no chance Republicans are going to win. Same in Wyoming for a Democrat voter. Their vote is a waste.
In House elections it depends on the area they are in. But plenty of people vote in their House election where they know their vote isn't going to count one bit. I grew up in such a place. No point voting because the right wing was going to win every time without fail. I know how it feels to not want to bother.
In Germany if you vote, you vote counts. They have a 5% threshold. So, if you vote and enough other people vote, then your vote will help to decide the make up of the Bundestag.
Basically 10.7% of people voted for the FDP in Germany. They vote twice. In US style system the FDP won zero seats. None, not one single seat, yet 10.7% of people wanted them to represent them in government. You've just disenfranchised 10.7% of the electorate there.
The AfD got 11.5% of the vote and three seats. 3 seats out of 299 (This is the number of seats gained from the US style system). So, 1% of the seats. So youve basically just disenfranchised 10.5% of the electorate.
Doing well so far, we've disenfranchised 21.2% of the electorate.
die Linke got 8.6% of the vote and 5 seats. 1.66% of the seats. That's 7.9% of voters disenfranchised.
The Greens got 8% of the vote and 1 seat, 0.33% of the seats, that's another 7.86% of voters disenfranchised.
So, we're managed to disenfranchise 37% of the electorate without even taking into account the 1.5 million voters who voted for parties that couldn't get in with FPTP or past the 5% threshold for PR which is about 4%. Had there been a 3% threshold as in many other systems it wouldn't have a difference last year, but would have made a difference in 2013.
But Germany votes twice. They vote PR too.
So, instead of 40% of people being disenfranchised you had much less than that.
In fact you're looking at only 4% of the voters not getting represented in the Bundestag. That's a MASSIVE, MASSIVE difference.
