Shutdown plurality voting!
- Government shuts down, due to
- Ideological fundamentalism in Congress, due to
- Ideological fundamentalists voted into Congress by the American people, due to
- Dysfunctional, big money, two-party political system generating few election options, due to
- Widespread use of simplistic, poorly-representative, winner-takes-all, Plurality Voting system based on single-mark ballots, due to
- It being used when the country was founded and now being ingrained in our culture, due to
- Single-mark ballots being easy to tabulate by hand.
Yes, in 2013, after landing rovers on Mars, sequencing the human genome, and creating a machine than can beat humans on Jeopardy!, Americans still use a simplistic system based on single-mark ballots and plurality voting because historically they were easier to count by hand!
Fortunately the Constitution (and local and state law) can be changed. ;) That means it's actually on us. Do we want to move to more evolved, robust systems, such as Preferential Voting (ranked voting) or Proportional Representation (wherever possible), to create a more representative, satisfactory, efficient government? Or do we want to keep our 'merican gladiator system that produces ideological meatheads who'd rather fight on camera than solve problems?
More info:
- http://en.wikipe
