The United States conducted its final democratic election on November 5, 2024. A majority of voters chose a rapist pedophile who was convicted of 34 felonies, caged illegal immigrants and separated infants from parents, lied to his supporters, faked his assassination, incited an insurrection with a crowd that stormed our capital trying to kill his vice president and left his first term in office with every cabinet member of his telling Americans to vote against him in 2024 because he is a danger and unfit person for the office of President.

And yet, he won the last election we will ever have because his administration will end our democracy & make him dictator.

If you voted for Trump, may your worst yesterday be your best tomorrow for the rest of your suffering lives.

If All Americans can agree on one thing, it is that George Clooney is a meddling ignorant phony narcisistic jackass. After destroyong the Biden Campaign, his cowardly ass is probably flying off to a safe chateau in a country with loose banking laws. FIRST NEW RULE: No Celebrities steering the previously fatally starstruck Democratic Party.

I've been thinking what would be the smallest change to existing Western election aristocracies to get them closer to the democratic ideal, rule of the governed, for the people by the people. I think I got something:

One change: Make each voting list/party get either n, or n+1 seats, based on the number of seats n they have enough votes to win outright, randomly, proportional to how many seats the list receives over that threshold for n seats.

Say, a population of 10M has 500 seats available. Thus, a single seat would require 20k votes. If a list receives 55k votes, they'd have enough votes to win outright 2 seats, that requires 40k votes, and they have 15k votes left over, so they'd have 75% chance to receive a third seat, and 25% to receive two seats.

That's all.

This would eliminate issues such as wasted votes / strategic voting. Every single vote would count, as every single vote corresponds to a fixed probability for that list/candidate to be selected. Doesn't matter if the list you vote for has 1M votes, or 1 vote, your vote has the exact same effect. This removes fixed gatekeepers from the political process who can effectively threaten voters and candidates by dropping support for them. By rendering all votes equally valuable, this extortion opportunity is just gone, and one that finds all other candidates unhelpful, could reasonably just vote for themselves, and have that vote be exactly as valuable as someone elses vote for a superstar politician.

By allowing citizens to reasonably run themselves, and be selected, you'd now be removing huge opportunity for systematic corruption, as there are no financial gatekeepers to satisfy, these randomly selected representatives would likely owe no political favors to anyone in exchange for being selected.

The main point however is, this way, ordinary citizens could run for positions of power, and get in, allowing them both incentives and resources to get deep into the questions governance is needed to solve, and impact their results. With election aristocracy, it offers an illusion of this, with careful omission that virtually no voter would possess neither incentives nor resources for this work, giving rise to "rational ignorance", one would be wise to not spend much effort on researching political issues as a citizen, as they have no say in those issues either way, and any resources spent on that would most likely be better spent playing video games or really, anything else.

I earlier proposed a more radical version of this, which is a more democratic and sortition-like, where in addition to the change proposed here, every voter would also be automatically a candidate, and every candidate would automatically vote for themselves, making the default "population is passive and does nothing" revert to sortition automatically.

I've since realized that democracy might be harder to push for than I anticipated, so this is an even smaller step towards democratic governance.

What do you folk think? Still too radical? Would this sorta proposal have a chance to get passed somewhere?

Watching Biden deliver his speech today made me reflect on whether we should have stuck with him from the start. He had an impressive track record as vice president and a long career in politics, helping guide the U.S. economy through a soft recovery after the unprecedented pandemic. His speeches were often calm, direct, and carried an air of sincerity that resonated with many. In terms of sheer "star power" and presence, he was arguably the closest rival to Trump, and the whole "Dark Brandon" meme even gave him a kind of revitalized, old-school charisma.

Yes, the debate performance was rough—but it’s worth remembering that he had been tirelessly traveling and was reportedly ill at the time. Imagine if that debate hadn’t taken place; would public perception have shifted? People are naturally skeptical about replacing an incumbent president just months before an election, especially when it seems sudden and opaque. The feeling of being misled about his true state and the absence of primaries made many question the fairness of the process. When they pulled Biden, it felt rushed, almost like a last-ditch effort.

With all the underlying prejudices still present in the country, was it really wise to pivot to a Black woman as the candidate just five months out from the election? It’s not about capability—but strategy. The incumbent, with all his recognition and political gravitas, might have had a stronger chance considering the difference in percentages of votes cast for Democrats in all areas from 2020 to 2024. What could have possibly made people feel this one was less important or sway them to support Trump? Am I unreasonable for thinking this? What do you think?

One last observation now that the dust is settled and the real shit takes a 2 month pause;

Blaming ignorant Americans for electing a convicted felon is the easy way out and shouldn’t be overlooked.

However, upon close inspection, history will judge and show the post pandemic Democratic Party and specifically, The Biden administration, as the worst four year term in US history for its selfishness that allowed someone back in power that tried to tear down American democracy. (give or take, depending on how bad Trump destroys what’s left of American democracy)

Joe Biden destroyed his own long legacy by not passing the torch about a year ago when there was plenty of time to build a workable case for a new vision and a way to show that accountability matters in America and that will now never happen.

Worse than that, Merritt Garland was BY FAR the very worst attorney general in American history. He had the evidence to keep Trump off the ballot four years ago, never wanted any part of prosecuting or holding Trump accountable, and it’s now clear there was never any Justice department intent to hold a president gone rogue responsible for trying to hold onto power through treason and easily prosecutable methods. Trump represents exactly what the founding fathers worried about but couldn’t ever visualize realistically.

Sadly, humans ignore history with regularity and this will be no exception. January 6th will obviously become a national holiday and mislabeled with some ludicrous name like “patriots day”. Those who read a lot about history will know that we are about to literally duplicate the 1920’s; a period of significant white supremacy, major discrimination against ethnic groups and immigrants and one where women never ever hold any power.

Perhaps if there’s any habitable places left to live in 2124 after all those able to provide actual historical accounts are gone, historians will look back and attempt to figure out why so many millions of humans were so ignorant, selfish and self destructively acting against their own best interests which was the privilege of living in what was once a great nation called America.

That is all. Last word. Good luck world.

"Alright, America, I think I’m finally getting the vibe here:

1. Women leaders? Nah, not unless they’re running for the fridge.
2. Political experience? Please, we’re looking for someone who’s barely passed high school civics.
3. Gotta be a white guy? Big sigh, but okay.

So, let's cut to the chase. If we’re committed to this, I’ve got a few prime candidates ready to rock this rodeo:

George Clooney – Already leads in ‘Best Smile While Holding Coffee,’ and hey, that's 90% of politics, right?
Mark Consuelos – Can handle drama (hello, 'Riverdale') and honestly, wouldn't you rather see him in a State of the Union than...literally anyone else?
Bryan Cranston – If we're going off-script, might as well go with the guy who turned high school chemistry into a billion-dollar empire. 'Breaking Bad' policies? At least we’d be intrigued.
Ryan Reynolds – Yeah, he’s Canadian, but I think we can all agree: he’d make our State Department 10 times more fun and our national holidays...Canadian Thanksgiving.

America, I know you have big dreams, but maybe it’s time we finally elect someone who knows the true power of a really good smirk. 😎"

How can people who don't even want to listen to different opinions or allow people to express them have the nerve to talk about democracy?

Started with the idea of openness and decentralised power structure, internet seems to have become a true stress-test for democracy. The basic concept is certainly noble but seems now more fragile than ever. Popular, representational vote requires (or dependant on) all citizens sharing at least a common-ground in reality. They might disagree on it but at least they would be seeing, hearing the same 'facts' from different news channels (by new channels of course I mean independent journalism). This is gone now. Everybody live in their echo-chambers, most people get their news from Whatsapp etc..and we can not even establish some basic facts (do people eat pets in Ohio or not?). This is when what you see is not manipulated by deep-fakes and trolls. How do we expect masses to act 'rationally' who elect representatives in such a context? What do we expect from these representatives when democracy is facing unprecedented, complex challenges such as climate change or social media's impact on social cohesion? And when then these problems are interdependent on each other, more than ever? I seriously started to think that internet and this fragmented reality space will be the end of democracy as we know it. Whether humans can come up with a better system that goes around this, I do not know.

Where do we go from here as a society?

Do we stay? Protest? Fight? Die?

Or do we leave for a better life in another country and let this one burn?

I don’t know what the right move is. I just know I need to protect my family.

Okay, the senile old bully won, so now we need to be more diligent. The purpose of R/BanishTrump is to find non-violent ways to keep Trump from further damaging this country.

As a result, it's time to revisit the story that started this subreddit:

Banished to the Island of the Toadasaurs is a satirical short in which Trump is banished to an island and outsmarted by children.

https://medium.com/@michaelstierhoff/banished-to-the-island-of-the-toadasaurs-65cb4a00e29b

It's a shame we didn't wake up enough zombies on the first pass. But get this story out there because nothing has changed and we can continue to hope for banishment down the road!

Pass it around and we'll be back soon with phase two!

There's obviously a very important one happening today (Palau obviously), we had one here in the UK in July and there have been many more this year all over the world. If it was only a few I'd consider it a coincidence, but this many in one year?! How come so many elections have taken place / will take place this year?

Other than the presidential race, what races or ballot initiatives or referendums are you most excited to watch?!

Let's go vote!

If we were a true democracy wouldn’t the presidential election come to Popular Vote. I understand that there are laws and fines set in place for electors not voting for what their states majority vote was. Still it seems like a waste if say I live in California and I vote Trump. I believe on 6 occasions has a presidential candidate lost the electoral college but won the popular vote.

People feel bound by democratic elections only when they share a basic bond with most other voters. If the experience of other voters is alien to me, and I believe they don’t understand my feelings and don’t care about my vital interests, then even if I am outvoted by a hundred to one I have absolutely no reason to accept the verdict. Democratic elections usually work only within populations that have some prior common bond, such as shared religious beliefs or national myths.

By Yuval Noah Harari