“According to FEC filings, the Synapse Group has worked for Republican Governor Doug Burgum of North Dakota, who ran for the GOP presidential nomination this cycle, as well as GOP candidates for Congress. Synapse has also been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for field and canvassing work by America PAC, the outside spending group started by allies of Musk that has spent millions of dollars this election cycle to boost Trump and oppose Democrats.”

  • @Olgratin_MagmatoeEnglish
    42•2 months ago

    I’d also like to point out something I’ve heard way too much lately:

    maybe democrats should run on some of the policies that are overwhelmingly popular instead so there’s no room on the left for someone to run.

    I’ve heard probably a dozen variations of this statement by now.

    The spoiler effect is the result of geometric distance between candidates, not the strength of policy positions. If anybody tells you that the democrats should just do X, unless X is switching the country over to approval/star/rcv, or some other system that is more representative, they don’t know what they’re talking about.

    Here is an example using a randomly generated set of voters and candidates. The first election is just two candidates, the second election is identical, but with an extra 3rd candidate

    Total voters: 765
The winner was favorable to 56% of voters
lachlan - 427
emma - 338


    Total voters: 765
The winner was favorable to 44% of voters
emma - 338
lachlan - 312
omalley - 115

    Any party, any candidate can fall victim to this, no matter how strong or inspirational they are. This is simply the result of everybody voting for the candidate closest to them.

    A good electoral system will not have the results changed by an irrelevant candidate. But our current systems are vulnerable to this, and it is disastrous for the state of our country.