The Death of Competition in American Elections
www.nytimes.com
A vast majority of 2024 races for Congress and state legislatures were decided by low-turnout or meaningless primaries. The trend is making politics more polarized and eroding public trust.

This makes it incredibly important to actually show up and vote during primaries — they’re what actually decide who will host most offices.

Changing the system would be good too, but you can’t do that without holding power in the first place.

  • @AdamEatsAss
    16•10 hours ago

    Agreed. Making federal election day a federal holiday would help a lot of people make it to the polls. Where I live, the week before you can early vote in person, but I know that is not currently an option everywhere.

    • Stern
      2•3 hours ago

      Can’t just make it a federal holiday, you need to make it painful for many businesses to run that day or you’ll just get election day sales. Mandate that any work outside of the stuff critical for human safety (e.g. police, firefighters, hospital.) has to pay any employee octuple their regular pay if they are working that day. Not a chance in hell Wal-Mart and the like opens that day.