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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023

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I feel like as long as I have been paying attention to elections there have been screwups by the major parties that should have had them disqualified from major state ballots.

Republicans are not barred from the General Election ballot in Colorado.

I should be more clear: it is always specific candidates that fail to meat some standard and should been off the ballot. Often times it is hilariously because they accidentally made the ballot requirements too strict in their continuing efforts to fuck over third parties, and they forgot to exempt themselves from it like they normally do. It is always the R or D next to their name that saves them.

Trump is barred form the Republican Primary ballot.

And I'll reiterate my point: I think it is unlikely to actually happen. I'm about 90% certain that Trump will be on the primary ballot in Colorado come election time. I will take a small token bet of 80% odds to that effect.

... But yeah, the two party duopoly absolutely conspire against third parties, and it's bad. Not too bad, though, since first past the post voting pretty much guarantees a two-party system at a macro level anyway, even without the thumbs on the scale. We need something like Approval voting to make third parties viable in single-winner elections.

First past the post voting guarantees a two-party system. It does not guarantee that those two parties must be the democrats and republicans. The laws and regulations do that.

I'd be happier with approval voting, but likely not by much. I'm not a huge fan of democracy anyways. Making democracy more efficient seems less important to me than making sure democracy can't vote on things I actually care about.