Last summer, I calculated what the U.S. House of Representatives would look like if the U.S. used statewide proportional representation by party registration to elect congresscritters: Those focused specifically on Texas and California, but since the gerrymandering wars have continued…
Still Ain’t Representin’: Tennessee
Last summer, I calculated what the U.S. House of Representatives would look like if the U.S. used statewide proportional representation by party registration to elect congresscritters: Last week, I updated that with a discussion of Florida: And today we get…
Democracy’s Weakness: Even Good Systems Can’t Cope With Bad Voters
Democracy is not, in itself, a particularly good way of running a State; it’s complicated and messy and really an awful lot of work. It’s only virtue is that it’s the most fair. But even that’s only really true when…
You Should Read This: ‘When You Think of It, We Shouldn’t Even Have an Election’
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: there will be an election this fall, and in the fall of 2028 too. But neither election is likely to go smoothly. It has been obvious for a long time now…
Moar War: What Even Is It?
So, the U.S. being a country with laws but not really interested in operating by laws, there’s a problem in how the U.S. does “war”. Other than all the killing civilians, and murder and such. Those are called war crimes,…
May Day: I Wish You Well
I’ve mentioned before that I do IT and run servers for a living. And this has been a week for folks in my line of work. Most significantly, there was a vulnerability announced this week that lets an attacker take…
Still Ain’t Representin’: Florida
Last summer, I calculated what the U.S. House of Representatives would look like if the U.S. used statewide proportional representation by party registration to elect congresscritters: TLDR: it was very different from how it currently looks. That started with looking…
Nanny Statists: Speaking Of Vice Taxes
I mentioned vice taxes in the title of last Friday’s post, but over the weekend I realized that I actually hadn’t said anything about them in the post itself. I only really talked about outright bans. And vice taxes are…
Nanny Statists: Moral Panics, Vice Taxes and Authoritarianism
This time, I’m not talking about the latest “Oh, will someone think of the children!?” nonsense that’s fronting the movement to install age-gates on your personal computers. Or whatever’s behind the recent movement to force your 3d printer to ask…
Gerrymandering: Good Politics, Bad Policy
Viewed just from the perspective of electoral politics, you can’t really blame a political party in power for using its position to make the next election more favorable for itself. Winning sort of is the point in politics. And anything…