SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Chelsea Manning eyes U.S. Senate seat for Maryland
Chelsea Manning, the transgender U.S. Army soldier who served seven years in military prison for leaking classified data, is seeking the Democratic Party's nomination for the U.S. Senate seat from Maryland, according to Federal election filings seen on Saturday.
[...] Democratic Senator Ben Cardin was elected in 2006 to that seat and is expected to run for re-election this year. He is the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Cardin was easily re-elected in 2012, beating his Republican challenger by 30 points in the heavily-Democratic state.
Previously: Chelsea Manning Released from Prison, Remains on Active Duty Pending Appeal
Harvard Dean Rescinds Chelsea Manning's Visiting Fellow Invitation, Calling It a 'Mistake'
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @08:50AM
And either resettle somewhere else, or create a new country of your own.
Neither will be easy choices, but the problem is that right now there are essentially no choices in American Politics.
In order to gain choices we need people to stop campaigning as either Democrats or Republicans, and we need citizens to stop voting FOR Democrats or Republicans on the principle of the matter, regardless of which partisan side they normally would follow.
If both of those choices among the potential electees and the voting base can be pushed to happen, then we can move on to what is required to actually *FIX* the system, which at this point is either abolishing the electoral college, OR eliminating the voting positions and simply making the votes given based on the states final vote results (has the same effect and eliminates the possibility of the electors voting against their constiuents) while protecting the 'all 50 states are not equal population-wise. Following that is removing first past the post, and choosing either a point pool and points based system, or voting tiers and iterating through each tier until a candidate has a clear win, ideally of either 51 or 67 percent majority, which ensures the candidate elected should recieved a majority approval rating at least until he begins acting on (or against the) behalf of the United States of America.
Those changes could also provide the necessary push to see more of the inactive voter base to reregister and actually feel their vote makes a difference, since an official who might not pass in FPTP voting may find that the second or third tier of votes pushes them way ahead of the other candidates, who were only popular amongst their party-base while broader approval was gained by a third party candidate across multiple ideological groups.
Personally I have lost whatever faith in America I might have once held and am going to try and do a better job wherever I end up. Perhaps the rest of you can elicit some change that will make me regret that decision, but as it stands there is nothing for me to lament losing here.