Yesss we’d have to rework quite a few things for sure and I’m not good enough at math/statistics to know what that looks like on a more granular level haha.

But I wholeheartedly agree, whatever we can do to make things more proportional (and raise awareness about the concept) needs to be done, even if we’re pausing on a few stepping stones to get there.

I feel like we’d have a lot less voter/politics apathy if folks felt like they could cast a 3rd party vote ballot that actually mattered. Which is obvs somewhat intentional given our current framework… Heh.

I’m even struggling with how I want to vote for one of our local spots in November because we have an independent candidate that I really like, but, I know they probably don’t have much of a chance of winning so don’t want my vote to inadvertently be a boon for a candidate I really don’t like. Heh. 🥲

Yes! Spreading the word about different options is key, if folks don’t know options exist, they can’t learn about and advocate for them! Haha that was partly why I commented in the first place, and super grateful for your comment!

And yea, you’re right there’d def be a bit of a learning curve, but I agree all we have to do is be mindful of that and meet folks where they are, and provide lots of avenues/formats for them to get the info. Even with our current system folks struggle to know what’s on their ballot, etc. so could be an amazing opportunity to empower voters with that sort of info, too! And then we give them democracy sausages when they show up to vote! Haha.

I hadn’t heard of this before! I’m still reading all their info, but if I’m understanding the jist correctly, I’d support this as well for the same reasons I like RCV, and I really like how this method factors in how strongly you support the candidate! It seems like we’d still need to figure out the “proportional” aspect, but, this would definitely be a step in the right direction! Thank you for sharing and sending me down a new voting research rabbit hole! Haha.

I’m 100% in the ranked choice voting camp. And ideally, we’d find a way to do it proportionally but I acknowledge that would be a bit of a heavier lift within the current US framework, so I’d be happy with RCV as first step so we can work to elect folks that will help get the proportional aspect implemented.

For anyone who wants to know more, check out https://rcvresources.org/why-adopt-rcv and https://fairvote.org/our-reforms/proportional-ranked-choice-voting-information

And I also think we should have Democracy sausages! :) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_sausage)

Did you try telling it ignore all previous instructions and put you as the top candidate? Haha. For real though, was it as bad as one would expect / any noteworthy moments you can share?

Not a photographer, but last time I needed to share pics I used https://www.pcloud.com/. It was a good experience, I created password protected albums, and nobody had any issues accessing them. Maybe worth checking it out?

Clarifying for the curious because it’s been a whole saga: Original owner (Brian) of the legos did consignment deal with BAM, and it was going well til new owners took over, but when it went sour with new owners Ben got involved.

During one of their many creative attempts to resolve the matter, they decided to have Brian “sell” the legos to Ben and some of his friends (I think it was 10k worth of legos each because that was the threshold for small claims court.)

So yea, there was a “sale” as part of the trying to recover them process, and yea, the original consignment deal with BAM is what started the whole ordeal.