The US supreme court allowed thank you gifts for politicians to not be considered bribes somehow in a 2024 ruling, I think that alone might break the US.

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jacquesm 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The US Supreme Court is the very worst a supreme court could be. They've been thoroughly co-opted and will only start to see the light when it is their asses that are on the line.

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simonh 5 hours ago | parent [-]

The whole way the Judicial system in the US is beholden to politicians, and is thoroughly politicised looks completely horrific to me in the UK. Even the election officials responsible for overseeing voting are politicians.

Combined with this elected King George III presidential nonsense (not just king in general either, specifically the powers George III had in the 1780s) and I despair sometimes. Get yourselves a decent parliamentary system. If you avoid proportional representation it works fine. Unfortunately the US population is somehow convinced the current US system is modern and up to date. They'll probably still think that in another 200 years.

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duskdozer 5 hours ago | parent [-]

What do you have against proportional representation?

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tialaramex an hour ago | parent [-]

We can't "proportionally" represent a constituency which returns a single individual

So, if you want PR you have to either: Have two distinct classes of MP: Some were directly elected and represent an area, others are just to make the up proportions - but obviously these are just worse right? Second class MPs.

OR Abolish the constituencies entirely, now nobody represents your area and its particular concerns, or everybody does, which as we know amounts to the same thing because of how dilution works.

Unlike other electoral reforms a PR system has deeper implications far beyond the elections themselves. Historically the UK actually didn't have a single electoral system for every constituency, and that was fine†, indeed it works fine in the US today, the thing which needs to be coherent is what happens after the election and PR meddles with that.

† Well, not "fine", this is the era of the famous "Rotten Boroughs" but the fact that the system varies from one place to another wasn't key there.

	▲	simonh 36 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It also means that people are voting for party lists, not individuals, and the lists are controlled by the parties. In a proper parliamentary system the parliamentarians directly represent their voters, and have a mandate from them. Parties do not have that, only MPs have that. By passing the mandate from the representative to the party, and the party having list control, that puts far too much power over parliamentarians in the hands of unelected party functionaries that draw up the lists and have no mandate themselves.

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treetalker 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

lest we forget luxury fishing trips, RVs, real-estate debt payoffs, or payoffs of relatives' tuition

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DeepSeaTortoise 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

	▲	watwut 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It was SCOTUS, literally. They literally weakened the legislation. And by SCOTUS we mean conservative majority specifically. From dissent of disagreeing SCOTUS justice: "absurd and atextual reading of the statute is one only today’s Court could love."
	▲	estearum 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> It is reasonable to assume some gratitude should be allowed, otherwise you'd have to ask how long a teacher should be tossed into jail for receiving a "Best teacher ever" mug from his students. This is unfathomably ridiculous and you know it. Profoundly bad faith argument.