595. Why Don't We Have Better Candidates for President? | Freakonomics Radio

[@jerrybarrax5618]

This is an enlightening broadcast about a vitally important topic. I'm looking forward to hearing more about these movements.

[@TheDavidlloydjones]

You and 1.3% of the electorate, Jerry.

[@Siddhaloka007]

We do. They just get blocked out by the party’s anointed ones. For better or for worse.

[@dragonofparadise]

I am in the middle and I am so angry that I am leaving the country for a more democratic and free nation. America is like the Titanic and Roman Empire in a slow decline all due to its own internal corruption like the founding fathers were scared off. I think the problem will eventually solve itself after going through struggles and complete financial ruin but I don't want to stick around to lose everything in the transition.

[@danacoleman4007]

hey man, where ya headed?

[@X9523-z3v]

Hustle culture = pirate culture

[@floydwhatchacallit6823]

This is a well put together argument for something so many people instinctually know.

[@goodfortunetoyou]

I'm a fan of ranked choice voting systems, and think they should be on state-level ballots more frequently. I do want to point out that there are multiple types of Ranked Choice. 1. Instant Runoff Voting (This is the mentioned form in the podcast) It's basically the same as the current system, but if your first choice doesn't make it, your vote goes to your second choice. Some people seem to dislike this because it's not approval voting. The candidate with the lowest level of support gets cut loose each time. Otherwise it's First Past the post, re-done multiple times, but you only vote once. 2. Proportional Single Transferable vote - This is the approach to use if you want a state-level parliamentary body to represent its underlying population. It's more complicated, but basically, they group votes, and then set a threshold. If the number of votes for a candidate go over the threshold, their votes get spent electing them, and the rest of the group's preference moves to their next most favorite person. 3. Ranked pairs - The winner of this approach wins a head-to-head matchup against all other candidates. It's more complicated, but also a condorcet method. 4. Approval voting: Would you be okay with person X as president? Something like the opposite of Instant-runoff, and first-past-the-post where the goal is to get more than 50% of votes FOR a candidate. This elects the least disliked candidate, rather than the most liked. Supposedly it usually elects a candidate who wins a head-to-head vote against all other candidates, which first-past-the-post and Instant-Runoff don't. The current voting system america uses is call first-past-the-post. Winner gets the highest number of votes, but doesn't need to hit 50% of votes. Instant runoff improves on this by ensuring that if you want to vote for a third candidate, that you can do so with your vote still mattering.

[@Billschneider42]

We don’t really know who we are voting for because we don’t know which oligarchs pull the strings of candidates!

[@brianmulholland2467]

This is great. I'm 100% on board with Ranked Choice and nonpartisan redistricting (though there is the question of details with that). I don't think 'all-party primaries' goes gar enough though. i think we should end primaries altogether, as well as runoffs. The all-party notion DOES fix the primary systems worst faults. But it leaves in place a few. 1) Primaries turn the campaign from something that should take a few months to something that takes a year and a half. We don't need to be campaigning that long. And primaries are a big part of why it happens, especially our state-by-state staggered primaries which are beyond ludicrous and are just d___ measuring contests between states that want to be first. 2) Primaries still have the problem of meaning that only the most hypermotivated voters get first crack at weeding out the candidates, and they are not particularly incentivized to pick the best ones. They're incentivized to pick the more extreme ones. I think better would be to do Ranked Choice, but have anyone who wants to be eligible run. There should be a relatively low bar to get your name on an electronic ballot, and if it's a paper ballot, just pick an abritrary number of candidates (let's say five), and the top 5 according to all major pollster averages get listed on the ballot. Likewise, for debates. But a full list of everyone running should be available at every polling station (and online of course) for people to review if they want to do write-ins. Lots of candidates isn't really a big problem IF you're doing ranked choice. It's only first-past-the-post that NEEDS a smaller pool. I'm also a believer that money isn't the problem, it's a symptom. Money flows to where power is, not the other way around.

[@Techelettt]

The two failures of democracy…a n uninformed/poorly informed voting public, and a dearth of qualified candidates. You’re my fave podcast.

[@lshelbs7441]

Is there a freakenomics episode on rank choice voting in democratic and republican primaries? What would be the ripple effects of that?

[@krone5]

In NY we saw the sadness of congressional districting, when we had a independent districter, we had 2 perfect districts that ended up getting removed in the last cycle.

[@user-et1ht9fx2k]

This episode is 🔥

[@andrewhoyle1521]

My favorite episode, ima share this with everyone. 2 party system destroying this country

[@nathanngumi8467]

Very insightful!

[@Lou_Mansfield]

It's fair to question Yang's optimism on voting reform, given his track record of losing races and endorsements. However, the fact that there are other organizations pushing for Porter and Gehl's ideas mean it's not largely dependent on Yang to progress. Institute for Political Innovation, Unite America, and Veterans for All Voters are doing a good job organizing and spreading the solution of Final Five Voting.

[@MVMM-yo8rz]

Trump is running under the Republican ticket, but he is a conservative moderate and isn’t a part of the establishment. That is why he has the endorsements of former Democrats and also why original democrats also give him their vote.

[@weinerdog137]

Because you get the politics you deserve.

[@TheDavidlloydjones]

What is Andrw Yang's policy on the Straits of Hormuz? And how does he feel about Donald Trump's position? Or is Yang opposed to the entry of policy into politics?

[@johnweiner]

I'm 11 minutes in and you haven't even begun. "The hidden side of everything" must be very well hidden.

[@DITBC]

An interesting read would be the defense arguments and Court conclusions in Wilding et al vs DNC Services Corporation. The DNC admits it has the right to rig primaries and select their candidates privately. The promise in their charter for even handedness isn’t legally binding.

[@jimpad5608]

It is mathematically impossible for more than two candidates to exist.

[@johnweiner]

This is my second comment after listening to this whole podcast. I STILL don't get it...ranked-choice voting (RCV)is supposed to be good, but how many times do voters have to vote to get a winning candidate? Also you only present Andrew Yang's take on the RCV result in Alaska. The Wikipedia page on the same election has a blizzard of criticisms that were not nearly as optimistic as Yang's. You didn't discuss these criticisms at all.

[@canadianroots7681]

I would love to hear realistic approaches to drawing districts in a non partisan way. Democrats in New Mexico made sure SE NM has no voice. On the other hand, we are so sparse that i recognize drawing districts fairly is tough.

[@brianniegemann4788]

One possibility might be electing candidates statewide through ranked-choice voting. Get rid of districts altogether. It would also give third-party candidates a better chance of getting more that 1% of the vote.

[@ralphwoodruff]

One of the big problems in this is that when any other territory gets lumped in with a densely populated city, almost inevitably the desires of the city dwellers oppose those of the suburban/rural dwellers. This means you see taxation without representation for the non-city dwellers. For example: in Colorado, they voted on whether to naturalize coyotes/establish a population there. It was voted in favor of doing so because the city dwellers outvoted the rural dwellers. Who was impacted by this? The rural dwellers. So why did the city dwellers have a say in this vote?

[@brianniegemann4788]

@@ralphwoodruff you have identified one of the biggest political problems there is; the urban/ rural cultural divide. Urban culture and values are very different from those of small-town and country people. But we all have to vote on issues affecting our states, and big cities have a LOT of voters. I don't have an easy answer, other than people from different walks of life need to do a lot more sitting down and talking to each other. Preferably face to face.

[@brianniegemann4788]

@@canadianroots7681 why have districts at all. Switch to ranked-choice voting and allow say up to 50 candidates to run. The top 3 would get at-large congressional seats. Since each one would represent the whole state, candidates would need to adopt more moderate positions in order to be popular enough to make the grade. If you're too far to the right or left, your appeal is narrower and you end up # 16. This method is being tried in a few states and is already getting results.

[@stephenboyington630]

I, as a voter, am neither a Blood nor a Crip. Why do I have to vote for either of them?

[@brianniegemann4788]

I'd just like to say that getting Big Money out of politics is a vital step, in addition to the reforms discussed here. So long as Elon Musk can donate $250 million to the RNC (or other multi-billionaires to give million$$$ to the RNC), these corrupt private clubs will be hard to stop. If the states were to start adopting tough donation laws and tough truth-in-advertising laws for campaigns, it would accelerate the rise of third parties. We need strict limits on donation amounts & a cap on total spending per constituent. Plus laws requiring that political advertisements disclose the names of the individuals and organizations who paid for them. If l were the reform czar, campaigns would be publicly funded with strict spending limits, and it would be a felony for any office holder or candidate to accept private donations.

[@johnwilson427]

The false dilemma of only 2 candidates for president may be at fault.

[@stp479]

For much of the blame we need to look to our professional laptop class and our MSM rendering the precious Fourth Estate a darn ghetto.

[@dweller6065]

God bless Alaska

[@geneadaway2671]

I asked the same question during the George Bush/John Kerry debate.

[@iamwesleyfrazier]

Identity Politics 🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃

[@charleskatz2606]

Dr.Pepprr just started to outsell Pepsi

[@hip360hop]

Fuck this system, might be the first election I vote third party

[@jimpad5608]

You may as well just stay home.

[@isonlynameleft]

I love Coke 😄

[@richdobbs6595]

Ranked choice voting only completely disenfranchises half the population and gives a lot of people their secondary or third choice representative. Open primaries are essentially two round voting, which when fully implemented like in France leads to strategic voting where people don't so much select their representative but have a stronger veto against who they don't want to run government. I'm dubious that democracy with an unlimited franchise ends up making good laws. But if you want to implement it, why not allow people to give proxies to who they want to represent them? So my candidate gets 1207 votes out of 45,000,000 votes cast. That's how much his vote counts. And why am I stuck with a candidate who happens to live near me?

[@brokenrecord3095]

Representative democracy is 18th century technology. In a democracy, it is taken as a given that the best way to govern the nation is in accordance to the popular will. How do we determine the popular will? Now, back in the day Joe Farmer couldn't realistically couldn't cruise on out to DC every week to weigh in on the issues of the day, so it made sense to send someone out to lobby for corn subsidies. These days most of us, especially teenagers, carry the internet in our pocket. Do we want to know the popular will over an interstate highway extension in Kansas? Well we can ask the elected representives, yes, and they will perhaps in turn ask the voters, or more probably the important deciders: the donors. Or we could just ask the people themselves. Which is more likely to give us a good reading of the popular will?

[@4terrascorned]

Yeah. Why would I want someone that lives on my block representing my block? Someone who has to live in my community representing the interests of my community?

[@richdobbs6595]

@@4terrascorned Why vote for a national government based on geographical constituencies? I have more in common folks I follow on KZbin then with the folks around here. Why worry about representing the geographical community and not the professional or political community? It made sense back before we have computers, but not now.

[@4terrascorned]

@@richdobbs6595 you would really like what Mousollini did in Italy. I mean, it worked great until it didn't. There's also francos Spain and Pinochets Chili.

[@richdobbs6595]

@@4terrascorned That seems like a non sequitur to me. Maybe you should fill in you reasoning a bit. I'm more closer to AnCap then I am to fascism in outlook.

[@quatroquatroquatroquatro]

because we confuse free money with free speech. If it were free speech we'd have more choices.

[@justafewquestions3647]

Exactly nine years after the cultural thing happened and that's true with almost every there exceptions, but with almost everything it happens in politics it happens nine or ten years after the culture shifts. Seth Godin kzbin.info/www/bejne/npaUh52fZtNrsJIsi=rcUlUwCT7h_dg9pw&t=168