Election integrity and systems of government

[Cerin]

On the other hand, Trump won despite being massively out-fundraised and out-spent. Sanders did extremely well with little fundraising. Jeb Bush had virtually nothing to show for his huge fundraising drive - he ended up spending something like $2,000 for every vote he actually got in the primaries.

Trump and Sanders were both exceptional, imo, in that their messages resonated deeply with portions of the electorate.

I would agree with the idea that money won't help a presidential candidate who fails to capture people's interest. But I think the unlimited dark money must be in part responsible for the Republican takeover in so many state governments, when it's been demonstrated that a majority of citizens is not in favor of the Republican agenda.

A billionaire from California can secretly pump millions of dollars into a city council election in New York or a school board election in Wisconsin, to mislead voters in order to influence local zoning regulations or curriculum. It's crazy.

The other facet of the money is as bribes to elected officials, which the Supreme Court has sanctioned. Representatives don't serve their constituents, they serve the wealthy interests who pay for their campaigns and junkets and gifts and promises of future employment as lobbyists. It's all legal. It's all sick.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Yup.

[yovargas]

Hey, look what I stumbled upon:

In political science, Duverger's law holds that plurality-rule elections (such as first past the post) structured within single-member districts tend to favor a two-party system and that "the double ballot majority system and proportional representation tend to favor multipartism".[1][2] The discovery of this tendency is attributed to Maurice Duverger, a French sociologist who observed the effect and recorded it in several papers published in the 1950s and 1960s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law

A fun fact from that article: "Another example was seen in the 1992 U.S. presidential election, when Ross Perot's candidacy received zero electoral votes despite getting 19% of the popular vote."