Stidmatt

Republicans are trying to make the Mexican border a political issue this election. Let’s investigate how to make a stable situation:

The main causes of people crossing the border illegally is the following:

• There are few legal pathways for Mexicans to work in the United States.
• There are more low-skill jobs (which means you don’t need special training to do them) than people able and willing to do them in the United States, but many people in Mexico are willing and able to do them.
• Relative incomes between the US and Mexico, as the disparity grows, border crossings increase.
• Relative safety in the US vs Mexico. This is caused by income inequality and the drug war.

Here are the realistic solutions to these situations:

So, if we wanted to reduce illegal border crossings from Mexico, we could have a legal pathway for Mexicans to work in the United States at any job. That would end the need to cross the border illegally without harming the US economy. This is the only realistic way to solve the first two points.

For the third point, either see Mexican incomes approach that of the United States or have a severe recession in the United States.

For relative safety, we need to end the drug war, which will significantly shut off the flow of money to violent cartels.

But Republicans are not interested in solutions. They want a police state.

The Every Vote Counts Amendment is almost perfect, but it needs some tweaks.

Every Vote Counts

Section 1. The President and Vice President shall be elected by the people of the several States and the district constituting the seat of government citizens of the United States.
Section 2. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of Senators and Representatives in Congress from that State, except that the legislature of any State may prescribe less restrictive qualifications with respect to residence and Congress may establish uniform residence and age qualifications.
Section 3. The persons having the greatest number of votes for President and Vice President shall be elected.

Section 2. Every United States citizen who is 18 years of age or older has the right to vote for President. It is the responsibility of the county or territory where that elector is registered to vote to provide a paper ballot by mail to the elector, if the elector requests it. It is the responsibility of the postal service to return all ballots free of charge to the county or territory auditor when mailed from within the territory of these United States. Counties and territories are responsible for signature verification of the ballots they receive.
Section 3. If a ticket has received a majority, defined as at least half of the total valid votes, for President and Vice President, they shall be elected. If no ticket has received a majority of votes, then the ticket which has received the fewest valid votes will be eliminated and those votes will then count towards their highest ranked choice who is still in the election. Repeat until a ticket has a majority of votes.

Section 4. Each elector shall cast a single vote jointly applicable to President and Vice President. Names of candidates may not be joined unless they shall have consented thereto and no candidate may consent to the candidate’s name being joined with that of more than one other person.
Section 5. The Congress may by law provide for the case of the death of any candidate for President or Vice President before the day on which the President-elect or Vice President-elect has been chosen, and for the case of a tie in any election.

Section 5. If a Presidential candidate dies before election day, the Vice Presidential candidate on the ticket will be the Presidential candidate for that ticket, and may choose a new Vice Presidential candidate. If the Vice President on a ticket dies before election day, the Presidential candidate on that ticket may choose a new Vice Presidential candidate. If both the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidate on a ticket die before election day, that ticket will be eliminated from the election and all votes for that ticket will be reallocated towards the next choice on the electors ballot.

Section 6. The Twenty-Second article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.
Section 7. Congress may not infringe on the right for any sitting or former member of congress, president, vice president, member of the cabinet, governor, or state legislator from being a candidate for the Presidency. Congress shall have power to regulate Presidential ballot access to other persons.
Section 8. The order of names on the ballot for President shall be determined by the United States order of precedence first, and then all other candidates by alphabetical order.

Section 6 9. This article shall apply with respect to any election for President and Vice President held after the expiration of the 1-year period which begins on the date of the ratification of this article.

In my opinion, this solves all the issues I see with our current Presidential election system:

1. The Electoral College is abolished, ending the inequity built into the system.
2. It establishes ranked voting, allowing voters to vote their conscience, and prevents the spoiler effect.
3. It guarantees a right to vote by mail.
4. It extends Presidential suffrage to citizens in the several territories.
5. It establishes a positive right for all adult US citizens to vote.
6. It guarantees absentee paper ballots, and the post office will deliver them free of charge.
7. It guarantees a right for members of congress, governors, members of the cabinet, and other high-ranking officials to run for the Presidency.
8. It establishes the order in which the ballot will be printed.

I think this will establish a solid system for future Presidential elections.

First and foremost, every Presidential election is unique.

You cannot accurately predict an election’s outcome by the candidates’ offices in the race.

No matter who Harris picks as her running mate, this election will be unique because it is the only election in which an incumbent Vice President has run against a former President. This is funny because 2020 was the first election in history where a former Vice President ran against an incumbent President.

However, there are some trends that are interesting to observe.

When analyzing the offices held by the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates from the two major parties in every election since 1828, every combination is unique.

The most common combination for a winning ticket is the sitting President and sitting Vice President.

The most common losing ticket is two Senators, the second most common winning ticket.

Most combinations are rare enough the results are not statistically significant. But it is clear that incumbent President/Vice President tickets win 71% of the time.

Tickets with a Senator as the Presidential candidate and a Representative as the Vice Presidential candidate have been run 5 times and lost every time. It’s the most common losing ticket, and a ticket like this has not been sold since 1964. The last ticket of this shape was in 1848.

All of this is to say that while there is clearly an incumbency advantage, any other office held by candidates has little to no impact on the election.

Candidate quality and the record of the incumbent administration are the best predictors of whether a candidate will win or lose the election.

Arm Ukraine and force a peaceful resolution to Palestine to win the Presidency.

Over the last 60 years, the two parties have diverged.

On the one hand, Johnson passed major civil rights reform.

On the other hand, Nixon negotiated with hostile regimes to not sign peace agreements with the United States for political gain.

But on the other hand, Jimmy Carter has pushed for and eradicated Guinea Worm.

However, Ronald Reagan sold weapons to terrorists.

But on the other hand, Clinton passed gun reform and enforced UN missions to end genocide.

But on the other hand, Bush curtailed constitutional rights and started an illegal war in Iraq at Netanyahu’s urging.

But on the other hand, Obama expanded access to health insurance to millions of Americans.

But on the other hand, Trump actively backtalked doctors during a pandemic and his court appointments led to the repeal of Roe v. Wade.

However, Biden passed gun reform.

How is one to choose between the two parties?

Here’s a more balanced way to look at it:

Democrats are not perfect, but Republicans are horrendous, and they have been for the last 60 years.

With Biden ending his campaign and Harris as the presumptive nominee to be the next president of the United States, there is clearly only one path to protecting democracy at home and worldwide.

That is to elect Kamala Harris as the next President of the United States.

She was one of the most consistent Democrats in the Senate, so we won’t have to worry about her moving toward Republicans. However, she is likely to be harsher towards New Democrats when they inevitably oppose her proposals, which will help her push policy through.

Trump will be more supportive of Israel and will certainly not work towards a peace agreement between Palestine and Israel.

Trump will stop supporting Ukraine.

Trump wants to ban abortion.

Trump wants to abolish the Affordable Care Act.

Harris is none of these things.

We need to vote for Kamala Harris.

• People who think Democrats need to approach the center were never going to vote Democratic in the first place. No one will ever vote for a black man who supports extending health care to disabled people… oh wait… the best performance for a Democrat since 1964… twice.
• George McGovern is the ideal candidate. He is from South Dakota and blames our inflation crisis on the Great Society. He’s definitely going to win as the moderate candidate we can all support!
• The New Democratic lie is a fraud. The closer New Democrats get to power, the worse Democrats do across the board. We should have had a landslide in 2022, and they failed.
• I fully believe Biden won in 2020 because of COVID-19. If COVID was not around and Biden ran against Trump, it is now obvious Trump would have won the electoral college again. It’s funny how not campaigning in swing states gets Republicans elected.

I’m a reliable Democratic voter, and I have benefited massively from the Affordable Care Act since I was born with cerebral palsy. If the ACA is repealed as Republicans promise, I will have to leave the country or not have health insurance. Those are the stakes of this election.

I read the article in Politico that the Biden campaign was not even polling in swing states over the last month, and that is absolutely unacceptable. Biden handpicked his campaigns top operatives himself, according to the article. Tim Kaine made this mistake on only focusing on safe wins in the 2010 election. We know how that turned out, voter turnout dropped relative to 2006 levels, and we lost the election. Hillary Clinton’s campaign and DNC operations under Debbie Wasserman Schultz did not invest in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin despite them having republican governors, and we know how the 2016 election turned out.

Twice in my life my fundamental rights have been threatened by Republicans and high-ranking Democrats have failed to protect the rights of disabled people by absurd campaigning strategies. To see President Biden following in Kaine and Clinton’s footsteps this year is infuriating to me. The DNC and the Harris campaign need to instead follow the strategy Howard Dean used in 2006 and President Obama successfully used to sail to victory with wide margins, even as Democrats were destroyed in the House elections under the strategy of only funding races we know we can win.

There is only so much I can do as a single voter. My phone banking in swing states helps a small amount, but is only a drop in the bucket compared to the resources the DNC has. I implore the DNC to continue the tried and true 50-state strategy which gave us victories in 2018 and 2020 under the leadership of Jaime Harrison, and that the DNC needs to force the Harris campaign to campaign in all 50 states, otherwise history shows Trump will probably win.

Tacoma’s unfortunate geography makes transit difficult to serve. The city is fairly low-density, but zoning can fix this. It’s dense enough to support Link.

Problem 1: Bad bus routes

If you want to go from the St. Joseph Medical Center to the Tacoma Dome, the new transit center for the South Sound, the bus takes over half an hour without a forced transfer, driving takes 9 minutes, and the distance is only a mile. This is insane. Pierce Transit needs to design its routes to be more user-friendly, increase average speed, and optimize routes. If the Tacoma Dome Station will be the transit center for Tacoma, it needs to be easy to access from across the city. It is not.

Problem 2: Tacoma Dome had bad land use

There is an even bigger problem which is there is very poor land use around the Tacoma Dome. It is a very low density area, not much else to do, and sandwiched next to two freeways. This means it will not be a very useful station by itself.

Solution:

Turn WA-509 into the new track for Link and connect it with Tacoma Rail via Jefferson Ave. Build a new train station for Tacoma with Link, Cascades, and Sounder stopping at Union Station in downtown Tacoma. Use Union Station for its original purpose. Abandon I-705 and create a new Union Station on top of where I-705 used to be. This will be far more useful than Tacoma Dome. Close Pacific Ave to cars and will be the heart of Pierce Transit’s bus service, running to the county.

Eliminate surface parking lots and zone all abandoned lots within a mile of downtown Tacoma as mixed-use. This will do more to alleviate increasing housing costs than anything else you can do.

This will provide better, faster transit to everyone in the South Sound. The train station will be far more useful, and being right next to the University of Washington campus will be very useful. The easy transfer between the University, frequent local trains, and frequent regional trains will make downtown Tacoma one of the best places to live in the United States.

Assuming good land use around a station (I live in Jersey City, which is a good assumption around here), I expect that as frequency changes, the demand for using a station at any given minute creates a parabola.

Case 1: There is very frequent service, more than once every 5 minutes. People move in and out of the station quickly, and crowds are very brief. I recommend using the Spanish solution.

Case 2: Medium service, every 5-15 minutes. Transit is still useful, so people crowd the stations. Building enough space on the platform to prevent overcrowding requires more money. The Spanish Solution might still be ideal.

Case 3: Low service, anything less than every 15 minutes. At this point, the longer your frequency, the lower your demand as people switch to other modes, so you need smaller stations. You don’t need a center platform at this point.

This is why the frequency of service vs. demand for space at train stations forms a parabola.