comment: >
  
  We need the assault to stop on our public schools. They are not funded nearly enough, Congress just took away the free lunch program, they are banning books, calling teachers groomers and indoctrinators, banning certain subjects from colleges, and are making it clear higher education is a waste of time and will only put you in debt.
context: The single best example that I have seen of eroding the power of the political poles is Alaska’s top four primary, ranked choice general system. For the state’s house seat, a moderate Democrat was able to defeat a conservative Republican, despite the GOP collecting nearly 60% of the aggregate vote in round one. Over on the Senate side, the Democratic Party basically didn’t stand behind their candidate, for fear of knocking out the moderate Lisa Murkowski before she got to a head to head final round w/her Trump endorsed opponent. Note that both major parties benefited from this moderating process whereby candidates who didn’t go scorched earth on their opposition and did show willingness to compromise defeated extremists who did no such thing. 
  While Washington and California both have top two primary systems which sometimes produce this result (Marie Perez in WA-3, Dan Newhouse in WA-4, David Valadao in CA-21 & Diane Feinstein in CA-SEN) too often they simply end up as traditional Democratic versus Republican contests (Louisiana has this too, and you will notice they are not exactly a bastion of moderate lawmakers at the federal level).
  So there’s my suggestion: a jungle primary w/the top 4–5 vote-getters advancing, regardless of party. Then, a simple 1-2-3(-4) ranked choice vote in the general so that a majority is collected for every office… and the winners will know that in all, but the rarest of cases, they were not the majority of their district’s first choice, so they better act like they still have work to do. >
  
  A good rule for politics is to never use Alaska as a predictor of other places. It is genuinely just too unique to trust. >
  
  I mean, I hear what you’re saying…but Maine has RCV too and I’d argue AK’s works better than ME’s on account of advancing enough candidates to force strategic considerations but few enough that we aren’t waiting for a month to get a definitive answer. Literally any voter can count to 3. This isn’t NYC’s bullshit primary mayor vote where Adams won on the 8th redistribution. >
  
  What was wrong with NYC's RCV election?  I mean how do you limit how many there are in the primary? >
  
  Alaska had a general election where the top 4 vote getters in a jungle primary advanced to the general, which was a lot better than NYC doing only the democratic primary with RCV. The problem with RCV is it doesn’t incentivize loser candidates to drop out, because they don’t have to worry about playing Spoiler. The unintended consequence is they crowd and confuse the field and take up tons of airtime that otherwise should go to actual contenders. >
  
  But that’s not how the primary played out; the establishment front runner who had the lead after the first round, ended up being the candidate that won the last round. There was no lack of airtime for the front runners. >
  
  Well that's the problem, when the field is crowded, it benefits the front runner who has a large unmovable block of support. Garcia and Wiley could have posed a legitimate threat if the field was down to 4 candidates, but instead there were 8. >
  
  Ah, right, Garcia would’ve won if it wasn’t for those meddling leftists. >
  
  Spend less time looking at voting and more time looking at the voting system. 
  As their total numbers shrink, republicans counter the losses by boosting the technical. A favorite technical is gerrymandering. Gerrymandering makes individual districts safer from poaching. But it also makes them safer for extremists. So more gerrymandering at the local level means more extremism at the congressional level. Pass laws to make gerrymandering harder and congress will get less extreme.
  Another favorite technical is voter participation. Reduce voter power and increase apathy and fewer people vote. The lower the overall participation, the easier it is for a smaller group to wield  greater power than should be possible. But the more influence a small group has and the less engaged the entire population, the more extremism you can have at the congressional level. Increase voter participation and congress will get less extreme.
  The system too already had mechanisms built in to encourage extremists. Winner take all (FPTP) voting reduces voter choice and power, both limiting options and reducing participation. Roll out rank choice and other improved voting, coalitions become more organic and apathy shrinks. Congress will get less extreme. >
  
  
  As their total numbers shrink
  
  This is literally a myth >
  
  Do,you have facts to back your statement? Not disagreeing just wondering. >
  
  Party affiliation hasn't gone down over time, party voter registration has gone up, and the party is making gains on key demographics such Hispanics and Asians.
  The idea that the Republicans are "dying" comes from two false assumption. The first is that demographic groups are monoliths and the second is that politics is consistent and static... neither of these ideas are true. People are dynamic and politics is unpredictable. >
  
  But what link can you send that proves it’s not a myth. What research/data. ? Right now I’m just hearing your opinion. >
  
  I can't agree with the premise of this question; most of the conservatives who barely lost their elections were of the most rabid election denying MAGA faction. If they had all won, the congress would still be just as, if not even further to the extremist fringe. The election more or less functioned as intended in this case. The problem is the intention (to throw democracy itself into disrepute so as to facilitate an extreme authoritarian takeover), not the execution in this particular case. >
  
  I disagree. Here are the closest losses by congressional Republican candidates:
  CO-8 (B. Kirkmeyer)
  NM-2 (Y. Herrell)
  CT-5 (G. Logan)
  WA-3 (J. Kent)
  NY-18 (C. Schmitt)
  PA-7 (L. Scheller)
  PA-8 (J. Bognet)
  OR-6 (M. Erickson)
  NC-13 (B. Hines)
  CA-47 (S. Baugh)
  RI-2 (A. Fung)
  NV-3 (A. Becker)
  IL-17 (E. King)
  The WA-3 and NC-13 guys were far-right candidates; everyone else would have probably been standard R's who would have been reliable Speakership votes for McCarthy from the get go >
  
  I think the argument is that despite not winning a strong majority as they originally thought they would, they still shifted more conservative when popular wisdom suggests they shift to the middle. >
  
  But did they actually shift more conservative? It’s just so much easier to unify your party when you are in the minority and when the leader doesn’t have the ability to put things to a full vote or hand out gavels. If hypothetically in 2020 if the Dems would have won the presidency and senate but lost the House I imagine we would have seen similar shenanigans. >
  
  Yes, they shifted more conservative. That's why it took 15 votes for McCarthy to win Speaker. He was not going to moderate by working with Democrats to get votes, he changed the rules and promised committee assignments according to the demands of the far right wing that was holding out. >
  
  I haven't thought super deeply on this so it's probably a flawed idea, but the constitution originally pegged seats by population rather than by trying to work everyone in with 435 available spots. I feel like we should be pegging the number of seats to the state with the lowest census population each decade; i.e. Wyoming gets 1 seat and every other state gets 1 seat for every multiple of Wyoming's population they have in their border. Larger states are outrageously underrepresented in the house and I think this would go a ways towards fixing that. >
  
  Is that because they outright don’t have enough room in Congress? >
  
  I feel like they made room for the 435. Parliament has many more MPs, and they're a much smaller country. If I can fit into an airline seat in coach these days, I feel like they could squeeze a few more reps into the House. >
  
  Vote the gerrymandering officials out of every office at every level.  Every election matters.   Don't just focus on the president.  Elected sheriff's, judges, clerks, and state officials matter more in your day to day life. >
  
  And work to implement Rank Choice Voting >
  
  The moderate Republicans had the chance to make deals with the Democrats to be more middle of the road - 
  They chose to go with the far right. 
  The Republicans have not done any negotiations with Dems for about 10 years. 
  Democracy doesn’t exist without discourse and negotiation. 
  The Republicans are choosing fascism more and more everyday. They keep going further Right. 
  And we are all going to suffer because of them. >
  
  
  The Republicans have not done any negotiations with Dems for about 10 years.
  
  We passed multiple major pieces of legislation this year with Republican votes >
  
  Excactly. When have republicans in power last reached out to democrats? >
  
  No not "Excactly", that's the exact opposite of the point u/sunnydaysahead2022 was trying to make. >
  
  I think they're saying that Democrats will work with Republicans when they're in power but the reverse isn't true.