re: #156 Wendell Zurkowitz ((slave to the waffle light))

Our electoral system is not constructed to be robust enough to face the challenge of holding free and fair elections when one of the major parties is openly and actively ready to ignore the outcome of any election that is not in its interest. Christ, we had a President ready to use the military to seize voting machines that held results that did not favor him.

We based our system on good faith and good will and only a minimum of mutual oversight. It served us well for centuries. But I fear that it will not be enough to guarantee an outcome this year or in 2024 without further guarantees, safeguards, oversight, checks and balances.

It has a lot to do with one of those bits of US historical trivia, namely that the Founders made no concessions for the formation of political parties and generally did not like the idea of such being a thing in this new democratic government they were formulating. Why? Because they’d seen what splitting a nation’s people into factions could do in England and wanted to avoid all that. Of course, it should probably come as no surprise that the guy most supportive of political parties being a thing in US politics…was Thomas Jefferson.