Care to tell us how we can make a difference?
Comment on If we let republicans set the bar, we will be buried in no time.
other_cat@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
If people are interested in trying to make a difference on this front, you can. I’m working with a group of people to enact ranked choice voting in our city. If you can get it passed at a local level, that’ll pave the way for familiarity with higher levels of government down the line.
CaptnNMorgan@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
other_cat@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Certainly! Now bear in mind that this is going to look a bit different for everyone because not only is every state’s politics different, but every city and town is too.
I was fortunate enough to have an already established RCV group in my state that I could reach out to–they’ve had practice getting it passed in various locales already and were able to set me up with a ton of resources.
So, first step, look for anything like that in your state. If you’ve got a group doing that work, reach out to them and connect. They’ll know how to steer you better than someone who probably doesn’t live anywhere near you and is a stranger on the internet.
If you can’t find/don’t have anyone like that already established, you’re going to be working from square one, and that will be difficult, but it’s not impossible. Again, my guidelines might not be applicable to you in this case, but they should at least get you started. Here’s the instructions I was given (in a rough overview) for how to get the ball rolling in my city:
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Learn your local government. Are you a city or a town? Do you have a mayor? City council? Town hall? How does voting currently work? What seats are available for election and how often, and are they single-seats or multi-seats (like a board or a committee would be.) How long are the terms? Do you have preliminary elections, and what’s the criteria to trigger one? Do you have a town/city charter? If so, give it a once over. Who is the person who primarily handles election duties (such as handling the ballots) and what is their title?
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Do your local voting machines handle ranked choice voting? There’s actually a website for this! verifiedvoting.org/verifier/#mode/navigate/map/pp… - If your machines are too old you might have to include (or start with) a motion to upgrade your machines.
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This is where things get hard for me to tell you what to say in any detail because it’ll be specific to your home. But the basics is–start reaching out to the people in your local government. See if you can find someone who’s knowledgeable on local legislature who’s willing to help you out, either in general by teaching you how to get things brought to the attention of the legislatures there or who is even willing to help you go the whole way. You might need to get a petition going, you might not. But forging connections with people, even if it’s just one person, is going to help a lot. I’m fortunate that my city has a committee dedicated just to liasoning between citizens and the council–I’ve got a meeting scheduled to talk to them and see if they’ll give me a boost on this. That’s the kind of thing you’ll want to do on this step.
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10001110101@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
Some states are pretty authoritarian and stop cities from doing anything good. Some states have banned rank-choice voting. But yeah, where this is possible, it’s definitely a path forward.
other_cat@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Yeah, it can be really difficult if you live in that sort of place because I feel like making change locally is going to be a lot easier than tackling the state level immediately but I totally get that it’s not always an option.