Voters in Montana on Tuesday delivered a major blow to big moneyed interests by overwhelmingly passing a ballot initiative barring corporate cash from political campaigns in the state.
With 87% of votes counted as of Wednesday morning, Montana Constitutional Initiative 194 has ++received++ support from more than 65% of voters, with just 35% registering opposition.
We also kept State Supreme Court elections nonpartisan (I-132) which I like. Largely because that particular initiative sprung from Republican groups whining about “activist” judges.
We even managed to avoid electing only assholes to state and federal office. It’s mostly assholes. But it’s not all assholes.
Great choice and now all states do the same, ranked choice voting too!
Ranked Choice is a slight improvement over our current system, but it was first invented in 1785 and has some inherent flaws. Flaws that can be exploited by bad actors to subvert elections.
May I suggest STAR. It was designed in 2014, and makes it much harder to subvert an election.
I disagree on the improvement being slight. Having incentive to campaign cooperatively because second choices count could dramatically change political culture. And Australia has used ranked choice for a century, without becoming any hotbed of subversion.
Further, RCV has a foothold in the US Alaska (pending surviving the latest repeal initiative on yesterday’s state ballots), Maine, and many cities. It’s much more realistic to spread it than to start from scratch with something else.
Portland OR! Just did my rcv ballot the other day
I say very slight because of the many, many, glaring flaws of the system.
The fact that it does not eliminate the spoiler effect is a major one.
All it does is kick the spoiler effect down the road a bit. It eliminates the also ran candidates. As soon as a third party candidate actually becomes halfway viable, the spoiler effect kicks in harder than ever and skews the election the other way.
And FairVote (the assholes who keep pushing a broken system) know this.
The simplest argument against RCV is thus, the current US primary system followed by a General election functions nearly identically to a version of RCV capped at two rounds.
You can’t just call those “glaring flaws” when it has a proven track record in the real world.
Citizens United has to go!!! Way to go, Montana,
Continue to kick ass Montana!
— Things I had no idea I would be typing when I woke up this morning
I am not that surprised actually. Montana folks are generally conservative but fiercely independent. They don’t like the gays or the trans, but they really DO NOT like the government and they sure don’t like corporate interests either.
A typical Montanian view is something like
“The state shouldn’t compel the church to marry the gays. They’re a church. They should decide who they marry. But, they should be allowed a civil union. They’re just not invited to my property.”
I can weirdly live and let live with that. They’ll get 'em eventually
They’re just not invited to my property.
I can weirdly live and let live with that.
For me, that’s too close to the way Christian Nationalists in my state of Arkansas want to exclude non-Whites, and I think would bring back suntown towns where the (often democratic) government of an locality (violently) excluded a marginalized minority from “their property”.
I have to live with that attitude around here, but I’m not directly threatened by it as a cis, white male. My county voted 90% R yesterday. I know politics is the wrong place to change hearts, but I hate that my state government has regulations in place that make things less safe for trans persons and cis women.
I just mean theres a lot more to work with if someone is at that point as opposed to in a chronic frothy murderous rage at the mere notion of the undesirables existence.
That actually is the door cracked open subtly but they are going to require more time or close to them situations where someone in their family they love turns out gay or a friend they cherish comes out or something like that.
Yeah I respect the ethos in a lot of ways. Their philosophy only really fails when like… They disagree on stuff.
“I don’t give a fuck where your kids get educated. Just don’t tell me where to educate mine.” Is fine until “well they need to be being taught ‘x y and z.’” And you’re met with “LIKE HELL THEY DO, ASSHOLE, GET OFF MY LAWN.” because they can’t agree on x y and z.
Or
“We don’t do drugs in this house. And if my kids touch the stuff, they’re out on their own. But, why should johnny law have a say what’s in my greenhouse?”
Or
“I am fiercly pro life. But, I don’t think anyone outside this house should be telling my daughter whether or not she has access to an abortion. She’s just disowned if she ever chooses to access one.”
Where like, their rugged individualism is so fierce they’ll happily hurt people close to them to maintain their version of what’s right. Tough to respect that.
I just think these folk will be subject to their own Family Modernization at which point theyll kinda have to make te right choice and drop all the bullshit.
You’d be amazed how important it is to people to have complete family photos and the social consequencesto those who have to 'splain to their friends/network why their child isnt in any of their current family photos and never will be in the future.
Those are the real losers. Zero sympathy or empathy, they could fiz shit but they cant get over themselves
No that’s what I am saying. Montanians are more likely to choose their individualism over the complete family photo. That’s where their philosophy falls apart.
You really think so? Like they’re able to uphold that rugged individualism even when their house is empty on Christmas and they have zero evidence of a loving, intact family?
Im sad for them but not in any way that would compel any sympathy. Theres such a dark side to being an American
As a child of the 90s in the midwest, I can look back and see how my optics have transitioned on gay people. I was never hateful, but I definitely had and aversion. I don’t think it was a conscious decision necessarily to change but just being exposed to more demographics once I moved out of my small town and the normalization of it in media naturally changed my perception. When guys kissed on TV before it was kind of jarring and ‘wrong’. Now I get happy when I see same sex couples irl and on TV.
I’m not a fan of PDA in general, but for many years now it’s no different who’s smooching who.
I think that the more normalized it gets, the less people will care even in the most bigoted places. Eventually everyone will personally know someone that is gay or trans, and it will just stop mattering to them as they realize their just people. I wish it were faster, but it wasn’t so long ago that same sex marriage was legalized and there’s been a lot of positive change and acceptance. Generational bias takes a long time to change out.
Ya these things take time but I actually think thats one of the positive things associated with that demographic. They’re definitely breeders which means many children which means they are more statisticaly likely than not to end up with direct exposure to that which they most detest and “fear” and over time it’ll just be so much easier to stop giving a shit
There is enormous social leverage in needing to avoid scaring away your own children and close relatives. I will never not judge someone who is missing someone in their family photos and their excuse is some attempted face-saving bullshit like “they drifted from thuh Lord” or some bullshit
This is fantastic news! Good for them! I hope more states follow!!!
I mean, fucking duh. Who the fuck among normal people votes for money IN politics??? I’ll never understand humans.
Amazing news, hope it spreads
Here comes the supremos to equate money with speech.
Such a horribly drawn equivalence. Money isn’t speech. Money is volume. You’re free to say what you want. Having more money just means you’re able to say it louder.
This is the kind of ballot measures that should be put to more states. When there’s direct democracy about single issues people are very progressive. Removing corporate cash from elections will be something everyone can get behind.
Color me pessimistic and mostly a dumbass but how will this stop things? Like people can still donate. It just won’t be anonymous (and even by the letter of the bill that’s kind of up in the air too). But will that stop anything? As we’ve already seen, tons of billionaires don’t really give a crap if everyone knows they donated a bajillion dollars to stop puppies and kittens from getting free food. They’re still doing it and still making a huge difference in politics.
I guess I just don’t see a huge difference in changing a campaign donation from “Bill’s Furniture Emporium donated $3 million to Carl Ass’ campaign fund” to “the ceo of Bill’s Furniture Emporium donated $3 million to Carl Ass’ campaign fund”
I think this is definitely a step in the right direction but I don’t think this is the crippling blow to oligarchy some people seem to think it is
Its not a panacea but a step in the right direction. The rich and powerful have always had an out sized influence on American democracy but after citizens united its been much more. Any steps to curb it will be useful, especially at the state level since it is usually easier than national level. But at this point it might even happen at the national level. It isn’t a cure all but a step in the right direction
Instead states like Arizona fill the ballot with hateful anti trans measures. And my state just wants to hurt the poor and immigrants even more with “amendments to save america”. All written by Republicans of course.
What a waste.
Nice! Now that the proof of concept has been doubly established, everyone needs to do this.
Dually?
Hawaii I think?
Moore noted that the initiative passed by Montana is similar to a law passed in Hawaii earlier this year that classified corporations as “artificial persons” who do not have a constitutional right to make political donations.
(from the article)
I remember that!
It does also limit the ability of Unions and nonprofits to help with campaigns, but I guess that’s fine, because the vast majority of union dues is used to fund political campaigns, and if they’re not allowed to do that anymore, union dues may not keep rising.
I’m ok with limiting union and nonprofit contributions too. Those are just more workaround avenues for billionaire money at the end of the day.
This amplifies the effect of every individual voter’s dollar in the race tenfold. And THAT matters way more.
Exactly. But it also doesn’t apply to “editorial” content… so that’s something we’ll have to watch out for.
Unions also generally have access to more individual donors that are willing to have their donations at least partially directed by the organization.
The “dark money” PACs are usually formed because some rich person(s) want(s) to wield more power than they can by directly convincing other individuals to direct their donations, even when they (illegally) offer to and do reimburse other individuals for their donations.
When you are having to funnel donations via individuals (legally or not), the number of individuals often matters more than the amount of available funding. (And, that’s a good thing, even for unions.)
But corp money will still make its way into the discourse via SuperPACs, won’t it.
This is a good step…but not enough
Huzzah! Huzzah!
Next let’s pass similar federal legislation!
