Sadly I doubt the US would ever go along with this even though our citizens would strongly support it. The wealthy have too much power here.

It seems like every voting system has pros and cons, but I’ve become interested in STAR voting as it seems to have a nice blend of positive characteristics without the worst flaws of other systems.

It’s effectively a mix of score voting and instant runoff (ranked choice).

You can read more here: https://www.starvoting.org/

It hasn’t been tested much, mainly because it’s relatively unknown, so I’d like to see more real-world testing before I say it’s the best, but it’s definitely intriguing.

We have a similar system in California called the jungle primary—basically there are no party specific primaries (except for president because this system is incompatible with other state’s elections), and the top two advance to the general election.

There are a few issues though. If a candidate wins more than 50% of all votes in the primary, they win the election and don’t appear on the ballot in the general election along with the president. Since there is generally higher turnout for the general election rather than the primary, you can sometimes have a generally unpopular candidate win in the primary with 50+% of the small number of primary voters.

We also have issues with spoilers—if a bunch of similar candidates run, and all split the votes between them, it’s possible they don’t make the final ballot, even if any of them individually would have won the final election. This seems like a fringe issue until you realize that parties have actually supported lots of minor candidates on the opposing side in order to eliminate an otherwise dangerous challenger.

So overall it is somewhat better than first past the post but it still has significant issues. In general I think elections that select a single candidate are somewhat undemocratic by nature and we should think about ways to give the minority a voice but not the ability to shut things down. This may be a difficult balance to achieve but it’s still worth aiming for.

Awesome tool, thanks for sharing. I wish they included STAR voting since I’ve become interested in that one.

No, no, they’re the good kind of murderers.

Yeah that’s true too, I was kind of focusing on the direct impact here but they don’t have a place in any conflict.

I know everyone’s here dunking on the hypocrisy of Russia making this complaint and that is valid but it’s still sad this happened and I personally don’t think the US should be distributing cluster munitions which are inherently more dangerous to civilians.

I just did but you didn’t answer. But I guess we can skip that step. I am mainly curious if you are naive enough to accept the statements of these authoritarian leaders unquestionably. Do you really believe Kenya is doing all this just because they believe it’s the right thing to do? I suppose Putin really just wants to protect Ukrainians from Nazis and western imperialism, and Bush just wanted to bring democracy to Iraq too?

I’m just describing the situation as it exists. Whether it’s respectful to the Kenyan government or not is not my concern.

But I am curious what possible interest you think Kenya could have in this matter given that it is a regional power from the other side of the world that had almost no relationship with Haiti before last year. Besides, apparently, an interest in whatever the US is offering in exchange for this adventure.

No of course not. But I don’t see how that’s relevant. Kenya is just a puppet here, they don’t matter at all other than as a tool for the US. Kenya has no interest in this issue beyond what the US directs. The two countries didn’t even have any diplomatic contact before this scheme was concocted.

First, I don’t accept that it can’t work, there are still holders of power in Haitian society, and if you get them to negotiate and agree to a peace then it will happen.

But even more importantly, having order imposed by force by hostile foreign governments is no more guaranteed to improve the lives of Haitians, and it could make things much, much worse. A real solution for Haiti needs to come from and be supported by the people. We’ve had a series of US imposed foreign puppets for about a century, and the current situation is the direct result of this failed policy. This medicine is already killing the patient, applying more won’t help.

I’m not making a statement about Kenya, I’m saying I don’t trust the US’s intentions in this case based on their historical actions in Haiti. But no, I don’t think it would be good for Kenya to be involved unilaterally either. I would prefer to see a non-military solution.

I mean you read the article right? It’s all about how the US has created this multinational coalition but that it’s really calling the shots. It almost seems like your excerpt was deliberately chosen to omit all of the other information that supports what I’m saying.

So, I guess there would have to be a large accumulation of information that the US was not directing these efforts, despite members of congress and others having already confirmed that fact.

The whole framing of this conflict as a “gang” issue is very problematic in my view, since these warring factions are more of competing political actors seeking to control the country. While they may or may not be engaged in traditional criminal activity, their primary goals are political, not merely economic as with typical organized crime. Yet there has been essentially no attempt to explain who the various factions are and what their goals are. They are just described as gangs that are going on killing sprees for no reason (with an unspoken implication that Haitians are just violent savages). From my limited research on the topic, this is highly inaccurate.

That said, I really am not too knowledgeable about the situation there which is why I was hoping someone from outside of the US media ecosystem could share some real knowledge.

Is there reason to think this is anything more than a fig leaf? The US is obviously heavily involved in directing this effort, even if Kenya is doing the dirty work.

I am very concerned about the situation in Haiti and the global public seems to have a very poor understanding of the situation. Media coverage of the crisis there has been very biased and superficial. This concerns me because the powers that be may not have Haitians’ best interests at heart and without public oversight these military solutions could end up creating further problems.

If anyone here lives in Haiti I would be very interested to hear any knowledge they could share of what is really happening and how they think it can be solved.

Well I like birds too but I’m not really a birdwatcher. Are you going out and birdwatching at that hour? Not much bird activity in the afternoon from what I’ve seen.

Birds are cool and I generally like birdwatchers but those people get up entirely too early. It is not natural.

I think the idea that MLs are a far left ideology is pretty questionable honestly. But that is the conventional wisdom certainly.

The definition most people use for left and right isn’t really consistent or coherent. If you do try to iron out those inconsistencies, you’ll find that MLs don’t really fit with the rest of the left.

Based on the information in the article this seems way over the line. Is there some context missing or is it just that?