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Perhaps. In theory, you’re definitely right. I just feel that this is something where building the momentum during a single election cycle isn’t feasible. The most likely result of voting for a third party without laying this groundwork would be splitting the vote and giving a landslide victory to the greater of the two evils.

Formally organising online would make it possible to demonstrate how much support each candidate actually has without giving an official vote to a candidate that the general public isn’t confident enough to vote for. Watching participation grow and third parties receive substantial semi-official support could build excitement and lead to a third party being trusted to have the sway to win.

I’d love to be proven wrong though. If we can organize enough support for a third party within a single election cycle that it’s reasonable to risk voting for that candidate, I’m open to it. I already have too much on my plate, but if no one has built this service by the time I have energy for it, I’ll definitely be thinking about it

I suppose it’ll continue until enough people believe that it’s possible for a third party to win.

I think ranked choice voting would make it much simpler to foment that change. People need to be able to trust that breaking from the party line has a real chance of success, but that can’t happen without demonstrating support.

If we can’t have real ranked choice voting, a third party could build a website to let people coordinate votes according to ranked choice, and hopefully carry the result as a unified bloc to the polls. Have an agreement that if a certain threshold of participation is met, vote for the ranked choice result. Otherwise, lesser of 2 evils.

We honestly should just replace every single fixed dollar amount in every law with an algebraic formula. It’s ridiculous that we design laws to become dated and require replacement.

Minimum wage should be tied to worker productivity, and wealth tax should be tied to the median personal income, including that of non-working adults. Welfare programs should be tied to regional cost of living. Limits on rent should be tied to changes in regional median income.

We’re already tracking most or all of that data anyway, might as well put it to maximum use.

I’d also like to hear what your idea is. I don’t know of a platform to solicit someone building your device at a price you’ll be wanting to pay, but there are forums to help you learn how to do it yourself if you’re motivated enough.

If it’s cool enough to pique interest, you could try posting the concept in an electronics community and seeing if anyone’s interested in the challenge, or an ideas community and just floating it for people to choose to run with.

It’s also possible the device already exists and someone can suggest an easy option for you

To sway them, you must first disillusion them. They need to see their leaders are unreliable or they’ll be unwilling to admit they were lied to, because doing so would shatter their sense of identity.

It’s a problem, but I don’t think it’s as unsolvable as that. Figuring out how to overcome the strategies being used to divide us could rapidly repair the damage. Education, both in and out of school, is a crucial element of that. The ones frothing over “liberal tears” clearly don’t want to find common ground, so we would need to learn how they communicate and why they won’t listen, then find a strategy to break through that barrier and help them on their way to broader skepticism. In essence, once we cure the disease, we need to vaccinate them to mitigate the next outbreak.

There’s been some focus on this area of research. We have evidence that “strong men” rise to power by capitalizing on fear and anxiety. They set themselves up as a savior who will get rid of the scary problem by blaming someone/some group that is innocent but unknown (and therefore a suspicious stranger) to their base. They start with (comparatively) small lies and build trust among their following. Once the more suseptible slip into this form of groupthink, they’ll fall for bigger and bigger lies, and are very difficult to recover. The question is, how do we wake up they who scream of “sheeple” without an event so tragic it traumatizes an entire generation? The last few times involved massive wars or similarly harrowing events. Events so massive they dissillusioned the followers and forced them to confront the fact that they got played by a charismatic (to them) narcissist with a superiority complex.

Unless we can figure out how to snap these people put of it relatively peacefully, we’re most likely going to be in for a really, really bad time before it gets better. With any luck, at least in the US, maybe Trump will get thrown in prison and the Republican party’s leadership will turn on Trumpism or collapse before they can take control. Maybe if their chosen authority figure is imprisoned and disowned by their team they’ll be able to see clearly again.