The Projection Racket, Pt. 2
September 28, 2020·28 comments
You're told your vote IS your political will. It isn't. Structural features of the electoral system have systematized the distance between what you actually want and what your vote can express. The machinery that celebrates voting as democracy's foundation is the same machinery that ensures most votes change nothing.
• Your zip code determines your vote's power more than your actual preferences do. In competitive districts, voters from the losing party effectively cast votes that register zero influence on outcomes. In safe districts, opposing candidates often don't even run. Over 55 million Americans lived in congressional districts where one party didn't field a candidate in 2014.
• The two-party system isn't an accident. It's an equilibrium. First-past-the-post voting mathematically pressures parties toward dominance. The incentive structures created by this system make it nearly impossible for candidates outside party norms to survive, even when those candidates would better represent voters' actual preferences.
• As federal power expanded, the abstraction got worse. More authority moved to the presidency and Congress. Higher stakes mean parties consolidate around modal positions, making off-modal views unviable. Voters whose preferences don't fit the binary face increasing pressure to choose the "lesser evil" rather than express their actual will.
• Representation itself has degraded without you noticing. In 1793, each House member represented roughly 37,000 citizens. Now it's 760,000. This isn't just dilution. It's a fundamental change in the relationship between legislator and constituent. It makes new candidates more dependent on party infrastructure and wealth, deepening entrenchment.
• The system has become self-reinforcing and stable. Both parties have abandoned cooperation, making competition the permanent mode. Every election becomes existential. The pressure to "not waste your vote" intensifies. The Widening Gyre doesn't resolve itself because defection works. What happens to democracy when the vote that's supposed to save it can't actually move anything?
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