Currently trudging through Lies My Teacher Told Me which makes the compelling argument that the majority of American history is battles over systemic racism.
I remember being taught about the EC for the first time. The lesson was basically, "Did you know that we don't actually vote for the President? We actually vote for Electors who elect the president! But don't worry, kids, it's a formality. The chances of a president winning the EC and losing the popular vote are so remote as to not even be discussed." That would have been in like 1992, let's say. I got to vote for president for the first time in 2000, the same year I graduated high school and turned 18. So I have lived a mere 40% of my adult life under a president who won by popular assent. Making the EC moot is far easier than abolishing it, since the former only requires a change in state laws and the latter a constitutional amendment. The 270 compact would de facto abolish the EC overnight. I hope that if there's a blue tidal wave at the state level this fall, that it would be on the agenda of many state legislators. The recent SCOTUS ruling is actually a huge win for the 270 Compact, since it would obviate any faithless electors from saying, e.g., "I'm voting how OH voted, not how NY voted, fuck you." A 9-0 ruling also makes GOP court challenges to its inception a hard sell. So I don't think the ruling on its own is that bad. It's a simple plain reading of law, and it's not SCOTUS's fault the law is dumb. Liberal activists have put a lot of effort into passing redistricting commission laws that make it harder to gerrymander House seats, and they've had a lot of success pursuing that goal in swing states. They have proven that they can take their case to the people, so I hope they'll fight hard for this change, too. I'd throw money at any group trying to get that shit on the ballot.
Seventh grade we did reports on something involving government. Kid stood up and told us about the electoral college. We called him a liar. Dude sat there smiling while the teacher let us know that no, children, your vote doesn't count worth a shit, never has, never will, and that's why we were about to see Michael Dukakis spend every tuesday in Vermont but the last president to visit our state was Kennedy. Let's not mince words; the Senate was a compromise.
The Senate was a horrible compromise, but one, I'm afraid, we're stuck with. I think many people would be amazed to learn that there are two things in the Constitution that cannot be changed by any mechanism. The first is moot, since it said that no one could make any changes to slavery for 20 years after ratification. That is why it took 20 years to ban the international slave trade. The other is that the voting power of any given state in the Senate can only be changed by assent of the state whose power is to be changed, which is basically everyone, because it's not like if you change one state's number of senators, you don't affect the relative power of everyone else. So 100% of people in 49 states could all sign up for an amendment that says, "WHY THE FUCK DOES WYOMING GET 2 SENATORS?", and Wyoming just gets to shrug.
I read the first half of that book before returning it, still the wait list still to check it out again. The problem is deeper than bad history textbooks from Texas, when then only intervention the state/district uses for schools with failing STAAR scores is indiscriminately firing administrators. My wife taught for a year at a school right on the edge of failing, with some of best admins she's worked for, but they had to quit every subject except reading and math in March to get ready for testing. Even the most sedated kid is gonna be antsy after a week of test prep but after a month the whole school was batshit crazy.
The solution is federal education standards and federal education funding. Period. Full stop. It's deeply irrational that we have federal highways, a federal bureau of investigation, a federal postal system, a federal engineering program and education? Is whatever Cletus thinks will keep his daughter from getting any librul ideas.
The problem isn't "teaching to the test" the problem is that to sell a textbook you have to find a buyer. The biggest buyers of textbooks are states -because whatever your textbook teaches, it has to pass a purity test before you get state funding to buy it. The southern states figured out that if they change out their textbooks a lot they get to influence what those textbooks say a lot. The biggest buyer is Texas. So in general, every textbook you find has been approved by the Texas Board of Education. Reactionary, racist, religious shitheels love being on the school board. They know it's how they win the culture war. In 10th grade all our science teachers had to stamp every biology book with a little paragraph about how evolution was a theory and how we were strongly encouraged to learn alternate explanations for the origins of man. Tests? Sure. Same reason. SAT and ACT most definitely been approved by the state board of education.
My gut instinct is that dropping standardized tests with no replacement would be a big improvement in maybe 2/3rds of districts, and public school opponents would burn everything to the ground and salt the earth wherever they could.
That was off topic but I was already mad about it
Lies My Teacher Told Me is my #1 favorite non-fiction book ever. I first read it when it came out, and have re-read it - and bought it for others - several times since then. The title is unfortunate, because it seems to lay the blame on the teachers, when the truth is they are limited to the materials and curriculum those Texan fuckheads have scripted for them. I can't wait for the Bl00's Reviews of this one...
I'm going to do Heather Cox Richardson's latest first. We'll see if it's worth a two-fer.
Australia has mandatory voting. Failure to vote incurs a small monetary penalty of $20 for the first time, and $50 for subsequent failure to be a Good Aussie. It seems like mandatory voting would also eliminate voter fraud, since there could be a technological solution where each voter could enter a unique ID into a vote-confirming web site, and confirm their vote was properly recorded.
Might as well add a 'none of the above' option too. If none of the above wins a majority we get a runoff with fresh candidates. Not sure if I remember where I originally heard that idea.
Brazil tried it for a while. https://theglobalamericans.org/2018/08/elections-in-brazil-blank-and-null-votes-are-the-favorite/The Brazilian Constitution of 1988 states that only valid votes count. However, the Electoral Code of 1965 provides for the annulment of elections if there are more than 50 percent of null votes in a majority election (it doesn’t mention abstention). Still, many Brazilian sociologists and political scientists believe the threat of annulling the vote will do little to alter the strategy of the main political parties.