Top Tweets for #FalseBinary

My latest -- Polling Data Highlights the Viability of Anti-Establishment Candidates I recently hypothesized: A majority of people could want an anti-establishment candidate as president and we would never know it because the public is never asked who they actually want. Pollsters are in effect limiting the choices of the public. Polls — which should be a method by which the public, rather than the parties or the pundits, articulates its desires — are crafted in such a way as to solidify the status of the “major candidates.” Then those polls are reported on over and over again, further canonizing the position of those candidates in the name of public opinion. Citizens who might want to support an independent effort then hold back. A self-fulfilling prophecy comes to pass as the “major party” candidates tighten their grip on people who are often drawn to them by little more than their fear of the other “major party.” Breaking into the system is virtually impossible largely because pollsters have — consciously or not — incorporated the “greater evil” fear into the polls. A significant number of people may want an independent or “third party” candidate and we wouldn’t know it because the public isn’t asked. I’d also suggested that polling could be done using other forms of voting. Well, I was just on a zoom presentation with “A Time To Break Silence” and one of the other speakers was Hayden Sasswood of the Equal Vote Coalition. He highlighted polling data from 2012 I’d never seen before from New York City using various voting systems. Sure enough, Stein and other non-duopoly candidates had their numbers spike using Approval (you can “approve” of more than one candidate) and Score (rate each candidate from 1 to 10) voting. This indicates that half of all voters would support Stein, up from less than 5 percent with “Choose One” polling. Now, this is in New York City, but I think the underlying point is there: Imagine that this polling was done regularly and then reported on. People seeking change from the duopoly would not feel isolated and the numbers for such candidates would swell. This is what https://t.co/VA5x5BAdrI gets at. Because the pollsters aren’t doing it and the establishment (or even most “alternative”) media are not going to get this out there, it’s up to people to do so. People are hungry for something else. See full piece: https://t.co/GnMYgVUgEA