zlacker

>>codeze+(OP)
Before it gets asked...

>The DEA is limited by statute to enforcing drug related federal crimes. But on Sunday, Timothy Shea, a former US Attorney and close confidant of Barr who was named acting administrator of the DEA last month, received approval from Associate Deputy Attorney General G. Bradley Weinsheimer to go beyond the agency’s mandate “to perform other law enforcement duties” that Barr may “deem appropriate.”

>>jimbob+m1
How can we repair a system that's been systematically corrupted over several years? As a systems engineer my instinct is to rebuild the system from the ground up. If only politics was that simple.

>>pfunds+t2
Electoral reform. Every state manages its own electoral processes, and the vast majority of states have some mechanism for direct democracy through ballot initiatives.

There are many potential improvements, from algorithmic redistricting to mail-in voting, but the big one IMO is Ranked Choice Voting (Maine has already achieved this successfully, and it's stood up against court challenges [0]). This allows us to break the R/D duopoly, and shift the incentives towards big-tent consensus-building rather than demonization and "lesser evilism", and giving independents and third parties a real path to victory.

[0] https://www.maine.gov/sos/cec/elec/upcoming/rankedchoicefaq....

>>lukife+og
Every state manages its own electoral processes, and the vast majority of states have some mechanism for direct democracy through ballot initiatives.

We already know how states being able to run their own elections worked out in the South before the Voting Rights Act.....

>>scarfa+1w
I was describing how it works already. Disenfranchisement can also swing the other direction (such as the Supreme Court intervening to stop the Florida recount in 2000).

The main point is: while there's no mechanism for citizens to pass a federal law without the existing parties and representative, most states do have such a mechanism, which puts the power to reform our electoral processes directly in the hands of We The People (while still subject to court oversight under state and federal Constitutions).