this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2026
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Are they rigged in any way?
Each state and party runs their own, so I guess it depends. In Washington State we made the primary election run the same as the general: there's a list of candidates with party affiliations, and the two with the most votes progress to the general in November.
So you have 102 candidates, 2 from each state?
There's 50 states, and they don't all do it the same way. Each state has 2 senators, 1-52 representatives, etc. Then there's national elections where a small pool of candidates is voted on by the entire country, but which names appear on which ballots and how depends on the county you're voting in.
Damn, that's a lot of layers of obfuscation.
No, you were just very confused and it's a lot of assumptions to rethink.
Each county runs their own elections. It's not obfuscated, it's federated.
No, it is a lot of obfuscation. Thats what they've been trying to get you to realise.
Centralized elections are often much more obfuscated and less transparent. Federated elections are more resistant to corruption and less confusing for voters.
I know the exact process of my county's voting system, I can meet with the people involved and have conversations with them. It's a human-level system with paper records and secure processes.
Replacing that with a top-down national voting system would not reduce obfuscation in any way.
The discussion was on wether or not the elections were obfuscated, which they are. You are now trying to move the goalposts on to a discussion of the merit of obfuscation, because you can't make your brain work well enough to cede a point.
The core issue is the system itself: first past the post voting necessitates two parties for decisive votes, and any method to arrive at that outcome is going to be hostile to nuance.
Though I would argue that the process of choosing a super powerful leader through popular vote is a bit weird to begin with.
There are a lot of things about American politics that need correcting, but the federated election process is not one of them. It's a good thing, and it isn't obfuscation. If you want to keep saying it is you're going to have to explain it clearly.