Hasan Minhaj is here to teach us about the American two-party election system and why plurality voting is the source of so many issues. On the new Patriot Act With Hasan Minhaj, Minhaj explains how “winner takes all†elections are what led to Trump taking leadership, and how it gets in the way of actual democratic majority rule: It leads to each party competing to be an ineffectual “big tent,†and one of those big tents just happens to house a “racist Cirque du Soleil.†Minhaj sat down with progressive Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (taped in the Watergate Hotel in pre-corona times) to talk about the ideological split between moderates and progressives housed under the big tent of the Democrat Party, which AOC says is “less a fracture and more like two different limbs.â€
So what’s the solution? Minhaj says we could focus on the Electoral College, gerrymandering, and campaign finance issues all we want, “but fixing those things won’t solve negative partisanship. It won’t break up the two parties.†Minhaj explains that ranked-choice voting could lead to actual majority rules politics in America, and demonstrates how it works with a hypothetical ranked-choice vote between Baby Yoda, Paddington Bear, and Detective Pikachu: “It’s great, because you can vote your conscience without electing some fascist like Paddington Bear.†We appreciate the demonstration of an alternative, and achievable, voting system, but we take issue with the Paddington slander. You leave our polite furry son out of this, Hasan.