Of course just because there are technically flaws, doesn't mean it's not an improvement over the status quo.
Instant Runoff Ranked ballots are particularly well suited for electing a single position like a Mayor or President. Given that it's still a majoritarian system like First Pass the Post, it's a much more questionable system to use for other things like electing a parliament.
I remember seeing a 2D chart representing voter preferences on the X and Y axis, coloured by who wins under those preferences (and some assumptions). Some systems showed clear biases towards certain outcomes. IRV had a pretty symmetric shape but with a random mess of different colours in the middle.
It won for Bolsonaro whose campaign nailed it in 2018. It didn’t win in 2022 because he was completely bad in dealing with pandemics (mocking people dying and saying he had nothing to do with it being president).
Now, Lula’s campaign was absolutely dead during the whole time. Until it lost in the legislative by a mile and in the President run had a partial loss in the first round. Then the campaign lit up after the partial upset.
Janones, an energetic young guy elected to legislative with good online presence led the campaign. He achieved creating a WhatsApp group with 11 million people called “Lula’s army”. He would give the directions and the people would obey almost blindly.
The interwebs (basically WhatsApp + Instagram) got flooded with this top to bottom Lula’s campaign.
The first round results made Bolsonaro very favorite. Lula victory was a huge upset. I put the merit in this incessant social media campaign.
The thing is: “centrally planned cohesive campaign” looks a lot like a cult. The point of the campaign is not critical thought or argumentation, it is incessant messaging. Think fandoms.
Bolsonaro voters pejorative nickname from past campaigns was they were all “cattle”. Because that is how they behaved online. Ironically, what worked for Lula voters this year was they behaving like “cattle”. Just reposting and following this central orders on what to post, what to say, what to dress.
The thing is, it works. Cult-like fandoms work in elections. The right won a few elections like this in the world. In Brazil, the left just learned how to do it was well.
The more mindless posters a politician has following their campaign HQ orders, the more votes they have.
And also because the entire state apparatus was engaged in unconstitutional censorship of his "centrally organized, cohesive, persistent online engagement" machine, which is what wins elections, as you noted.
And now that Janones set up his own "Lula's Army", Brazilian institutions did not manifest even a fraction of the energy they had shown while persecuting Bolsonaro.
Lula was allowed to do everything Bolsonaro was persecuted for in 2022. He even lowered taxes on fuels, and got away with it. The tax cut ends tomorrow.
It can be better than the alternatives and still not good.
Australia has no term limits and has famously had the longest serving prime minister (12 years) followed by extremely short terms. All seemed to represent the general will of the population.
Lula served two terms from 2002-2010, and came back in 2022 (now to serve until 2030, if he lives until then).
The world is more complex than "fascist" vs "communist"
Literally Lula said as much
"We are interested in discussing the defence area, the space area, the scientific and technological area, the education area, and especially, the energy issue area," Lula said.
Now he will face a much bigger opposition in Congress and therefore will have to find a middle ground.
I expect his policies to move even further to the right. This might pave the way for his vice-president Alckmin, a historical right-winger, to run in the 2030 elections — likely against São Paulo’s governor Tarcísio de Freitas, also a right-winger and considered more moderate than the Bolsonaros despite being associated with them.
(reposting my own comment from a related thread)
I don't think "Oooh. Scary muslims!" works any less well if it's required to say "Elon Musk" rather than "American Apple Pie Goodness PAC" or whatever.
It might make a difference for smaller donors, especially if they're more sensitive about their personal PR.
I don't know the specifics of Brazil's system, but at least in the US gerrymandering has nothing to do with the Presidency or Senate, only the House. It's also not without risk. Gerrymandering is bad, but it doesn't change the totals of votes; it attempts to reapportion "excess" votes yielding a large win margin in one area to give winning, but necessarily smaller, margins in more areas. Amongst other challenges though that smaller margin means if there is a wave then a gerrymander can turn into a "dummymander" where previously safe districts get flipped.
>funny business
This is actually pretty dang hard in anything but a total sham, and even then is at least obvious it happened. Some timy fiddling at the margins may be possible to sneak through, and yeah some elections that might make the difference. But that can't counter any serious victory. The more common technique seems to be trying to suppress the vote. But as well as also not being trivial it also too risks backfiring by motivating people much harder. There is a lot of human psychology around "loss", people often absolutely hate things being taken from them even if they were complacent about having them.
Must win by 50% plus 1 of all valid votes on Round 1. If not, 1st and 2nd most voted go for Round 2 a few weeks later. Then, 50%+1 again of all valid votes.
Everything else you mentioned also matters. I can't tell you the amount of times that the state of Georgia, suddenly out of the blue, invalidated a lot of registered voters. And if people don't check, like my friend in a minority town outside of Atlanta, they won't realize until election day. Red states are more likely to play this trick. Your conclusion is something I disagree with, though. Voters have lost so much over the last decade, and they don't fight back until it really starts to affect them personally. I think the surge that we might see this election is only due to economics. If the economics were good, it's not out of the question that Trump would be doing fairly decent this election cycle. This is why Iran is playing things very well to try to enact maximum economic pain in the days before the election. But it's all about economics, and that shows you that people truly don't really care.
Well it does change which voters decide the results. A lot of electoral systems seek to constantly redress imbalance by having impartial bodies redraw district lines as populations shift. It is a shame the US does not. Gerrymandering is fundamentally undemocratic.
A major reason it isn't working for now is because Donald Trump is, in addition to being a corrupt autocrat, incredibly incompetent. We shouldn't have to rely on that next time.
Need I say more?
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Elon+Musk%2CAl...
Make of that what you will.
If you have a lot of money and you've managed to stay out of prison, people are generally ready to believe good things about you and want to be in your good graces. If you pay people to continually say good things about you and manage your media appearances for you, there will generally be a lot of impact to that. You're just telling people what they're primed to believe. A lot of people will fluff up your image for free just because they're hoping for patronage.
Musk has a BA in physics that was awarded a couple years after he says he says he completed his studies. Unlike CPSC, leaving a physics program early robs you of some pretty crucial stuff. You generally don't see a lot of rockstar physicists leaving university early to join startups. Despite Musk posing as a rocket scientist, engineering guru, etc., there's no evidence he's one of the scientific or engineering minds behind Tesla or SpaceX's work. He's just a money guy.
The general rule for money guys is that the closer you are to the money, the more of it you can get. This is why CEO's are paid outrageous sums. Musk is the closest guy to the money at his companies, and his one true gift seems to be "getting close" to politicians in order to get the public's money, which Tesla and SpaceX have received gob-smacking amounts of.
If you want a laugh, go look up the episode of Dan Carlin's Hardcore History addendum where he brought Musk on. Carlin typically interviews authors of history books, so why Musk? Why indeed! During this episode, it comes out that Musk used to have models of WWII planes but clearly knows absolutely nothing about history. Despite this, he makes every effort to sound like he does. This is the sort of exposure $$$ gets you but, sometimes, you miss the mark.
Many cities had their mayor cancelling free public transportation and stopping people from going voting. Extending the time is a reaction, not a first action. Furthermore, the ask didn't come just from Lula's party, it came from both candidates [1].
2022 Brazil had the Federal Police Director actively interfering with transportation as well.
[1] - https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/eleicoes/o-que-diz-o-codigo-ele...
Both candidates supported that decision.
It's also inconsistent with the court's own precedent. Extending voting hours was deemed illegal back in 2022. "Everybody had the chance to vote", said Alexandre de Moraes.
After Lula lost in the 1st round, suddenly it became legal again. The irony is not lost on me. That's the pattern with the leftist judges in the courts. The supreme court judge who decided it used to be Lula's own lawyer.
This time around, some guy in Lula's party created "Lula's Army", a channel with millions of people in it. Suddenly, it was fine.
They used to cry about "fake news" and call for censorship at every opportunity, and they'd get it because they own the courts. Now they were the ones spreading "fake news" of all sorts. Did they get censored? Nah.
Censorship in Brazil is unconstitutional, by the way. Political censorship is doubly so. It doesn't matter, because they own the supreme court.
There are no laws in Brazil, there is only what the supreme court wants. Whatever they write on a piece of paper becomes law, and police obeys it. They are the true seat of power in this country.
Please review the HN guidelines:
Can you explain?
You are right winger but don't like the Brazilian right wing aligning with the US right wing, but do like the politicians who are aligned with the US right wing?
Bolsonaro generally supports privatizing Brazilian state companies and selling them off to foreigners. I don't want that. Especially not to the US and Israel.
Lula on the other hand is better aligned with China, which is also what I want.
Lula and myself are aligned on these two points. So this outcome is not entirely bad for me.
The problem I have with Lula is his party's obnoxious taxation, lack of a real plan for reindustrialization, continuous defense of criminals, and most importantly, his total domination of the supreme court. I voted for the right specifically to see those judges impeached and imprisoned, because I absolutely oppose everything they did in 2022, far more than I ever opposed Lula himself. I'm of the opinion that presidents and elections barely matter anymore, because it's the supreme court that runs the country. It's the Venezuela governance model: president appoints god-like supreme court judges and rules monocratically through them.
The 1st round this month was such an upset not because of Bolsonaro but because of the senate. They are the ones who can impeach supreme court judges, and when Brazil unexpectedly elected a right wing majority in the senate, it struck true fear into the court. This was our chance to completely wipe out that court and forever change the history of this country, like Bukele did for El Salvador.
While in the end the necessary victory didn't materialize, Brazilian senate is still absolute majority right wing now, and they could still impeach those judges. I'm not going to hold out hope for that anymore, but if I see at least one judge bite the dust I'll still call it a major win.
Both will lead the country to pork-barrel, corruption and government paralysis by debt. Both are "unfortunate".
There are 2 solutions for all Brazilian problems: Guarulhos and Galeão. The rest is just circus.
There is exactly one politician that once upon a time represented me: Dr. Enéas Carneiro. Ironically, his ideas were closest to the Chinese Communist Party. He's dead now.
The left wing has PCO, a real left wing party, and I agree with them on a daily basis. They're shunned by everyone, and were even persecuted by the supreme court along with the right wing.
I'm increasingly resigned to the idea that immigration is the only option by now.
Debating politics with the Chinese on X taught me a lot and allowed me to move past left/right labels. My personal politics turned out to be a mix between what people call left and right wing ideologies.
The right: we need to torture immigrants and more market capture.
The center: I can't decide between these two equally appealing, equally moral options.
And when you correctly use the word to describe what they are supporting, you are inciting violence.
Polymarket was like 80% Bolsonaro Jr to 20% Lula 7pm, 7:15 it changed to 60% Lula. There were multiple reports in the news websites about it favoring Bolsonaro which itself probably made some people vote for him.
I'm quite happy with the result tho. Let's see how the far right opposition will take this loss. I'm already expecting the worse.
I think as humans we are really bad at intuition about probabilities, and it being an election only makes it much worse. I don't think anyone is consciously conflating these with poll numbers but percentages of voters are the numbers we see a lot more than prediction markets, and 80% is idunno an 80% chance of getting between 50% and 54% of the vote or something.
Every single factor was pointing towards Bolsonaro, Polymarket was just consistent with that.
He unexpectedly won the first round of the election. His lead was expected to grow since he'd likely get most of the votes of the other candidates. 17 out of 18 polls favored Bolsonaro. Market movements indicated a strong expectation of him winning. The Brazilian Real futures are already down 10% in the last couple hours.
Brutal.
Surprising to see Bolsonaro lose at this point, but the real upset of this election was caused by the senate. The whole point of electing the right wing was to impeach the judges. So long as that happens, I will be satisfied.
The next four years were going to seriously suck for Flávio. Now the economic bomb is going to explode in Lula's hands. I was tempted to vote for Lula myself just to make that happen. It's the supreme court issue that stopped me.
Lula's barely fit for his position as president too. He might resign and let the vice-president deal with it. Also an acceptable outcome.
Impeachment of the supreme court is precisely what will save this country. They have been ruling monocratically since they launched the "fake news" inquisition in 2019. People can stomach a Lula win, even I have points where I intersect with the guy. The thing is not a single Brazilian voted for those judges.
Unfortunately, Flávio's loss will only embolden them now. Remains to be seen whether the senators will do what we elected them to do.