If someone won $500,000,000 in the lottery, what would be the most effective way to spend it to change the political situation in America?

Edit: Asking for a friend. Also; as much as I appreciate the violent suggestions, I’m thinking more positively focused.

  • CalamityJoe
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    1 year ago

    My suggestion would be starting or supporting an advocacy organisation to help change gerrymandering laws whether state or federal, and have completely independent government bureaucratic officers, bodies or commissioners decide on electoral boundaries, rather than let it be decided by politicians in any kind of way.

    A lot of progressives voters are disenfranchised by the typically obscenely politically motivated gerrymandering going on in the US.

    I think the US would find a lot more of its elections and votes corresponded to average voter sentiment and expectations if that issue was tackled, helping make any subsequent political change attempts -after solving gerrymandering- much easier. At the moment, it swings heavily to favouring Republicans and conservatives, because they’ve been the ones unethical enough to systematically use changing electoral boundaries as a tool to influence voting outcomes.

    This is a description of the process Australia uses to organise electoral redistributions, usually caused by population changes.

    https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1718/Quick_Guides/FederalRedistributions

    It’s not simple, and it’s not one government body or officer’s responsibility, but it’s apparently widely regarded as “independent and fair”.

    I think taking gerrymandering is one of those things that has to be taken on by progressives as a long term project, like the conservatives have done with populating the Supreme Court with conservative-aligned justices. It will just have so much of a similar knock-on effect of advancing political interests elsewhere.