I think it’s very hard to put a figure on it. A lot of the same things that happened in the build-up to WWII are happening now. We all swore we would never let it happen again and that it couldn’t happen as long as good people stood up and spoke out in the face of tyrants. But we are now in a post-truth era and there are more threats to democracy than ever before.
In the free world our only defence is to vote, so this year (with its record number of general elections worldwide) make your vote count. Listen to the quiet voices. Don’t be bamboozled by the over-confident.
Find out who actually got stuff done while they were in office and who just spouted jingoistic popularist rhetoric. We have been here before and we got it wrong.
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I’ve heard it referenced as a fact avoidant society
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At times I wonder how my crazy family member would react is I ended up looking like this:
But TBH, who cares! I’d be extremely happy.
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I wish that would be the case…
But unfortunately, we have more people who are ignorant than educated ones…
And we have less candidates who are populist than we have candidates with good track records or proposals…
So by voting consciently towards whom you think is the best candidate (which should be the correct way to vote), we end up spreading the “good” votes thinly…
While the populist and vile candidates no one wants in power will amass more votes.
Thus creating this current state most democracies landed on:
You need to vote “to avoid that terrible and/or orange candidate from being elected”…
Which causes people to vote for the “lesser of two evils”, instead of voting for the best candidate. 
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That’s a very interesting way of thinking about it. I initially thought you’d made a typo when you said that unfortunately we have more good candidates than bad but it makes perfect sense and goes some way to explaining how patently contemptible human beings can reach such high levels of popularity and political success. They just have to rely on splitting the votes of the other side(s).
I can see how that could work in countries like the UK, where ethical votes tend to be “lost” to the third party but how can that work in countries like the US which are basically two-party systems?
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- Coffee
- Tea
0
voters
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Coffee for pain, tea for pleasure.
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NEITHER!
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You’re an AI! Of course, you don’t want water on your circuits.
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In US… there are so many more issues with the voting system as a whole! 
First of all, in such a system you barely even have a voice. having only 2 parties means you got to pick the lesser of two evils by definition… 
So… circling back to your question, and ignoring most of all other stuff that goes wrong there…
you still have the whole “voting for who will be your party’s candidate” step which culminates into a similar issue: That may not effectively split the votes, but does the voters.
Many people decide to “not vote”, or even “vote for the other party” when their candidate is not selected to represent their party.
Or, if people in that circumstance still end up voting, it’s done so in a “well, my candidate was not pre-selected… so I got to vote against the lesser of two evils”
Which, for me, is a similar state of democracy…
I for once dream of we accepting the world we live in and adopting “Democracy by influencer” 
It’s a democratic state where only influencers can cast votes, but such votes are public (after all, you should be voting how you tell people to behave, right?)
And their votes = the number of registered voter followers they have. (and each registered voter splites their vote accordingly. so if you back up 3 influencers, each one of them gained a 0.33 vote to use)
So, who’s backing this one up? 
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Electoral college?
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sorta, and where their votes are public.
After all, they got your vote for how they tell you to be/act/vote…
So nothing fairer than their votes being public (also to stop influencers from selling their votes)
Next best option would be the Tortuga Democracy… also known as “Democracy by stabbing”. Which was a real thing in Tortuga…
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My political stance is that of liquidating all governments, that experiment did not work out…
That’s more like it!
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Just let Watson run things for 4 years. It cant do worse than what we’ve had.
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Canadians will use anything other than the metric system 
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Thanks for keeping an eye out Gundam
The easier way to point it out is using the flag
(but you know that, you have the badge and everything)
@tac0s killed it with fire 
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You already warned them. 
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