I've been hiding out from the heat today, and occassionally looking around for my bee-tools in preparation for a big honey harvest tomorrow morning, and i got distracted and started thinking about how we got in such a mess here in america and the 2024 election. i'm glad we kept our senator - right now that is especially important. however congress was a bit of a downer. i really wasn't too impressed with either candidate in the general(though i did still have a preference). However, i found some of the candidates in the primaries more compelling(or at least interesting):

this guy seemed very electable to me. it's too bad he didn't get the nomination.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240715225607/https://www.paulrileycongress.com/issues

on the other side, there was this guy. he seemed a little kooky, though supposedly he has insider knowledge from his years working in intelligence comunity, so who am i to argue i guess... he did seem less trumpy than the rest of the lineup.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240911145745/https://www.va7th.com/

Also, our state delegates race(District 53) was a bit lopsided. and it looks the same for 2025
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Virginia_House_of_Delegates_election

https://ballotpedia.org/Virginia_House_of_Delegates_elections,_2025

https://ballotpedia.org/Tim_Griffin_(Virginia)
https://www.griffinforvirginia.com/issues

https://ballotpedia.org/Sam_Soghor
https://www.sam53.com/

...Sam's website is still not built. i already tried to reach out to virginia democrats more than a month ago and got as far as leaving a voicemail on sam's supposed office phone, however i have not heard back. to be fair, i get so much spam on my phone these days it is very possible i wouldn't notice if they tried to contact me. anyway, at this point i'm not sure how much effort i want to put into it since i don't know sam's platform(because he doesn't have a website). i just don't understand why the low effort? maybe they think he just wont win, so why even try? Well it is sort of disappointing then. 

really, i feel like we need more third party representation in this country. i'm sure it is a complex problem to solve, though it seems to me alot could be done by impementing a couple little ideas: 

1. (Semi)Open Primaries(voters should be able to participate in 2 of 3 primaries in their state with the goal of increasing 3rd party participation)

2. Approval Voting(or other voteing method allowing for choosing of multiple candidates, in ranked or unranked form, and counted by weighted or unweighted score of ranked/unranked votes in a single-round counting-method - which by necessity does not include multiple rounds/runoffs i.e. no 'FairVote'-RCV/IRV)

3. Preserve The Electoral College, though require states to split their electors either by districts or in a way to approximate the state's popular vote results.(this one isn't really as important as far as promoting more diverse representation as it is really only applicable to presidential elections, and is probably the least important thing as far as fixing politics. having more 3rd party members in congress would probably have a bigger impact. it is too bad parties like the libertarians have been taken over by FairVote).

Well, i'm sure i sound like a kook now after bringing up politics online. anyway, it looks like i found all the tools for the big job in the morning

p.s. finally found the Ins(ert) key on my crummy keyboard. coming from mac it is a real headache to get stuck in overwrite mode.