Arabic and Chinese then.

With Sri Lanka’s ranked ballots, they didn’t need consolidation. Working-class voters could have had this, at any time, with no risk.

Ah, you’re talking about SLFP voters second-preferencing the JVP. (I thought you meant UNP voters supporting the SJB.) That is more plausible, except the SLPP leaders and hardliners would attack it tooth and nail, fearmonger that it would split the vote and help the UNP win, and so on. No one wants to let go of power.

this new plurality-winning party is going to trounce the split alternatives, until one of them disappears, or both of them disappear.

Hard to predict. Depending on how many seats his coalition gets in Parliament, Dissanayake might have to get support from one of the other blocs to get bills passed. But if he can get a majority, he has a great chance to destroy both the established parties simply by appointing an honest auditor and letting them loose on the previous government’s files.

When voters only get (or only use) one choice, and there’s two parties on the same side of a divide, one of them has to utterly dominate the other, to stand any chance against a popular third party.

What the new party did was to challenge the old poor Sinhala vs Tamil+Muslim+rich divide, and turn it into more of a common people vs political / business class divide. Obviously, there aren’t enough businessmen or politicians to form a party by themselves, so we’ll have to see what they do. Maybe they’ll negotiate with the new powers, or maybe they’ll run smear campaigns, or maybe they’ll wait for it to get corrupt and unpopular.

Either these voters start using their ranked ballots properly - or they’re going to keep getting a two-party system.

The other possibility is a de-facto one-party state, like Mexico or Japan. I really don’t see hardline Sinhala nationalists and hardline Tamil separatists co-operating.

Sir this is a meme.

Jokes aside, I’m Indian. Sri Lanka has a much better education system than we do.

But as you point out, they’re acting like they have America’s elections, where this schmuck who got 17% is now a massive liability to the runner-up who got 33%. If those two presumably-liberal blocs got together, they could handily oppose the leftist bloc.

It would be useful if you tried to understand Sri Lanka’s political system before you made such comments. The SLFP / SLPP was historically supported by working class Sinhala people. The UNP was supported by Tamils, Muslims and richer / more urban Sinhalas. In 2022, the SLPP collapsed due to an economic crisis and widespread corruption. The SJB was an attempt by a section of the UNP to win over former SLPP voters by adopting centre-left economic policies and Sinhala nationalist rhetoric. The UNP base - largely Tamil and Muslim - are not going to vote for them! This is why the JVP was able to win - they consolidated the working class Sinhala vote, while not threatening Tamils and Muslims.

Their voters just aren’t using it, for some goddamn reason.

The reason being that, for many people, there is only one choice that is acceptable.

Every single person who wanted him, last time, could have listed him… also. They sure didn’t. His support was three percent. That’s not a viable path to power, that’s a punchline.

That’s a viable path to getting your face in the public consciousness, so you can win next time. As you said, losing a prior election isn’t a pre-requisite. But the posters you printed, the speeches you made, and the fact that one in thirty people took you seriously enough to vote for you, are a pretty strong boost when you run again.

Anyone who voted for only him, “last election,” was a fool.

Or they were the people who made this year’s result possible.

If you can’t rally a shitload of people behind your guy… you lose.

Yes, but you show that so-and-so’s platform has x amount of support, putting them in a better position next time around.

The winner of this election was not decided by everyone seeing through The Matrix or whatever and deciding to defeat a broken electoral system. It sounds like 95% of them are functionally unaware of which electoral system they have.

It’s incredible how one can see some piece of evidence that contradicts their pet theory with their own eyes and say, no, the reality is wrong and my theory is right. I mean, it makes sense sometimes - the discovery of Neptune is a famous example - but in general, it is better to adjust theory to fit the facts, rather than the other way around.

Given the system you’re voting under - you should vote for someone who has a chance of winning.

The problem is that who ‘has a chance of winning’ is decided by who people vote for.

Voting for a third party with single-digit support is not much better.

Uh, that’s what the Sri Lankan voters just did? The winner this time had 3% of the vote-share in the last election.

Sri Lanka has ranked ballots! What the fuck? They’re not even using Plurality, they’re doing RCV!

In theory, yes, but so few (~2%) people use it that in practice it is first past the post.

Duverger’s law is about how there tend to be two parties.

Emphasis on the ‘tends’. It’s a probabilistic observation, not a law of nature. Treating it as the latter leads to people acting against their best interests.

Sri Lanka has ranked ballots. It’s not a Plurality voting system.

You are right, in theory, but please check how many additional votes the winner (or the runner-up) got as second-prefrence votes. It was around 2% of their totals. This is because in practice, most voyers didn’t bother putting second and third preferences.

The new guy won despite winning <5% of votes in the last election. If people vote for the candidate they like instead of trying to game the system by calculating who they’d rather not win the most, then maybe we can kick out corrupt incumbents and get in fresh faces (they’ll get corrupted over time too, at which point you rinse and repeat).

In this context, I guess the self-employed would be an intermediate ‘middle class’. A doctor or accountant with her own practice, a master tradesman who can pick and choose his clients, a programmer who does contract work for companies - none of them are propertied enough to have their own workers, but neither are they employed by a boss who takes a cut of their pay. But I agree that a lot of people who call themselves middle class are actually either upper class or working class.

better yet how about they take enough for donation and decanter a portion out an do blood testing both to make sure the blood is clean but alsoso the individual is aware of they are free of X

This is already how they do it here (India). They’ll test all donations for a number of infections, and you can give them your mobile number / e-mail / postal address to inform you if they find something.

I think it was Charlie Chaplin who said that the best jokes make you first laugh and then cry.

Govt jobs in India have 30-40 days, which is 6-8 weeks. But the private sector will riot if you try mandating anything close to that.

The second image in the lead is showing the list of countries who recognised Palestine after the episode in question. Based on the title, you need the list of countries who recognised before.

And yes, we recognised them in 1988.

I asked how much corn or sorghum they eat. None,the children don’t like either.

Isn’t niacin found in meat and fish? What do corn and sorghum have to do with it?

being pushed into unsafe diet and exercise plans, often with very high pressure coming from parents and coaches

That’s true of any sport? I agree that sports should be more fun and less competitive, at least for children, but why single out gymnastics? At least there’s no contact like in wrestling or even football.

Voting is about choosing good candidates well before it gets pared down to 2 options.

In the US, yes. I was making a general statement. A voting system can be set up in multiple ways, but if it forces people to play lesser of the two evils then it is broken and needs to be changed.

Voting is about choosing good candidates (or parties, or policies). If your system doesn’t let you vote, then you should consider changing your system.

Gold having 1 more is weird because you would expect no silver if two have gold and therefore a difference of 2.

Vinesh Phogat was disqualified for being overweight during the weigh-in of the 50kg women’s wrestling final. Her opponent got gold, and both losing semifinalists got bronze.

It became a big controversy in India because she had been <50kg for every match until then, and she had previously protested against the wrestling federation - which chose her dietician and other staff - for covering up sexual assault cases.

Any narrative will be biased, both in what it says and what it leaves out. But historians have to at least try to be impartial. I’m not a professional historian, so I can have whatever opinion I want.

You stated that Alexander killed many people

Chinggis Khan, not Alexander.