America's most partisan voters hold the most voting power

I've long wanted to kill (or drastically reduce) the narrative of "the swing voter" -- who mostly doesn't matter, and even if they do, is not reliable enough to be able to "influence."

In the US, it's basically about turnout and/or "suppression." There's a wall of "red no matter who" that's kind of the default, and whether or not blue wins is up to getting enough young people excited -- and perhaps, more importantly, ensuring that blue voters and votes aren't "cheated."

> … which means that less than 5% of Americans will truly be deciding who's in control of the House

Something about this framing seems to undersell the efforts and influence of the other 95% of voters.

If a soccer match were tied 6-6 and a last minute winner made it 6-7, the final goal scorer may be celebrated as the hero, but in truth the victory was won on the back of six other goals too.

> His organization says 32 states currently don't have a single competitive congressional race

I agree that the system is broken, but this is not a very fair statistic. 5 states have only a single seat in the House of Representatives. A further 7 states have just two seats. In total, there are 23 states with 5 seats or fewer. These states are all small and rural, which doesn't exactly make for a diverse population and means the seats tend to be safe R. For the states with a single major city (like Omaha for Nebraska) that city typically has its own district, and will hence be safe D in a sea of safe R. It's only in the more populous, more diverse areas where you start to get a lot of people living together who disagree with each other. This is what creates competitive races.

The electoral system is at the root of so many problems. We need sane redistricting, elimination of electoral college, dramatic expansion of the Congress, term limit, age limits and many other changes.

From the article:

> Fewer congressional contests are expected to be competitive this fall, compared with past election cycles, and experts say the extraordinary mid-decade redistricting efforts initiated by President Trump are largely to blame.

> Fewer competitive seats means the overwhelming majority — more than 90% — of congressional races will pretty much be decided during primary elections, which see far fewer voters participate than general elections.

> "Right now, we only rate 18 out of 435 races as toss ups, which means that less than 5% of Americans will truly be deciding who's in control of the House," David Wasserman, senior elections analyst for the Cook Political Report, told NPR.

Also, FEC still lacks a quorum of commissioners and so they can't prosecute any new campaign finance violations (for example those of the current press secretary)

Good thing no one put them in charge of enforcing gravity.