#majority rules

I want to do right by you guys - because this story is as much yours as it is mine at this point.

Someone asked about chapter length and it got me thinking. I have feelings about it, but honestly I'd rather just ask. So here we go ♡

Majority rules. 

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to any and all that celebrate--but especially to @rookanis-de-riva!!

Does Majority Actually Rule?

If majority truly ruled, we wouldn’t be stuck with the ongoing nightmare that is the orange turd. Back in 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly three million, and under a system where true majority rule prevailed, she would have taken office. The QMAGA lunacy—those rabid cries of 'Stop the Steal,' conspiracy theories, and violent tantrums—might have been snuffed out in its infancy. Instead, what actually governs this country is a patchwork of archaic and deeply flawed systems—mechanisms explicitly designed to cheat, disenfranchise, and favor the entrenched power of wealthy elites and their obedient base.

Take gerrymandering, for example. Districts are twisted into obscene, nonsensical shapes to ensure that certain votes carry far more weight than others, diluting the influence of dissenting voices and creating the illusion of choice. It’s a grotesque mockery of democracy, all while the charade of 'representative government' carries on for the masses. But let’s not kid ourselves—the Electoral College is the most egregious relic of this system, a rusted cog in the machinery of democratic decay. It's a mechanism so broken that its failures have become a predictable farce, celebrated only when a Republican ekes out a rare popular vote win—such moments are so unusual, they become their own news cycles.

Consider the 2020 election: Joe Biden won the popular vote by over 7 million votes—a staggering 81.3 million (51.3%) to Donald Trump’s 74.2 million (46.8%). Despite this, Biden's margin of victory in the Electoral College was only 306 to 232. Fast forward to 2024. Trump narrowly won the popular vote with 74.7 million votes (50.5%) against Kamala Harris’s 71 million (48%). And yet, suddenly, he’s awarded 312 Electoral College votes to Harris’s 226. This stark discrepancy—a narrow popular vote lead yielding an outsized electoral win—lays bare the inherent distortion within the system.

Sure, Trump won the popular vote this time around, a rare occurrence for Republicans, who have routinely lost it for decades. But when the popular vote handed Biden a decisive win in 2020, many on the right simply couldn’t handle it. Cue the insurrectionist tantrums at the Capitol, an embarrassing display of fragility masquerading as patriotism. All because they couldn’t accept that both the flawed Electoral College system and the popular vote had gone against them. Spare us the sanctimonious civics lessons and cries of "majority rules." Your hypocrisy is glaring when you invoke majority rule only when it serves your narrative. The reality? Any criticism, dissent, or inconvenient fact is dismissed with cries of fraud—introspection be damned.

The truth is, for many who scream about democracy and freedom, genuine democratic rule is their worst nightmare. It’s not about representing the majority’s will; it’s about maintaining power through any means necessary. Twisting rules, exploiting systemic rot, and gerrymandering their way to victory, all while claiming moral superiority. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the Electoral College are tools wielded to amplify minority rule and silence opposition. When it works in your favor, you celebrate. When it doesn’t, you rage against the system and pretend to be its victim. It’s all part of the grotesque machinery, and the numbers don’t lie: a 7 million popular vote lead netted Democrats a fragile 306-232 Electoral College win, while a 3.7 million vote lead for Republicans in 2024 inflated to 312-226. That grotesque imbalance isn’t a triumph; it’s a stark reminder of how deeply broken and manipulable the system is.

a second message suggesting i make this triple treble followed, so it’s triple treble. thank you, @shaneythealphawolf!

*****

3.7k words, rated m.

*****

“Picked a movie yet?” Beca questions as she slips casually onto the mattress. Aubrey, legs crossed pretzel style, sits with her back to the wooden headboard, golden hair flowing neatly over one shoulder in that way that is just so distinctly Aubrey, while Chloe lay with her head resting comfortably in her lap. Both scoot slightly to make a little more room for Beca, who carefully lifts Chloe’s legs, dropping them down into her own lap once she is seated beside Aubrey.

“We’re thinking Sinister,” Chloe says with something of a mischievous gleam to her ocean eyes. The response causes Beca to immediately wince.

“Isn’t that horror?” she questions without much hope, because realistically, she already knows the answer.

“The scariest horror,” Chloe grins somewhat proudly, hand outstretching to settle lazily against Beca’s thigh. “I was reading this BuzzFeed article, apparently they did an experiment to see which horror movie caused people’s heart rates to spike the most dramatically, and Sinister was the winner.”

Before Beca even gets the opportunity to protest, a long arm is pushing its way protectively behind her back, and Beca cannot hold back the subtle scowl she shoots toward Aubrey. There are perks to this relationship, undoubtedly so, but ‘majority rules’, especially in situations such as this one, is certainly not one of them.

“It’s Halloween, Beca,” Aubrey reasons, nimble fingers curling securely around Beca’s arm as she tugs her body gently closer. In spite of herself, Beca doesn’t fight her; she allows Aubrey to pull her in, until she is curled comfortably into her side. “You had to know this was coming.”

“Well, yeah, but—” Beca starts, though she soon cuts herself off with tightly pursed lips and a slow exhale through her nostrils as two sets of pleading eyes bore in unison into her. “Whatever, you’re both psychos,” she murmurs indignantly, promptly ignoring the breathy chuckle Aubrey lets out in response.

Majority rules sucks.

so maybe this is something we can actually do? pressure local govts to use ranked choice voting on ballots.