It’s not the solution, but one of many I would say and an important one at that.

Also, the UK uses First Past the Post for the House of Commons, mayoral elections in England, Police and Crime Commissioner elections and local councils.

They use Alternative Voting systems for some of their elections for like the chair of committees in the House of Commons and the Lord Speaker.

The system needs to change for it to not be a bifurcation, for all practical purposes. The system of voting needs to be changed from First Past the Post to be something like Ranked Robin voting, STAR voting, or Score voting. All of those are my preferred alternatives, but Ranked Choice is still solid over First Past the Post as well.

A different voting system enables third parties to hold real power and to grow in influence.

Oh for sure, there are a lot of different areas in education that need to be changed. We need to go back to teaching people how to think rather than prepping them to just memorize for the test. That’s not even mentioning the issue that AI can have on the learning processes.

If I recall correctly, Aristotle proposed something like only the educated being able to vote. I think if everyone was guaranteed free access to both a high school and college education, along with all food and living costs covered for anyone studying, then I could see having at least any associates level degree being an okay barrier of entry to voting.

However, such a thing would need to be protected by some unremovable barriers. For instance, education would need to continue receiving appropriate funding, food and other living costs such as renting a room would need to be covered even as the cost for these things change. People with disabilities would need to receive proper accommodations.

A caveat I’ll add is that there would need to be more community colleges built and much more funding for pre-K thru 12th grade as well.

Such days don’t need to be so far away. I feel that taking in the joys of the moment has helped me a lot with being able to thoroughly enjoy the small things in life again. There could always be unpleasantness in front of me or behind me, but in this moment I can make space for the life I want to be living and being the person I want to be.