Why do discussions on the American voting system always insist on a single winner? You don’t need Star voting or Preferential voting or instant runoff voting. All of those are trying to elect one candidate from an enormous spectrum of political opinions. Even the best system is going to give poor results.
Instead, try proportional representation: X% of the vote gets you X% of seats. Let them form a coalition with a majority of seats. No shenanigans. No gerrymandering. No vote suppression. No two party system. No negative campaigns.
Yeah, and therefore the president should have basically no power. Their job should mostly just be going to meetings with other countries on behalf of the government, and other ceremonial stuff.
Originally, the president did have basically no power. The whole federal government wasn’t supposed to do that much, and the executive branch by itself was supposed to do almost nothing compared to today. They didn’t even think there would be a standing army. States not being willing to put in strong reforms by themselves led to more executive agencies and executive branch influence over the country. (Which is all controlled by the President, since that made sense for the things that they thought in the 1790s the executive branch would be doing.)
The whole system was made around an idea of who would do what, which has turned out to be completely different after 250 years. It’s not really surprising that it isn’t working very well.
I don’t really know where I’m going with this. To even get a sane and effective Congress, we need voters to be aware of the real world, which seems like the largest hurdle right now. In the past, large and effective reforms have mostly been lead and advertised by the President, although it’s possible that with better voting systems and less presidential power parties would be able to cohere behind consistent and strong visions. Conservative think tanks seem to be able to do that currently, but they’re very quiet about it and I don’t know of a progressive equivalent.
Why do discussions on the American voting system always insist on a single winner? You don’t need Star voting or Preferential voting or instant runoff voting. All of those are trying to elect one candidate from an enormous spectrum of political opinions. Even the best system is going to give poor results.
Instead, try proportional representation: X% of the vote gets you X% of seats. Let them form a coalition with a majority of seats. No shenanigans. No gerrymandering. No vote suppression. No two party system. No negative campaigns.
Well, you can’t very well proportionally elect a president.
Yeah, and therefore the president should have basically no power. Their job should mostly just be going to meetings with other countries on behalf of the government, and other ceremonial stuff.
Originally, the president did have basically no power. The whole federal government wasn’t supposed to do that much, and the executive branch by itself was supposed to do almost nothing compared to today. They didn’t even think there would be a standing army. States not being willing to put in strong reforms by themselves led to more executive agencies and executive branch influence over the country. (Which is all controlled by the President, since that made sense for the things that they thought in the 1790s the executive branch would be doing.)
The whole system was made around an idea of who would do what, which has turned out to be completely different after 250 years. It’s not really surprising that it isn’t working very well.
I don’t really know where I’m going with this. To even get a sane and effective Congress, we need voters to be aware of the real world, which seems like the largest hurdle right now. In the past, large and effective reforms have mostly been lead and advertised by the President, although it’s possible that with better voting systems and less presidential power parties would be able to cohere behind consistent and strong visions. Conservative think tanks seem to be able to do that currently, but they’re very quiet about it and I don’t know of a progressive equivalent.
Lottocracy enters the chat