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Voting system isn't broken, Democracy is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority To aggra

Voting system isn't broken, Democracy is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority To aggravate: many elections lately are win by tiny margins and with not all citizens casting a vote. Hence, the majority per se is not really setting the course of nations. On a side note, I wonder why close results happen. I do not think it is an accident (some that I can remember now that are almost split in half: the popular vote in 2016 US elections, the yes/no vote for the Peace Treaty with FARC in Colombia, the 2016 presidential elections in Peru). Maybe there is no pattern either, but it seems odd that when facing an important decision, voters split in half. (my own conspiracy theory is that given the lack of grey area options - a raking effect as proposed by the OP - voters MUST pick a side and they are manipulated to veer in one direction by smart and sophisticated communications)

rtkwe 10y ago
There's a lot of mechanisms that lead to close races/results. In particular in the US the 2 party defacto system kind of guarantees a close-ish result because our parties (at least in the past hard to tell where things are heading now) can't really be extremely ideologically left or right of center because (baring this bizarre recent result) because if they did they'd likely lose a lot of ground to an opposition willing to be more flexible. So you get 2 parties that are roughly vying for a base + enough of the centrists to get elected.
- Taek 10y ago
  Which still results in a system where a massive percentage of the people end up unhappy. I think you can do a lot better by giving more power to smaller parts of the government. For example, let's assume that 50% of the most controversial laws were turned over to the states. Suddenly California can be more "blue" in practice and not feel nearly so upset when "red" wins both houses and the presidency.
  - rtkwe 10y ago
    A lot of controversial laws only really work below a national level. You can't turn things like the EPA over to the states because of how closely related many state resources are, an environmentally friendly state down river from a lax state can't do much. Federal taxes and how to spend them is fundamentally a federal issue. There's also the larger question of what kind of nation we'd wind up with, for example take that same approach at any point in history and you wind up with a country that's much less inclusive to any sort of minorities. Finally there's the problem that it's kind of hard for people to move between states below a certain income and education level so you get people stuck in a state that may not be interested in protecting or listening to them at all because they're not required for the political majority. edit: On the issue of federal taxes it actually extends a lot deeper into the fundamental role of the (federal) government. In a totally hand wavey glossing over many different factions into 2 categories: Democrats see it as including a social safety net that redistributes the gains of the better off to ensure a base level of support for everyone. (I'm probably being very unfair to their internal view of things as an outsider but...) Republicans see that a unfair to those who've worked hard to get what they have and that if business were just left alone to use as the market demands things will balance out and everyone will wind up well off. If that decision were left to the states poorer states like South Carolina would have a fundamentally worse safety net (if any at all) further disadvantaging the poor there, so the only moral thing to do is have the federal government step in and redistribute things between the states.

rtkwe 10y ago

There's a lot of mechanisms that lead to close races/results. In particular in the US the 2 party defacto system kind of guarantees a close-ish result because our parties (at least in the past hard to tell where things are heading now) can't really be extremely ideologically left or right of center because (baring this bizarre recent result) because if they did they'd likely lose a lot of ground to an opposition willing to be more flexible. So you get 2 parties that are roughly vying for a base + enough of the centrists to get elected.

Taek 10y ago
Which still results in a system where a massive percentage of the people end up unhappy. I think you can do a lot better by giving more power to smaller parts of the government. For example, let's assume that 50% of the most controversial laws were turned over to the states. Suddenly California can be more "blue" in practice and not feel nearly so upset when "red" wins both houses and the presidency.
- rtkwe 10y ago
  A lot of controversial laws only really work below a national level. You can't turn things like the EPA over to the states because of how closely related many state resources are, an environmentally friendly state down river from a lax state can't do much. Federal taxes and how to spend them is fundamentally a federal issue. There's also the larger question of what kind of nation we'd wind up with, for example take that same approach at any point in history and you wind up with a country that's much less inclusive to any sort of minorities. Finally there's the problem that it's kind of hard for people to move between states below a certain income and education level so you get people stuck in a state that may not be interested in protecting or listening to them at all because they're not required for the political majority. edit: On the issue of federal taxes it actually extends a lot deeper into the fundamental role of the (federal) government. In a totally hand wavey glossing over many different factions into 2 categories: Democrats see it as including a social safety net that redistributes the gains of the better off to ensure a base level of support for everyone. (I'm probably being very unfair to their internal view of things as an outsider but...) Republicans see that a unfair to those who've worked hard to get what they have and that if business were just left alone to use as the market demands things will balance out and everyone will wind up well off. If that decision were left to the states poorer states like South Carolina would have a fundamentally worse safety net (if any at all) further disadvantaging the poor there, so the only moral thing to do is have the federal government step in and redistribute things between the states.