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“If congress would do its job...” is an interesting point. Congress have all sorts of incentives to consider “their” job is to stay elected by keeping special

“If congress would do its job...” is an interesting point. Congress have all sorts of incentives to consider “their” job is to stay elected by keeping special interests and local constituents happy. Perhaps we should have a few members of congress who are elected by the whole country and answer to the interests of the nation as a whole.

murph-almighty 8y ago
Different branch, but isn't that effectively the President/Vice-President? Especially when you consider the VP is the head of the Senate.
- ianai 8y ago
  Now it is, but the president originally won votes from representatives of the states (IIRC). I think the US needs the ability for recall elections. It also needs newer voting procedures.
- throwawayjava 8y ago
  The President is only indirectly elected by the country as a whole. Therefore, the president is highly incentivized to pander to a half-dozen or so states. And a few key voters within those states. It's exactly the same problem created by regionally-allocated representatives; the only difference is that the mechanism is just a little more opaque. Because strong presidents drive policy-making, this difference ("a few key states" vs. "the country as a whole") definitely shows up in Congressional behavior. A much simpler (and more plausible) solution to chapium's problem is simply getting rid of the electoral college.
  - sulam 8y ago
    So instead of pandering to one small set of states you’d rather they pander to a different small set of states? Perhaps the problem is federalism.
  - ttul 8y ago
    Hear hear... A parliamentary democracy would probably be better, but that’s not going to happen.
  - yock 8y ago
    > A much simpler (and more plausible) solution to chapium's problem is simply getting rid of the electoral college. Which would then require that a candidate only pander to an even smaller number of densely populated cities. It would be far better to revoke much of the power of the central government rather than to try and debug our way through to a mythical process by which all individual interests are considered. Because, in the end, minority interests will always be cast aside once the election is over anyway.
    - throwawayjava 8y ago
      > Which would then require that a candidate only pander to an even smaller number of densely populated cities. NYC/LA/Chicago combined is only 15M people. That's clearly not enough people to win a majority of a 300M+ population. Perhaps you mean a wider class of cities. But 80% of Americans live in cities! If you can't get elected by "pandering" to a whopping 80% of your electorate then something is terribly wrong. We have to choose a very "just right" definition of "city" for your assertion to be true. But there's an even more important misunderstanding here. When discussing this topic, many people get distracted by the fact that removing the electoral college would increase the voting power of Massachusetts residents and decrease the voting power of Montana residents in presidential elections. This is a distraction because neither Massachusetts nor Montana is the winner in the current system! It's states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that have a truly distortionary amount of power in the current system. Those states are not particularly rural or particularly urban. Here's the key observation that could make changes to the electoral college politically feasible: if you don't live in a presidential swing state, getting rid of the electoral college increases the power of your region in selecting the president regardless of the size of your state/city. So, this is not a case of favoring one small set of states over another small set. Removing the electoral college would substantially weaken the power of 5-6 states over the Executive branch and increase the power of the other 45 states (some more than others, sure, but nearly everyone wins compared to the status quo). > Because, in the end, minority interests will always be cast aside once the election is over anyway. This is exactly why I favor keeping Congress as it is but reforming the electoral process for the Executive branch. Montana has a very loud voice in the Senate and House relative to its population. I do not suggest changing that. > It would be far better to... 1. An omniscient and beneficent dictator would be even better; the point of my post was to suggest plausible alternatives :-) 2. There are many merits to federalism, but this is quite a bag of worms and we're already straying OT.
lkrubner 8y ago
"a few members of congress who are elected by the whole country and answer to the interests of the nation as a whole" I strongly agree. I would go further. The idea of a regional representative might have made sense in an era before the Internet, before the telephone, before the telegram and even before railroads could ensure fast delivery of written mail, but it does it make sense now? Why not have a legislature where every member is chosen based on a vote of the whole nation? Some parliamentary democracies do this, and their policies do seem more focused on national interests, as opposed to a bunch of local interests. Also evaporates the problem of gerrymandering.
- zeveb 8y ago
  > Why not have a legislature where every member is chosen based on a vote of the whole nation? Because then whichever party currently has the support of the majority of the country would win every seat. Yes, you could do things like stagger elections, but overall I think it'd be worse: say each representative has a six-year term and there are six annual elections, you basically have six blocs in Congress instead of 435 members. And of course the United States comprise a federal republic; most issues simply shouldn't be federal, and the vast majority are definitely not national. Who outside of Massachusetts cares if Massachusetts makes wearing a leek on St. David's Day compulsory or forbidden?
  - lkrubner 8y ago
    "Because then whichever party currently has the support of the majority of the country would win every seat." That is incorrect. Every democracy that I'm aware of, which uses national voting, also has proportional representation based on the vote. The rules vary from country to country, but generally speaking, if a party gets 10% of the vote, then it gets 10% of Parliament. If they get 43% of the vote, then they get 43% of Parliament. About this: "most issues simply shouldn't be federal" This is a straightforward assertion of nostalgia, regarding an era that died out more than a century ago. Nowadays nearly all politics is either national or international. Small scale political divisions simply get in the way of efficient government.
logfromblammo 8y ago
When I think about history, and try to come up with initial conditions in government that could have brought the native tribes on board rather than deporting and destroying them, I thought that maybe people could make a voluntary declaration of their cultural identity during voter registration and again while voting. The House of Representatives would have a separate fixed pool of seats for cultural representation, but the cultural groups would not be guaranteed at least one seat, like the states; if your group doesn't have enough membership to meet the cutoff, you don't get seats that election. Every group with at least one Representative would get two seats in the Senate. Only those declaring for a culture could vote in the races for their seats. You'd end up with the Senator from Southern Baptist arguing with the Senator from Postmodern Counterculture, or the Representative in Hispanic-American seat 5 hashing things out with the Representative from Secular Scientists. Mergers and schisms could cause the representation to track with changes in the population. Perhaps Iroquois Confederacy would have to merge with Algonquian Peoples and Five Civilized Tribes to stay politically relevant. Anglo Male Landowners might split into Urban-Industrial and Southern Whites. It never could have happened, though. The only cultural group with representation back then was Anglo Male Landowners, and they were unlikely to share power voluntarily. Anglo Male Landowners are still over-represented in US federal government. I don't think an "at large" position would actually represent the whole country. It would give more power to the one of two political parties with support of the majority that election. You really need a mechanism to ensure minority positions can get more representation, such that any majority blocs have to seek consensus with at least one minority bloc to get anything done. The two-party system is washing out a lot of voices that never even get lip service from anybody, ever.

murph-almighty 8y ago

Different branch, but isn't that effectively the President/Vice-President? Especially when you consider the VP is the head of the Senate.

ianai 8y ago
Now it is, but the president originally won votes from representatives of the states (IIRC). I think the US needs the ability for recall elections. It also needs newer voting procedures.
throwawayjava 8y ago
The President is only indirectly elected by the country as a whole. Therefore, the president is highly incentivized to pander to a half-dozen or so states. And a few key voters within those states. It's exactly the same problem created by regionally-allocated representatives; the only difference is that the mechanism is just a little more opaque. Because strong presidents drive policy-making, this difference ("a few key states" vs. "the country as a whole") definitely shows up in Congressional behavior. A much simpler (and more plausible) solution to chapium's problem is simply getting rid of the electoral college.
- sulam 8y ago
  So instead of pandering to one small set of states you’d rather they pander to a different small set of states? Perhaps the problem is federalism.
- ttul 8y ago
  Hear hear... A parliamentary democracy would probably be better, but that’s not going to happen.
- yock 8y ago
  > A much simpler (and more plausible) solution to chapium's problem is simply getting rid of the electoral college. Which would then require that a candidate only pander to an even smaller number of densely populated cities. It would be far better to revoke much of the power of the central government rather than to try and debug our way through to a mythical process by which all individual interests are considered. Because, in the end, minority interests will always be cast aside once the election is over anyway.
  - throwawayjava 8y ago
    > Which would then require that a candidate only pander to an even smaller number of densely populated cities. NYC/LA/Chicago combined is only 15M people. That's clearly not enough people to win a majority of a 300M+ population. Perhaps you mean a wider class of cities. But 80% of Americans live in cities! If you can't get elected by "pandering" to a whopping 80% of your electorate then something is terribly wrong. We have to choose a very "just right" definition of "city" for your assertion to be true. But there's an even more important misunderstanding here. When discussing this topic, many people get distracted by the fact that removing the electoral college would increase the voting power of Massachusetts residents and decrease the voting power of Montana residents in presidential elections. This is a distraction because neither Massachusetts nor Montana is the winner in the current system! It's states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that have a truly distortionary amount of power in the current system. Those states are not particularly rural or particularly urban. Here's the key observation that could make changes to the electoral college politically feasible: if you don't live in a presidential swing state, getting rid of the electoral college increases the power of your region in selecting the president regardless of the size of your state/city. So, this is not a case of favoring one small set of states over another small set. Removing the electoral college would substantially weaken the power of 5-6 states over the Executive branch and increase the power of the other 45 states (some more than others, sure, but nearly everyone wins compared to the status quo). > Because, in the end, minority interests will always be cast aside once the election is over anyway. This is exactly why I favor keeping Congress as it is but reforming the electoral process for the Executive branch. Montana has a very loud voice in the Senate and House relative to its population. I do not suggest changing that. > It would be far better to... 1. An omniscient and beneficent dictator would be even better; the point of my post was to suggest plausible alternatives :-) 2. There are many merits to federalism, but this is quite a bag of worms and we're already straying OT.

lkrubner 8y ago

"a few members of congress who are elected by the whole country and answer to the interests of the nation as a whole" I strongly agree. I would go further. The idea of a regional representative might have made sense in an era before the Internet, before the telephone, before the telegram and even before railroads could ensure fast delivery of written mail, but it does it make sense now? Why not have a legislature where every member is chosen based on a vote of the whole nation? Some parliamentary democracies do this, and their policies do seem more focused on national interests, as opposed to a bunch of local interests. Also evaporates the problem of gerrymandering.

zeveb 8y ago
> Why not have a legislature where every member is chosen based on a vote of the whole nation? Because then whichever party currently has the support of the majority of the country would win every seat. Yes, you could do things like stagger elections, but overall I think it'd be worse: say each representative has a six-year term and there are six annual elections, you basically have six blocs in Congress instead of 435 members. And of course the United States comprise a federal republic; most issues simply shouldn't be federal, and the vast majority are definitely not national. Who outside of Massachusetts cares if Massachusetts makes wearing a leek on St. David's Day compulsory or forbidden?
- lkrubner 8y ago
  "Because then whichever party currently has the support of the majority of the country would win every seat." That is incorrect. Every democracy that I'm aware of, which uses national voting, also has proportional representation based on the vote. The rules vary from country to country, but generally speaking, if a party gets 10% of the vote, then it gets 10% of Parliament. If they get 43% of the vote, then they get 43% of Parliament. About this: "most issues simply shouldn't be federal" This is a straightforward assertion of nostalgia, regarding an era that died out more than a century ago. Nowadays nearly all politics is either national or international. Small scale political divisions simply get in the way of efficient government.

logfromblammo 8y ago

When I think about history, and try to come up with initial conditions in government that could have brought the native tribes on board rather than deporting and destroying them, I thought that maybe people could make a voluntary declaration of their cultural identity during voter registration and again while voting. The House of Representatives would have a separate fixed pool of seats for cultural representation, but the cultural groups would not be guaranteed at least one seat, like the states; if your group doesn't have enough membership to meet the cutoff, you don't get seats that election. Every group with at least one Representative would get two seats in the Senate. Only those declaring for a culture could vote in the races for their seats. You'd end up with the Senator from Southern Baptist arguing with the Senator from Postmodern Counterculture, or the Representative in Hispanic-American seat 5 hashing things out with the Representative from Secular Scientists. Mergers and schisms could cause the representation to track with changes in the population. Perhaps Iroquois Confederacy would have to merge with Algonquian Peoples and Five Civilized Tribes to stay politically relevant. Anglo Male Landowners might split into Urban-Industrial and Southern Whites. It never could have happened, though. The only cultural group with representation back then was Anglo Male Landowners, and they were unlikely to share power voluntarily. Anglo Male Landowners are still over-represented in US federal government. I don't think an "at large" position would actually represent the whole country. It would give more power to the one of two political parties with support of the majority that election. You really need a mechanism to ensure minority positions can get more representation, such that any majority blocs have to seek consensus with at least one minority bloc to get anything done. The two-party system is washing out a lot of voices that never even get lip service from anybody, ever.