8 ms·

Why is it commonly assumed that "our system is broken"? What is the evidence for it? Do people consider the evidence against it? Usually not. It is very easy to

Why is it commonly assumed that "our system is broken"? What is the evidence for it? Do people consider the evidence against it? Usually not. It is very easy to fixate on things which could be better, and completely ignore things that are already great. I am reminded of Justice Scalia's testimony regarding "gridlock" https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4580812/scalia-gridlock https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4580812/scalia-gridlock

giobox 8y ago
FPTP elections are broken almost anywhere they are used, because FPTP’s only real positive feature is that it is simple to understand. It demonstrably rarely delivers electoral results that actually reflect the desires of the electorate. Combine FPTP with the electoral college system and you get arguably absurd presidential outcomes like we saw in 2016, where the winning candidate can receive less votes than the runner up and still win. Huge majorities on minority shares are often found in FPTP systems, because anyone who didn’t vote for the winning candidate might as well have not voted. It can also create the opposite outcomes, minority seat shares in the legislature on majority vote shares. It’s just a plain bad voting system if you believe the legislature should at least vaguely reflect the wishes of voters.
- arkis22 8y ago
  FPTP elections are where the candidate with the most votes wins. By that definition, it ALWAYS delivers results that reflect the desires of the electorate. I think you're overstating it when you say that it leads to situations where anyone who didn't vote for the winning candidate might as well have not voted. I think it's more accurate to say that every vote mattered, but the voters who pushed the leading candidate above the runner up mattered more. Of course, the underlying problem with those situations is that minorities are ignored via the tyranny of the majority. So if you think the presidential outcome was absurd because Hillary received the majority of votes you're arguing that in just this particular election ignoring the minority, and going solely by majority vote, would have been a good thing. You can't pick and choose like that. Combining FPTP with the electoral college did what it was supposed to, it compensated for the tyranny of the majority.
  - aaron_m04 8y ago
    > FPTP elections are where the candidate with the most votes wins. By that definition, it ALWAYS delivers results that reflect the desires of the electorate. How is this tautology helpful at all? Why would we want this definition of what the most desirable candidate is?
    - giobox 8y ago
      It's also plain wrong. Candidates win on minority shares in FPTP regularly, especially when there is more than two candidates. In the UK for example, it's pretty common to win your seat with just 40% or less of the vote. The desires of 60% or more of the electorate in that constituency is simply ignored - a majority can vote for someone else entirely, hardly a reflection of the electorate's desire. > I think you're overstating it when you say that it leads to situations where anyone who didn't vote for the winning candidate might as well have not voted. I'm really not. The outcome remains the EXACT SAME if everyone who voted for a losing candidate stays at home. This isn't really my opinion - it's a widely known limitation of FPTP electoral systems.
      - arkis22 8y ago
        For you to think that your vote doesn't count would mean you know in advance that your candidate will lose. You don't.
        arya169 8y ago
        Maybe not, but if you're voting for a third party you can know that there's, say, a 99.9% chance your vote won't count.
  - Cursuviam 8y ago
    FPTP with the electoral college makes my vote count for nothing voting in a solid red or blue state. I despise this fact. Elections only really focus on swing states and thus swing states have undue influence.
- __________ttttt 8y ago
  FPTP did exactly what it was designed to do during 2016. It stopped extremely lopsided states like California and new York (6 million vote difference right there).
  - Simon_says 8y ago
    The Electoral College did that, not FPTP.
natermer 8y ago
The question really isn't whether or not it's broken. It's more of a question of 'for whom it is broken'. Or, more accurately; what is the true purpose to the state and how well does it fulfill that purpose? If you assume that the purpose to the state is to carefully and thoughtfully use the resources and powers granted to it by the public to serve the public then, yes, the system is utterly broken. It's so completely and fundamentally broken that it is not salvageable. However if the purpose of the state is use the political power granted to it to advance the interests of people who are politically connected to the state... then it works very very very well. In fact what people call 'corruption' is fundamental to how politics is able to function in the first place! Get rid of the 'corruption' and get 'money out of politics' then you eliminate the purpose, reason, and forces that caused the state to come into existence. Any time you attempt to exercise political power to enact any sort of change to the country you must give the powerful people of your country a reason to go along with you. Whether your goal is to eliminate poverty, save the environment, or make your brother a billionaire... you must first convince the key individuals go along with your program. And powerful and wealthy don't work for free. And how this works in a country like the USA is by having the state gain significant control over markets so they can use regulation and policy to benefit people who play along and punish those companies that resist. Money and power go hand in hand. You can't have big government without big corporations. You can't have big corporations without big governments. These groups are not opposing forces, the state does not balance out the 'greed' or 'excesses' of market capitalism. Instead it is the nature of the state to feed into these negative effects and exploit them. Big business and Big government are complementary. So, yes, if the purpose of the state is to exploit the wealth of the country for the purposes of the politically elite within and without the state... then it works extremely well. Not broken one bit.
- eanzenberg 8y ago
  How is >>the purpose to the state is to carefully and thoughtfully use the resources and powers granted to it by the public to serve the public not an accurate representation? Services are at an all-time high, while today is the best year to have been born vs. any in history.
eanzenberg 8y ago
This is such an important point and key to so many political discussions, yet is almost never made. As we've continued to tweak and tune and optimize the process we've lessened the differences between the parties. The vitriol that is shouted from the rooftops for each party is the echo chamber that reverberates with additional power of clicks and views. Being "just alright" doesn't generate a call to action, even if "just alright" is how things have progressed year over year.
jellicle 8y ago
You can look at the work of Page and Gilens, who have shown that the US is not democratic in any meaningful sense. That is, if you know that policy A is preferred over B by 95% of the citizens of the USA (an incredible supermajority), that gives you no information about whether A or B will be implemented by the government. Has no predictive value. But if I provide the additional information that B is preferred over A by a majority of US elites, then now you can predict whether A or B will be implemented: B will be implemented, most likely. That situation is the current state of affairs in the US, and it shouldn't be. The system is broken.

giobox 8y ago

FPTP elections are broken almost anywhere they are used, because FPTP’s only real positive feature is that it is simple to understand. It demonstrably rarely delivers electoral results that actually reflect the desires of the electorate. Combine FPTP with the electoral college system and you get arguably absurd presidential outcomes like we saw in 2016, where the winning candidate can receive less votes than the runner up and still win. Huge majorities on minority shares are often found in FPTP systems, because anyone who didn’t vote for the winning candidate might as well have not voted. It can also create the opposite outcomes, minority seat shares in the legislature on majority vote shares. It’s just a plain bad voting system if you believe the legislature should at least vaguely reflect the wishes of voters.

arkis22 8y ago
FPTP elections are where the candidate with the most votes wins. By that definition, it ALWAYS delivers results that reflect the desires of the electorate. I think you're overstating it when you say that it leads to situations where anyone who didn't vote for the winning candidate might as well have not voted. I think it's more accurate to say that every vote mattered, but the voters who pushed the leading candidate above the runner up mattered more. Of course, the underlying problem with those situations is that minorities are ignored via the tyranny of the majority. So if you think the presidential outcome was absurd because Hillary received the majority of votes you're arguing that in just this particular election ignoring the minority, and going solely by majority vote, would have been a good thing. You can't pick and choose like that. Combining FPTP with the electoral college did what it was supposed to, it compensated for the tyranny of the majority.
- aaron_m04 8y ago
  > FPTP elections are where the candidate with the most votes wins. By that definition, it ALWAYS delivers results that reflect the desires of the electorate. How is this tautology helpful at all? Why would we want this definition of what the most desirable candidate is?
  - giobox 8y ago
    It's also plain wrong. Candidates win on minority shares in FPTP regularly, especially when there is more than two candidates. In the UK for example, it's pretty common to win your seat with just 40% or less of the vote. The desires of 60% or more of the electorate in that constituency is simply ignored - a majority can vote for someone else entirely, hardly a reflection of the electorate's desire. > I think you're overstating it when you say that it leads to situations where anyone who didn't vote for the winning candidate might as well have not voted. I'm really not. The outcome remains the EXACT SAME if everyone who voted for a losing candidate stays at home. This isn't really my opinion - it's a widely known limitation of FPTP electoral systems.
    - arkis22 8y ago
      For you to think that your vote doesn't count would mean you know in advance that your candidate will lose. You don't.
      - arya169 8y ago
        Maybe not, but if you're voting for a third party you can know that there's, say, a 99.9% chance your vote won't count.
- Cursuviam 8y ago
  FPTP with the electoral college makes my vote count for nothing voting in a solid red or blue state. I despise this fact. Elections only really focus on swing states and thus swing states have undue influence.
__________ttttt 8y ago
FPTP did exactly what it was designed to do during 2016. It stopped extremely lopsided states like California and new York (6 million vote difference right there).
- Simon_says 8y ago
  The Electoral College did that, not FPTP.

natermer 8y ago

The question really isn't whether or not it's broken. It's more of a question of 'for whom it is broken'. Or, more accurately; what is the true purpose to the state and how well does it fulfill that purpose? If you assume that the purpose to the state is to carefully and thoughtfully use the resources and powers granted to it by the public to serve the public then, yes, the system is utterly broken. It's so completely and fundamentally broken that it is not salvageable. However if the purpose of the state is use the political power granted to it to advance the interests of people who are politically connected to the state... then it works very very very well. In fact what people call 'corruption' is fundamental to how politics is able to function in the first place! Get rid of the 'corruption' and get 'money out of politics' then you eliminate the purpose, reason, and forces that caused the state to come into existence. Any time you attempt to exercise political power to enact any sort of change to the country you must give the powerful people of your country a reason to go along with you. Whether your goal is to eliminate poverty, save the environment, or make your brother a billionaire... you must first convince the key individuals go along with your program. And powerful and wealthy don't work for free. And how this works in a country like the USA is by having the state gain significant control over markets so they can use regulation and policy to benefit people who play along and punish those companies that resist. Money and power go hand in hand. You can't have big government without big corporations. You can't have big corporations without big governments. These groups are not opposing forces, the state does not balance out the 'greed' or 'excesses' of market capitalism. Instead it is the nature of the state to feed into these negative effects and exploit them. Big business and Big government are complementary. So, yes, if the purpose of the state is to exploit the wealth of the country for the purposes of the politically elite within and without the state... then it works extremely well. Not broken one bit.

eanzenberg 8y ago
How is >>the purpose to the state is to carefully and thoughtfully use the resources and powers granted to it by the public to serve the public not an accurate representation? Services are at an all-time high, while today is the best year to have been born vs. any in history.

eanzenberg 8y ago

This is such an important point and key to so many political discussions, yet is almost never made. As we've continued to tweak and tune and optimize the process we've lessened the differences between the parties. The vitriol that is shouted from the rooftops for each party is the echo chamber that reverberates with additional power of clicks and views. Being "just alright" doesn't generate a call to action, even if "just alright" is how things have progressed year over year.

jellicle 8y ago

You can look at the work of Page and Gilens, who have shown that the US is not democratic in any meaningful sense. That is, if you know that policy A is preferred over B by 95% of the citizens of the USA (an incredible supermajority), that gives you no information about whether A or B will be implemented by the government. Has no predictive value. But if I provide the additional information that B is preferred over A by a majority of US elites, then now you can predict whether A or B will be implemented: B will be implemented, most likely. That situation is the current state of affairs in the US, and it shouldn't be. The system is broken.