31 ms·

A part of me believes this is more feature and less bug of the government. "Blame the disfunction, not the leadership thats elected every 2 years".

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
How is this not a bug? A straightforward patch would be the introduction of FPTP and moving the executive role from the office of the head-of-state to a body controlled by congress.
- p1necone 6y ago
  FPTP tends to lead to the same heavily divided two major party politics you already have, it just avoids the possibility of winning with <50% of the popular vote. Something like MMP is probably a better system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_representation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_repr...). Baby steps though.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > FPTP tends to lead to the same heavily divided two major party politics you already have, it just avoids the possibility of winning with <50% of the popular vote. No, it doesn't. FPTP is a synonym for single-member plurality, which enables wins with less than 50% of the popular vote when there are more than two candidates. You may mean majority-runoff (which the US already uses for a fair number of elections) or instant runoff, instead of FPTP, both of which require a kind of majority, but are otherwise very close to FPTP in their incentives and effects.
    - p1necone 6y ago
      Oops yes I am mistaken about the non majority thing. It still leads to bi party politics though.
      - Beldin 6y ago
        Only if the election is per-seat. In the Netherlands, elections for the lower house (150 seats) are nationwide. The 150 candidates/parties with the highest number of votes get a seat. The party system makes it a bit more complex, but in the end, there's roughly proportional representation: a party with 10% of the popular vote occupies roughly 10% of the seats. No superwinning like in the UK (where 30% of the vote can get you more than 30% of the seats), no cut-off except you need at least 1/150th of the votes to get a seat.
        jacquesm 6y ago
        And, crucially: minority viewpoints actually tend to be accommodated as larger parties lobby smaller ones to support their agenda. Coalition government is a lot better than the see-saw you get otherwise with one party undoing what the previous one did.
  - Mikeb85 6y ago
    Lol, Canada has FPTP and regularly features majority governments that win with 35% of the vote.
- thephyber 6y ago
  I would argue the end-users (voters) mostly consider this a bug while the developers (majority party legislators at the state level) consider it a feature. Also, the founding fathers famously made it difficult for Congress to change anything, so dysfunction was definitely a feature.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > I would argue the end-users (voters) mostly consider this a bug while the developers (majority party legislators at the state level) consider it a feature. Voters consider the paralysis a feature when it is presenting a hostile legislative majority or executive from realizing their agenda, and a bug when it is preventing a friendly one.
    - a1369209993 6y ago
      > Voters consider the paralysis a feature when it is presenting a hostile legislative majority or executive from realizing their agenda, and a bug when it is preventing a friendly one. Yes, that's what they said: paralysis is always a feature, because the legislative majority is always hostile to the people.
      - thephyber 6y ago
        I think your parent was describing the nuance between "voters" and "voters who are aligned with the legislative majority", which is fair.
  - 0x8BADF00D 6y ago
    Not so sure about that. I suppose the original intent was to have a healthy debate around major policy decisions. It's a check against wanton liberalism or conservatism. Congress seems eager to pass spending bills and take away our privacy. They move at light speed when doing that.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > A straightforward patch would be the introduction of FPTP The US uses FPTP for most elections, that's actually central to the problem. If you mean “a system approximating proportional repreaentation”, that's a valid fix, but problematic, both in terms of choosing the right one and the fact that doing so itself has ideological as well as functional impacts on outcomes, which means that the status quo faction which would ideologically be disadvantaged will be hard to sway no matter what the functional argument is. So you'd need unchallenged control by the opposing faction, which would have to be willing to surrender that control to a multiparty system which might be favorable ideologically, but not organizationally. And even that only is talking about the House. It's outright Constitutionally prohibited, even by Constitutional amendment, for the Senate.
  - jcranmer 6y ago
    > It's outright Constitutionally prohibited, even by Constitutional amendment, for the Senate. Not quite true. It can be changed with consent of the state, so it would require 100% of the states to ratify it.
- karmelapple 6y ago
  Ranked Choice Voting, which is now the law for all elections in the state of Maine except the Presidency, is a way to help ensure that the winning candidate has been chosen by at least 50% of voters, even if the winning candidate wasn’t the first choice for all voters. Adopting RCV seems to me like one of the best ways we can improve the health of the US’s democracy going forward. Any voters Massachusetts can vote this November to have RCV statewide, just like Maine, from local elections up to the US House and Senate elections. I’ve volunteered with the group [1] helping Massachusetts join Maine in leading the way. [1] https://voterchoice2020.org/ https://voterchoice2020.org/
  - caf 6y ago
    It has also been adopted for all municipal elections in New York City.
  - Beldin 6y ago
    My current view is that having districts undermines everything. Once politicians are elected due to a specific geographical region, 1. they are beholden to that region, 2. You get an all-or-nothing approach to elections. With respect to 1: the main problem is that such a system will put the interests of the country second to the interests of the district. But even if you think that is an acceptable trade off, there's 2: all-or-nothing. RCV is one way to partially mitigate this, by letting voters specify more choices. Of course, ideally you'd want proportional representation. A simple solution is to abolish districts and have one multi-seat election. All votes count, the N candidates with the most votes are elected. (Of course, if you prefer to maintain districts, you can achieve the same by increasing the number of electable seats per district.)
  - ScottBurson 6y ago
    RCV is an improvement on FPTP -- almost anything would be! -- but Approval Voting is even better. It is easier to implement (the ballot doesn't change at all, just the way it's counted), simpler for voters to understand (you just vote for every candidate you approve of), much less susceptible to strategic voting and not at all to strategic candidate selection, and therefore much less likely to return an anomalous result. http://www.electionscience.org http://www.electionscience.org

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago

How is this not a bug? A straightforward patch would be the introduction of FPTP and moving the executive role from the office of the head-of-state to a body controlled by congress.

p1necone 6y ago
FPTP tends to lead to the same heavily divided two major party politics you already have, it just avoids the possibility of winning with <50% of the popular vote. Something like MMP is probably a better system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_representation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_repr...). Baby steps though.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > FPTP tends to lead to the same heavily divided two major party politics you already have, it just avoids the possibility of winning with <50% of the popular vote. No, it doesn't. FPTP is a synonym for single-member plurality, which enables wins with less than 50% of the popular vote when there are more than two candidates. You may mean majority-runoff (which the US already uses for a fair number of elections) or instant runoff, instead of FPTP, both of which require a kind of majority, but are otherwise very close to FPTP in their incentives and effects.
  - p1necone 6y ago
    Oops yes I am mistaken about the non majority thing. It still leads to bi party politics though.
    - Beldin 6y ago
      Only if the election is per-seat. In the Netherlands, elections for the lower house (150 seats) are nationwide. The 150 candidates/parties with the highest number of votes get a seat. The party system makes it a bit more complex, but in the end, there's roughly proportional representation: a party with 10% of the popular vote occupies roughly 10% of the seats. No superwinning like in the UK (where 30% of the vote can get you more than 30% of the seats), no cut-off except you need at least 1/150th of the votes to get a seat.
      - jacquesm 6y ago
        And, crucially: minority viewpoints actually tend to be accommodated as larger parties lobby smaller ones to support their agenda. Coalition government is a lot better than the see-saw you get otherwise with one party undoing what the previous one did.
- Mikeb85 6y ago
  Lol, Canada has FPTP and regularly features majority governments that win with 35% of the vote.
thephyber 6y ago
I would argue the end-users (voters) mostly consider this a bug while the developers (majority party legislators at the state level) consider it a feature. Also, the founding fathers famously made it difficult for Congress to change anything, so dysfunction was definitely a feature.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > I would argue the end-users (voters) mostly consider this a bug while the developers (majority party legislators at the state level) consider it a feature. Voters consider the paralysis a feature when it is presenting a hostile legislative majority or executive from realizing their agenda, and a bug when it is preventing a friendly one.
  - a1369209993 6y ago
    > Voters consider the paralysis a feature when it is presenting a hostile legislative majority or executive from realizing their agenda, and a bug when it is preventing a friendly one. Yes, that's what they said: paralysis is always a feature, because the legislative majority is always hostile to the people.
    - thephyber 6y ago
      I think your parent was describing the nuance between "voters" and "voters who are aligned with the legislative majority", which is fair.
- 0x8BADF00D 6y ago
  Not so sure about that. I suppose the original intent was to have a healthy debate around major policy decisions. It's a check against wanton liberalism or conservatism. Congress seems eager to pass spending bills and take away our privacy. They move at light speed when doing that.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> A straightforward patch would be the introduction of FPTP The US uses FPTP for most elections, that's actually central to the problem. If you mean “a system approximating proportional repreaentation”, that's a valid fix, but problematic, both in terms of choosing the right one and the fact that doing so itself has ideological as well as functional impacts on outcomes, which means that the status quo faction which would ideologically be disadvantaged will be hard to sway no matter what the functional argument is. So you'd need unchallenged control by the opposing faction, which would have to be willing to surrender that control to a multiparty system which might be favorable ideologically, but not organizationally. And even that only is talking about the House. It's outright Constitutionally prohibited, even by Constitutional amendment, for the Senate.
- jcranmer 6y ago
  > It's outright Constitutionally prohibited, even by Constitutional amendment, for the Senate. Not quite true. It can be changed with consent of the state, so it would require 100% of the states to ratify it.
karmelapple 6y ago
Ranked Choice Voting, which is now the law for all elections in the state of Maine except the Presidency, is a way to help ensure that the winning candidate has been chosen by at least 50% of voters, even if the winning candidate wasn’t the first choice for all voters. Adopting RCV seems to me like one of the best ways we can improve the health of the US’s democracy going forward. Any voters Massachusetts can vote this November to have RCV statewide, just like Maine, from local elections up to the US House and Senate elections. I’ve volunteered with the group [1] helping Massachusetts join Maine in leading the way. [1] https://voterchoice2020.org/ https://voterchoice2020.org/
- caf 6y ago
  It has also been adopted for all municipal elections in New York City.
- Beldin 6y ago
  My current view is that having districts undermines everything. Once politicians are elected due to a specific geographical region, 1. they are beholden to that region, 2. You get an all-or-nothing approach to elections. With respect to 1: the main problem is that such a system will put the interests of the country second to the interests of the district. But even if you think that is an acceptable trade off, there's 2: all-or-nothing. RCV is one way to partially mitigate this, by letting voters specify more choices. Of course, ideally you'd want proportional representation. A simple solution is to abolish districts and have one multi-seat election. All votes count, the N candidates with the most votes are elected. (Of course, if you prefer to maintain districts, you can achieve the same by increasing the number of electable seats per district.)
- ScottBurson 6y ago
  RCV is an improvement on FPTP -- almost anything would be! -- but Approval Voting is even better. It is easier to implement (the ballot doesn't change at all, just the way it's counted), simpler for voters to understand (you just vote for every candidate you approve of), much less susceptible to strategic voting and not at all to strategic candidate selection, and therefore much less likely to return an anomalous result. http://www.electionscience.org http://www.electionscience.org