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Australians are, on the average, no smarter or dumber than Americans. We have voted with RCV for a century and in Australia it is compulsory to vote, so the be

Australians are, on the average, no smarter or dumber than Americans. We have voted with RCV for a century and in Australia it is compulsory to vote, so the below-average intelligence voter is made to show up as well as the above-average voter. It works because it's piss easy to understand "number them in the order you like them". Millions of people vote this way for multiple levels of government. The USA is not a special place with a different kind of human and the Australian experience can be generalised to the American case. RCV works and will continue to work just fine.

godelski 4y ago
Isn't Australia also highly divisive over politics? I mean you all have coalitions and that's great and all because more parties but I'm not sure I see that as meaningfully different than what the US has where coalitions just call themselves a party (let's be real, AOC and Biden are not in the same "party" but they are definitely the same coalition). I've always seen Australia as a example of how ordinal systems still perpetuate the two party/coalition system.
- jacques_chester 4y ago
  I live in the US but I keep up with the home country. Australian politics is, relative to US politics, a hugging contest with the parties all singing kumbaya with perfect choristry. As for the two-party system, it's not perpetuated by how you count the vote. It's perpetuated by the economics of capturing single-member electorates. Australia has multi-member electorates for its Senate and most state upper houses and, unsurprisingly, that's where minor parties largely succeed in gaining representation.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > it's not perpetuated by how you count the vote. It's perpetuated by the economics of capturing single-member electorates One of the simplest tweaks to the American system might be consolidating e.g. Senate elections so that the states elect two Senators at one time. It's simpler than combining House districts in that it's merely a scheduling change.
    - twblalock 4y ago
      It would require an amendment to article 1, section 3 of the US constitution which explicitly requires that senators should serve staggered terms, with 1/3 of the senate up for reelection every 2 years. This was done intentionally to make it difficult for the Senate membership to be swept in a landslide at the same time as the House, which can happen to the House every two years. Compared to the House, the Senate was intended to be a more deliberative body, changing its composition on a longer timescale, and less responsive to short-term political opinion. Whether or not that works as intended is certainly debatable, but every time we change the Senate to work more like the House it raises the question of why we should bother having a bicameral legislature if both chambers are increasingly similar.
      - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > would require an amendment to article 1, section 3 of the US constitution which explicitly requires that senators should serve staggered terms The Constitution doesn't, to my knowledge, require both Senators from a single state be in separate classes [1]. You'd still have a staggered Senate with consolidated elections. A third of the states would simply vote their Senators together every two years. [1] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-3/ https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-3...
marssaxman 4y ago
How do Australians vote when there are a large number of candidates for a single position - or does the Australian system somehow ensure that doesn't happen?
- jacques_chester 4y ago
  This happens in Senate elections. Voters are allowed to vote "above the line" using party lists, but are required to number at least 6 boxes. In the lower houses electorates are single-member, meaning they greatly favour the major parties. Relatively few minor parties bother to run for lower house seats.

godelski 4y ago

Isn't Australia also highly divisive over politics? I mean you all have coalitions and that's great and all because more parties but I'm not sure I see that as meaningfully different than what the US has where coalitions just call themselves a party (let's be real, AOC and Biden are not in the same "party" but they are definitely the same coalition). I've always seen Australia as a example of how ordinal systems still perpetuate the two party/coalition system.

jacques_chester 4y ago
I live in the US but I keep up with the home country. Australian politics is, relative to US politics, a hugging contest with the parties all singing kumbaya with perfect choristry. As for the two-party system, it's not perpetuated by how you count the vote. It's perpetuated by the economics of capturing single-member electorates. Australia has multi-member electorates for its Senate and most state upper houses and, unsurprisingly, that's where minor parties largely succeed in gaining representation.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > it's not perpetuated by how you count the vote. It's perpetuated by the economics of capturing single-member electorates One of the simplest tweaks to the American system might be consolidating e.g. Senate elections so that the states elect two Senators at one time. It's simpler than combining House districts in that it's merely a scheduling change.
  - twblalock 4y ago
    It would require an amendment to article 1, section 3 of the US constitution which explicitly requires that senators should serve staggered terms, with 1/3 of the senate up for reelection every 2 years. This was done intentionally to make it difficult for the Senate membership to be swept in a landslide at the same time as the House, which can happen to the House every two years. Compared to the House, the Senate was intended to be a more deliberative body, changing its composition on a longer timescale, and less responsive to short-term political opinion. Whether or not that works as intended is certainly debatable, but every time we change the Senate to work more like the House it raises the question of why we should bother having a bicameral legislature if both chambers are increasingly similar.
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > would require an amendment to article 1, section 3 of the US constitution which explicitly requires that senators should serve staggered terms The Constitution doesn't, to my knowledge, require both Senators from a single state be in separate classes [1]. You'd still have a staggered Senate with consolidated elections. A third of the states would simply vote their Senators together every two years. [1] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-3/ https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-3...

marssaxman 4y ago

How do Australians vote when there are a large number of candidates for a single position - or does the Australian system somehow ensure that doesn't happen?

jacques_chester 4y ago
This happens in Senate elections. Voters are allowed to vote "above the line" using party lists, but are required to number at least 6 boxes. In the lower houses electorates are single-member, meaning they greatly favour the major parties. Relatively few minor parties bother to run for lower house seats.