Forest

KinectiA wrote:

There’s a lot to be said for multiparty coalition governments - many more opportunities for a voter to actually be represented. 2-party system with majority rule and/or electoral college means a lot of citizens are not represented at all.

Aclion wrote:

That would happen even if you abolish the electoral college. It's inherent in any FPTP system.

Agreed, but then the US would have to switch to a parliamentary system. I do not think that such a change would even be considered given the requirements for constitutional amendments and the automatic opposition that both the Ds and Rs would present. They do not even want to let non-D/R candidates into presidential debates. The last one who made it in was Ross Perot in 1992. So we are stuck with making the best out of a creaky framework. Shifting to anything other than an FPTP voting system or a non-two party system simply will not happen unless there were to be a violent revolution and/or some sort of extreme catastrophe.

I don't think there's any inherent reason why the US system is worse than a parliamentary one. Just look at the recent Brexit mess for an example of the problems the latter can get into. In any case, over here we seem to see our elections as increasingly presidential. We had televised debates in 2015 and (to a lesser extent) 2017, an election called in part because Theresa May was worried the 2015 mandate wasn't hers, despite there being no legal basis for that concern. And there's no doubt that most voters are voting on which leader they want to be Prime Minister as if it was a Presidential election.

Something that strikes me as odd about the US system is the lack of relationship there can be between candidate and party. Did Trump have any connection to the Republican party before his run? And the Democrats were considering Saunders, who sat in the Senate as an independent.

Perhaps more concerning is the apparent requirement that candidates be independently wealthy in order to finance a campaign. I remember thinking when Theresa May first met Donald Trump that the founding fathers might have been surprised that the leader of the US was a hereditary millionaire while the leader of the UK was a clergyman's daughter.

EDIT - meanwhile Ransium's proposal Repeal Endangered Species Protection has been submitted to the WA and will probably be the next motion at vote. Don't panic, he hasn't suddenly gone anti-environmental. A more robust replacement is ready and waiting.

Turbeaux wrote:

Agreed, but then the US would have to switch to a parliamentary system.

We would'nt have to switch to a parliamentary system, just have a single transferable vote.

Hi

Uan aa Boa wrote:

Something that strikes me as odd about the US system is the lack of relationship there can be between candidate and party.

This might be an effect of the Founders' (or, at least, the Federalists') extreme distrust of parties and "faction." On the one hand, the appeal of democracy ("of, for, and by the People") was obvious, but so are the problems of partisan faction -- "tyranny of the majority." So, they invented (or stole from the Iroquois, according to one history professor I had) a system where parties/faction -- the House -- is checked by the second sober thought of more dispassionate and educated minds -- state legislatures, the Presidency, and the Senate. In theory, according to Madison in Federalist no. 10, those elected to state legislatures, the Presidency, and the Senate should be people (free, white, land-owning, educated males...) better trained in the arts of debate and consensus-making and all that sort. These people would be elected from among the population, and given how difficult it would be to bribe or otherwise corrupt them, these individuals would be ideal for checking the necessary if ruckus House of the People.

Thus is established a system and political culture that idealizes individuals who are meant to be above it all in a way as to ensure democracy and good government. This is an ancient theme in democratic theory; the "philosopher kings" have become the "philosopher representatives."

But, fast forward a couple centuries, over the course of which Federal power has been consolidated and there has been significant movement toward more majoritarian systems of government (including de factor popular election of the President and de jure popular election of the Senate), and you end up with a system and political culture that idealizes individuals and is highly partisan. Thus, partisan factionalism gets consolidated behind individual personalities.

The Founders completely failed (not to their discredit of course) to anticipate 200 years of technological development that largely fueled that consolidation -- radio, television, travel across the country in a few hours, the internet, social media, absurdly vast corrupting wealth, etc -- but their system built on the assumption that factionalism could be controlled probably didn't adequately deal with the problem of political parties and majority rule all that well after all.

EDIT: Regarding the "borrowing" of the Iroquois confederate model --> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Law_of_Peace

Aclion wrote:

We would'nt have to switch to a parliamentary system, just have a single transferable vote.

This. A parliamentary system has its own set of drawbacks, and is not clearly preferable to a presidential system. But either type you can have with a non-FPTP voting system— STV/IRV/Ranked-Choice principally. Of course, such a change is just as unlikely to ever occur in the current climate. It’s one of the only things the Republican and Democratic parties can agree on: that the system which allows them to preserve their stranglehold on politics has to remain in place (ironic, considering it’s a system which is massively harmful to the democracy they claim to uphold). No one wants to write the law to give themselves more competition.

Mount Seymour wrote:

This. A parliamentary system has its own set of drawbacks, and is not clearly preferable to a presidential system. But either type you can have with a non-FPTP voting system— STV/IRV/Ranked-Choice principally. Of course, such a change is just as unlikely to ever occur in the current climate. It’s one of the only things the Republican and Democratic parties can agree on: that the system which allows them to preserve their stranglehold on politics has to remain in place (ironic, considering it’s a system which is massively harmful to the democracy they claim to uphold). No one wants to write the law to give themselves more competition.

https://youtu.be/PQRyGacBRA4?t=193

Mount Seymour wrote:

This. A parliamentary system has its own set of drawbacks, and is not clearly preferable to a presidential system. But either type you can have with a non-FPTP voting system— STV/IRV/Ranked-Choice principally. Of course, such a change is just as unlikely to ever occur in the current climate. It’s one of the only things the Republican and Democratic parties can agree on: that the system which allows them to preserve their stranglehold on politics has to remain in place (ironic, considering it’s a system which is massively harmful to the democracy they claim to uphold). No one wants to write the law to give themselves more competition.

media has a role to play in this if they would. they don't HAVE to give ALL the air, to candidates from the two major parties.

Cameroi wrote:

media has a role to play in this if they would. they don't HAVE to give ALL the air, to candidates from the two major parties.

They will, not least because most "journalists" today are little more then political activists and they're in a relationship with their preferred political party.

Ruinenlust wrote:

I'm not really thrilled about him either, and I think running Joe Biden might repeat the mistake of 2016, when the enthusiasm for Sanders was rather bluntly snubbed by the party hierarchy.

That comparison doesn't hold up because in 2016 the party hierarchy was very unified behind Hillary -- not just "someone other than Bernie," but specifically Hillary Clinton -- and they put their thumbs on the scale hard. This time around, there are several candidates being given serious consideration. Even if Biden wins the primary, there will still be some other candidates that got a fair shake.

Also, keep in mind Clinton had a lot of baggage that had nothing to do with moderate vs. progressive. A moderate candidate who isn't Hillary Clinton won't necessarily have so much baggage or such a divisive campaign style.