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Posted (edited)

There are a lot of factors involved in making sure we have two terrible choices for president every four years. It really is a team effort. Unfortunately, institutional inertia ensures that reform at this level (arguably the most important level) is almost impossible because everyone involved has benefited from the way the system is set up presently.

 

Despite recent setbacks, this grand experiment of eschewing the monarchy has been a net positive I would venture to say. We've learned a lot in this 247 year round of beta testing. Emergent phenomena, unforeseen downstream ramifications, plus the advent of the internet and the rise of social media and how they interact with the perverse incentives inherent in politics and society writ large.

My question for the forum is, given what we know now, what is worth keeping and what is worth changing, and what does it mean in the form of tradeoffs, with the ultimate metric of success being reliably two reasonable choices for president (threshold) or two outstanding choices for president (objective).

One major issue we face today is our representation will not agree on a basic set of unifying principles, and so our gridlock will remain even if just to spite the other, making it almost impossible for us to reform at the level required because it would involve establishment politicians voting against their own interests and limiting their power, something not really done since Washington turned down a Kingship. But let's ignore that for the moment and dive into the relm of the hypothetical. Consider this our federalist papers to discuss principles, rationale behind them, and why the tradeoffs are better than the alternatives.

Two party system vs Coalition Governments? How the parties choose their candidates? First past the post? Electoral College? Ranked choice voting? Third party viability? How to get ameliorate corporate influence?  What reforms would you like to see, why, and lets discuss the pitfalls of those even if still a net positive.

Anything regarding how we select the candidates and what can be done to make things a little less terrible goes. 

I'm trying to learn and I think opening up to the perspective of others is useful.

 

I don't know enough about the ramifications of screwing with most of the above topics to understand the negative tradeoffs and make any educated suggestions on them, but personally I think one of the simplest things that can be done in the short term would be to allow everyone to vote for their preferred candidate in the primaries of both parties, not just the one they are registered for, because even if your preferred party loses you should still get a say in who your leaders are. This means conservatives will vote for the most conservative democrat, and democrats will vote for the most liberal conservative in the primaries so that the end result will trend more towards moderate candidates rather than more and more radical populists on each end of the political spectrum. This offsets the influence of media to feed into this sort of thing despite their efforts to polarize the landscape for clicks and views, and encourages instead a metastable overton window around existing norms on the practical front. Politicians will continue to promise anything and everything to get elected but the silent majority on both sides who aren't interested in starting a movement or tearing everything down will directly overwhelm the vocal minority of fringe activists, nipping virtue signaling legislation in the bud and resisting cowing to social trends that come and go (not quite on the scale of the supreme court with their lifetime appointments but similar in principle)

 

Possible negative ramifications: This might work well as long as we are 50/50 split like we are now, but if we aren't 50/50 split then the party with the majority can have disproportionate influence in who wins the primary of the opposition party, which is understandably a hard pass. However, they ostensibly don't get a say in who the candidates in the primaries of the other party are, the candidates are chosen by the party, so this exploit can be mitigated by selecting candidates in the primaries carefully such that the most moderate candidate in the running during the primaries is still acceptable to the constituency.  This would be a check and balance over something like a direct democracy because majority rules is obviously rife with potential for abuse. 

This phenomenon would have a side effect in that it would incentivize reform within the parties to focus on merit rather than mere funding by corporate donors when it comes to selecting who is in the primaries, otherwise the opposition party might try to subvert this by funding a moderate of their own to run for the other party (wolf in sheeps clothing) to manipulate this approach, hence why I said "ostensibly" don't have a say who the other party runs above. There would also need to be rules in place regarding the minimum number of potential candidates running in the primaries, so the party doesn't just run one, even if it's the incumbent.  For instance, you could say a party must run at minimum 3 candidates on the debate stage with equal airtime and one of those candidates must a crowd rather than party picked and funded by the party (ie, the Joe Rogan candidate) to help mitigate corporate and lobbyists buying candidates, or party capture.

Edited by Burncycle360
Posted

Until we institute a flat tax, just through the 1040s of net contributors (so those that pay greater than $0 net federal income tax) into a figurative hat and pull out a name for whichever "elective" federal office needs a warm body to fill it. The results simply CANNOT be any worse than what we have had since WJC beat GHWB in 1992- and likely longer than that if you consider congresspeople.

Posted

Voting allowed only after presenting a valid voter ID with picture, as it is done in the rest of the world, could be a simple but powerful improvement.

Posted

The problem is the population group that resides in the US borders.  How do you propose to fix that?  Fusion weaponry?  Gas?  S/F....Ken M

Posted (edited)

Well, you're not wrong, but they gained this traction slowly over decades with emotional arguments and clever framing, manipulating the sentiment of the naive because they know their vote counts just as much as a rational person's vote but they don't have to put in nearly as much effort since critical thinking literacy in this country is at pre gutenberg levels. There's a LOT of low hanging fruit, and that allowed an oligarchy to collect power and ideologues to capture the institutions necessary for their sophistry to metastasize.

 

I don't like Trump, but I'm glad he happened. He broke people's brains, and got the very institutions themselves to drop all pretense and reveal who they are, and are pushing the average person to pick a damn side. This culture war is coming to a head and he expedited things, which was the best thing that could have happened. Not because I'm at all interested in the suffering that will follow but because there's no turning the ship to avoid this storm anymore, the only way out is through and I want to be on the other side of it as fast as possible,  much in the same way banks with myopic strategies should be allowed to fail rather than have endless bailouts despite the short term suffering because that's the only way to things will get better long term. 


Also, Voter ID should absolutely be a no brainer

Edited by Burncycle360
Posted
11 hours ago, Burncycle360 said:

Two party system vs Coalition Governments? How the parties choose their candidates? First past the post? Electoral College? Ranked choice voting? Third party viability? How to get ameliorate corporate influence?  What reforms would you like to see, why, and lets discuss the pitfalls of those even if still a net positive.

I think the effective two-party system is the most toxic factor in US politics due to the polarizing effect on society overall, eroding democratic values; the "must prevent wrong lizard at all cost" effect applies. First-past-the-post voting tends to promote such a system since smaller parties have less chances to win electoral districts. Then again, the UK and France (which even has runoffs for absolute majorities within districts) manage to have quite a varied representation of parties in parliament, even it's mostly just two or three which have a chance to get into government.

On a technical level, election integrity is obviously the most important issue. As frequently discussed here, the Byzantine US system with a myriad different laws and methods between localities, controlled by partisan-staffed boards and positions, just invites tampering at all stages; most egregiously, trying to expand or restrict access of voter groups based on their assumed behavior by fiddling with voter rolls and ID standards. A national unitary system would probably go a long way in improving standards.

Unfortunately what makes e. g. European systems rather solid are not stand-alone features which can simply be dropped into US voting legislation. For example, stringent enrollment and ID standards are typically tied to general population registries where everyone is listed with details like age, citizenship and current adress(es) pretty much from birth to death, national unitary ID documents, etc. Enrollment of eligible voters and checking them off is thus quite automatic with little extra effort. That would however require a huge cultural and systemic change in American society overall.

Posted

We seem to find that with our system, even though it is basically a 2 party system, when there is some crisis or pressure it enfranchises the third party, which can have a positive effect on the major players. Although to be fair this has only really come into play once since the war (and even then they rather stupidly allowed their terms to be subsumed in Conservative politics), and nearly once in the 1970's (the reason why was the leader of the Liberal Party had actually tried to have somebody murdered, of which the PM was aware,hence wouldnt try for a coalition with him). But the latent effect can be seen in Brexit, where the Conservatives, desperate to maintain vote share, actually tried to get ahead of UKIP. So it does have an effect, usually a positive one, when the major parties seem incapable or unwilling to reform or promote change.

Strikes me that several more parties in the US is just what they need. If nothing else it will act as a drain to the lunatic fringe from the major parties, keeping the middle ground fairly honest. That both major parties are unwilling is just damaging them where they have to keep lunatics like AOC or MTG inside the tent. Think how much healthier it will be if they tell them to poke off and form their own Judean popular fronts.

Posted

From George Washington's farewell address "... Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports..."

John Adams "Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

The over 200 year old process of U.S. Federal elections is fine, and as far as my limited knowledge of world politics goes, one of the best. As just two of many quotes I posted above, it is not the system that is flawed but what the system parts have become. The U.S. has lost its once good Christian-oriented morality. It is evil people, ie the Democratic Party, that has collected the secular power of government to rule over others. The Democratic Party's absolute lies of saying otherwise is the end product of the digestive system of the adult male bovine. 

Posted

POTUS should be appointed by a convention of the governors of the states.

Posted

Impose a constitutional amendment that forbids two things. 1. Exemptions for Congress from the laws they pass. 2. Hybrid bills. One topic, one bill. No pork, no trading.

Posted

Agreed. The current system of combining unrelated riders on bills is likely a "If you vote for my bill, I will vote for yours" assurance, but that shouldn't be. They should be separate and If someone fails to do as agreed then let it hurt their standing and trust among peers, it'll sort itself out.
 

Posted

The problem is that the system is fucked, and that same system is the mechanism to change the fucked system.  Because the people were ruined.

Therefore the only meaningful change is possible outside the system.  You can say "pass laws this, amendment that" etc but how is it actionable? 

It's like the intelligence system, you can "know" everything, but if there's no way to act on it, it's worse than useless, it's frustrating and maddening.  S/F....Ken M

Posted
11 hours ago, DB said:

Impose a constitutional amendment that forbids two things. 1. Exemptions for Congress from the laws they pass. 2. Hybrid bills. One topic, one bill. No pork, no trading.

Both excellent suggestions. 

3. Legislators in the US are personally responsible for the legal costs defending legislation that is found to be unconstitutional within 10 years of passage. 

Posted
8 hours ago, EchoFiveMike said:

The problem is that the system is fucked, and that same system is the mechanism to change the fucked system.  Because the people were ruined.

Therefore the only meaningful change is possible outside the system.  You can say "pass laws this, amendment that" etc but how is it actionable? 

It's like the intelligence system, you can "know" everything, but if there's no way to act on it, it's worse than useless, it's frustrating and maddening.  S/F....Ken M


Agreed, it's intractable internally.  The only people that can change it are the people who benefited from it in the first place.  Right now gross fiscal mismanagement has gotten so bad that we're beyond austerity fixing it, it's either going to collapse or the oligarchs will try to deus ex machina their way out of it by pushing for a digital currency so they can just fudge the numbers forever.  Makes you wonder why tar and feathering went out of fashion...

 

Posted (edited)

I'd propose an additional amendment...

1) Unless in a state of existential crisis with a supermajority vote, annual budgets will  be passed on time, and without deficit, or no sitting members of Congress are eligible for reelection.

2) Bills should be as least as rigorous as scientific research papers before passing, including the following sections:

i. Short, plain language abstract summary describing the law
ii. Legal / Technical language of the law (Lawyer version)
iii. Plain Language version of the law (Layman version)
iv. Section describing intent of the proposed law (Desired end result)
v. Rationale behind this approach (Why is this the approach taken to achieve the desired aims, and not another approach? What other proposed approaches were considered, and why were they rejected? What are the tradeoffs?)
vi. Red teaming (3rd party review to determine potential abuse vectors or less obvious downstream effects)
vii. Knock on effect mitigation (Issues exposed by red teaming and how these will be ameliorated)
viii. Escape Hatch (unforeseen effects despite all of the above efforts) usually in the form of a mandatory sunset clause with periodic review for renewal
ix. Risk Benefit Analysis and Cost Benefit Analysis
x. Metrics of Success (determining the success of the law in achieving intended aims) and timetables for periodic review
xi. Internal audit by 3rd party (conflicts with existing laws, 3rd party lawyers check constitutionality, bias check)
xii. Voter's personal opinions for every voter (typically a short statement or paragraph) for posterity
xiii. Peer Review
xiv. Judicial Review (constitutionality before the law is passed, not years and millions of dollars afterwards) including personal opinions of panel of judges for posterity.
xv. Recordings of proceedings (proposals, debates, changes, individual voter opinions the "federalist papers") for future generations

All written up in LaTeX, double spaced 12 font. NO unrelated riders or other combinations of multiple unrelated bills.

That ought to keep them busy for a while.

Edited by Burncycle360
Posted

Unfortunately all that has very little to do with the election system, but with what voters would want their representatives to do or not do once elected.

Posted

Why dont you just go back to paper totes, and if that upsets the network because they dont get an answer for a week or a month, too bad. You have them all sequentially sequenced, so its physically impossible for anyone to insert votes without it being counted twice. There, simple.

Posted
8 hours ago, rmgill said:

Both excellent suggestions. 

3. Legislators in the US are personally responsible for the legal costs defending legislation that is found to be unconstitutional within 10 years of passage. 

I'd take it further. If a legislator votes for a law that is overturned, that legislator is barred forever from continuing to serve as a legislator, since they've abrogated their responsibility to uphold the Constitution. And their district (or state, in the case of Senators) simply does without representation for the rest of the term. If a district or state loses to representatives is a row, then they lose their representation for 3-5 terms, since the electorate clearly doesn't know or care enough to send representatives who will act Constitutionally.

Posted (edited)

We could go the other way and embrace connecting voting machines online.  After all, we already have frameworks for trustless systems in the form of blockchain. Distributed ledgers with one unique token issued per person.  You'd use 2FA (or more) to authenticate a citizen registering to vote (SSN, Fingerprinting, Passcode) and independent confirmation (VoterID) to verify human and citizen.  Once done, the token is burned (or not) by the citizen to anonymously cast a vote. Since any updates or changes can only be added to the end of the blockchain and the provenience of who the vote is cast for is visible to all on the distributed ledger, it wouldn't be feasible mathematically to manipulate the results or "hack" such a system because the copy of the ledger is decentralized, available to all and it would violate consensus.
 

Edited by Burncycle360
Posted

I apologise for immediately derailing the topic.

It doesn't matter who you vote for if they're not held accountable, or if bending the rules is not discouraged.

Posted
On 5/18/2023 at 7:18 AM, DB said:

Hybrid bills. One topic, one bill. No pork, no trading.

We basically got this for a decade.  Congress (or maybe just the House, I forget exactly) passed a 10-year moratorium on earmarks.  It wasn't renewed by the Ds back in '21 or '22 and the Rs apparently didn't protest.

What we saw in that 10 year period wasn't exactly what we were hoping for.  Instead of a more efficient system with meaningful legislation being passed we got more gridlock.  Why?  Those earmarks were the only tool Congressional leaders had in buying votes to get stuff passed.  When that was gone there were far too many in Congress who were fine with just letting things burn, stagnate, or some combination of the two.

While we like to blame politicians for this we need to blame ourselves, the voters, just as much.  Voters love pork... they love special treatment from their politicians... and it's clear the average voter isn't mature enough to look at an issue from just a national perspective (unless it's something like the debt ceiling and how defaulting would likely fuck them over).

How to address this after the failed decade of no earmarks?  I'm not sure.  I think the best answer isn't a technical change in the rules but rather a type of politician we haven't seen in years - a leader.  Someone who can highlight the issue and rally the voters.  In this polarized era I'm not sure if that's even possible anymore, though.

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