Clean Sheet USA: Election Reform

[Skywalkre]

Our system has worked for most of our history even with the two party system.  It's only in recent decades that this hyper-partisan environment has led to the death of compromise (which is a fundamental reality of getting anything done and always will be).  While I'm not against making technical changes to how things work (some states have started experimenting with ranked choice so I'm curious to see how that works out) I think the real issue is what's driving that hyper partisanship.

The answer seems pretty clear - tech.  A recent podcast with an SDSU psych prof highlighted how recent rises in depression, especially amongst the youngest generation, can be tied to the proliferation of tech (specifically smart phones).  The same argument would seem to hold true to partisanship in politics.  All this really started kicking up in the late 80s/early 90s.  At the same time we started to see the rise of politically leaning cable channels.  In the late 90s we see the rise of the internet and this culminated in the early 10s with the proliferation of smart phones in nearly everyone's pocket.  Widespread use of and access to tech hasn't made us more informed but instead more insular as folks have purposefully searched out for echo chambers to reside in.  We now live in a society where large chunks of both ends of the spectrum literally see the opposite side as the enemy (as highlighted already by some posts here).

So... how do you address that?  Obviously that tech isn't going anywhere and no one is arguing it should (for all its negatives there are plenty of positives).  Maybe mechanical changes to the system are the way to go.  This hyper-partisanship is still on the fringes with a middle group of voters who are more... realistic.  Would swapping to ranked choice across the country let those voters push politicians to the Hill that would be more accommodating to actually working together?  Gridlock is clearly not the answer as it will inevitably lead to a collapse.

[Skywalkre]

8 hours ago, FALightFighter said:

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.

One major issue with this - many view our courts as becoming more political.  You have ultra-partisan judges like the one in TX who started this whole affair with the abortion drugs who, from what we've seen of his history, always votes in favor of certain positions regardless of the law.  While rulings of a lower court judge like him aren't binding in and of themselves... what happens if a judge like that makes it higher up or even to the USSC?  What if the USSC at one time rules a law unconstitutional but later rules a similar law constitutional.  What if a law is held up in the courts but eventually found unconstitutional?  My fear with such a law is the courts would be weaponized even more so than they are now and this could lead to even more paralysis from our legislators.  I think that's the biggest issue that needs to be addressed - getting Congress to actually act and address problems which has been a rare thing for decades now.

[DB]

2 hours ago, Skywalkre said:

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.

Good. More legislation is almost universally adding complication for minimal or zero benefits.

If you can't build a consensus without outright bribery, your bill does not deserve to pass.

[rmgill]

Did anyone notice the attempt by some tech types to do the Unity 2020 thing was completely shut down by the tech giant firms? 

https://bigthink.com/the-present/unity2020/

[Rick]

16 hours ago, Skywalkre said:

One major issue with this - many view our courts as becoming more political.  You have ultra-partisan judges like the one in TX who started this whole affair with the abortion drugs who, from what we've seen of his history, always votes in favor of certain positions regardless of the law.  While rulings of a lower court judge like him aren't binding in and of themselves... what happens if a judge like that makes it higher up or even to the USSC?  What if the USSC at one time rules a law unconstitutional but later rules a similar law constitutional.  What if a law is held up in the courts but eventually found unconstitutional?  My fear with such a law is the courts would be weaponized even more so than they are now and this could lead to even more paralysis from our legislators.  I think that's the biggest issue that needs to be addressed - getting Congress to actually act and address problems which has been a rare thing for decades now.

The problem(s) are not so much the politicians as the voters.

[FALightFighter]

21 hours ago, Skywalkre said:

One major issue with this - many view our courts as becoming more political.  You have ultra-partisan judges like the one in TX who started this whole affair with the abortion drugs who, from what we've seen of his history, always votes in favor of certain positions regardless of the law.  While rulings of a lower court judge like him aren't binding in and of themselves... what happens if a judge like that makes it higher up or even to the USSC?  What if the USSC at one time rules a law unconstitutional but later rules a similar law constitutional.  What if a law is held up in the courts but eventually found unconstitutional?  My fear with such a law is the courts would be weaponized even more so than they are now and this could lead to even more paralysis from our legislators.  I think that's the biggest issue that needs to be addressed - getting Congress to actually act and address problems which has been a rare thing for decades now.

What's far morel likely is chowderhead, low information voters in NYC, California, etc, voting for oath-breaking politicians that pass bad laws, regardless of their Constitutionality. Laws like the various federal gun control laws (absolutely, incontrovertibly un-Constitutional on their face) and any number of other federal encroachments into areas explicitly banned by the 10th Amendment (Dept of Education, student loans, etc, etc, ad nauseum).

There's a significant problem in the legal system, too, with the concepts of precedent that allow things to get pushed, and pushed, and pushed, to the point that the current application of the law in unrecognizable compared to the original letter. Like eminent domain, where we've seen government confiscate private property to give to another private owner based on potential tax revenue- a hugely mal-applied stack of precedents.

 

4 hours ago, Rick said:

The problem(s) are not so much the politicians as the voters.

This! x ∞!!

[NickM]

11 hours ago, rmgill said:

Did anyone notice the attempt by some tech types to do the Unity 2020 thing was completely shut down by the tech giant firms? 

https://bigthink.com/the-present/unity2020/

Sh#t, if the voters are disenchanted with a two party system, wait until they have to deal with a 'multparty' system that diffuses the votes over several parties leaving the best organized minority party (Commies? Sandanistas?) to run things.

[rmgill]

The already are in the big cities. 

[Skywalkre]

On 5/20/2023 at 4:05 AM, Rick said:

The problem(s) are not so much the politicians as the voters.

Agree completely.

[Skywalkre]

On 5/20/2023 at 8:57 AM, FALightFighter said:

There's a significant problem in the legal system, too, with the concepts of precedent that allow things to get pushed, and pushed, and pushed, to the point that the current application of the law in unrecognizable compared to the original letter. Like eminent domain, where we've seen government confiscate private property to give to another private owner based on potential tax revenue- a hugely mal-applied stack of precedents.

Don't necessarily disagree here.  Last year when RvW was overturned I finally sat down and read up on what the original case was built around... and I couldn't believe that  this massive USSC ruling, that was around for my entire life and decades before, was built on vague phrasing from an unrelated amendment.

Building on that observation... part of the problem is how our legislative branch coexists with the judicial.  On the legislative side you get a lot of bills that are just... vague and poorly written.  I'm not talking about twisting something to mean what it's not... I just mean writing in bills that doesn't even necessarily lend itself to mean anything that is actionable.  Lawsuits are then brought up with lawyers twisting the English language for these vague references to mean what they want it to mean... and then the judicial branch has to interpret it and precedent is set. 

I saw a piece the other day highlighting how teachers in OK are afraid to teach about some pretty important historical events like the 1921 Tulsa race massacre and then the piece highlighted the one line of the law in question... and for the life of me I couldn't understand how anyone would be afraid to teach about such an event, or anything related to the history of race in this country, from that one vague line.

So... crazy thought - why can't laws be more clearly written and less fungible?

[FALightFighter]

18 hours ago, Skywalkre said:

So... crazy thought - why can't laws be more clearly written and less fungible?

Bad business for lawyers if the law is clear, no?

[DB]

One of the things I didn't agree with in one of the above suggestions was the idea that a law should be written in two forms - natural English and legal English.

If you can't frame a law in natural English, you should be looking for a new job.

Without claiming that they've got everything right, I will note that there is a concerted effort for legislation in England and Wales for legislation to be written in such a way as to be understandable without requiring a legal degree or a cod Latin phrase book. This has been largely successful.

However, I can't claim to know anything about whether precedent has resulted in significant drift between primary legislation and court decisions - there is a robust appeals process that should, and has, reversed unusual interpretations of the law by lower-level courts.

[Skywalkre]

On 5/28/2023 at 6:35 AM, FALightFighter said:

Bad business for lawyers if the law is clear, no?

I think our country would be in a far better place if so much of how it was run was taken out of the hands of folks whose sole job is to manipulate the muddled waters of the laws that govern her.  What really saddens me is that's a minority opinion.

[Rick]

6 hours ago, Skywalkre said:

I think our country would be in a far better place if so much of how it was run was taken out of the hands of folks whose sole job is to manipulate the muddled waters of the laws that govern her.  What really saddens me is that's a minority opinion.

The fewer the laws, the less mud in the water to be stirred up.