Hacker News Reader

The states maintain their systems because there are 2 parties that exercise a lot of influence in state politics.

I've thought about trying to start a ballot initiative to remove parties from the ballot process. Each candidate would have to generate sufficient support to get their name on the ballot, no other rules. Organized groups like parties would be useful under those rules, but an independent wouldn't be at a legal disadvantage compared to a member of an incumbent party (as is the case in many states today).

I think Sir Humphrey said it best, 'no government would change a system that put it there'.

While your initiative is well meant, abandoning parties is actually a step in the wrong direction. Because while parties won't appear on the ballot, the parties will make sure to include their name and their candidate in every advertisement, so only few voters are unsure whom each candidate represents. Likely washing away other parties' chances as they don't maintain the same influence.

No, party-list proportional representation is a much more democracy and fairer system. Because it allows a voter to vote for a party that's not popular in their district, but so that their vote can matter on a state-wide or national-wide level.

Of course, that's a major overhaul of the system, but unfortunately, I personally believe that's what necessary. However, I believe that such an overhaul could start in smaller more progressive states like Vermont or Maine. And if the system catches on, there may be public push for a similar system in neighbouring states.

The point isn't to detach the parties from the candidates, it's to make it so that party infighting is not the strongest path to the ballot. At the moment, winning a party knife fight is the thing that decides lots of local and state office elections.

For the presidential election there would be more risk of pushing the election to the House of Representatives, but candidates could bargain with each other and withdraw and such. People would be able to figure it out.

While I agree that Congress and the States are not going to change the system now, that was not the case in 1780 or so. The weak Articles of Confederation were a failure and that system of government did abandon itself for a stronger more federal Constitution.

I disagree that progressives have a higher propensity for this sort of electoral reform. Progressive ideology is inherently an obsession with forming an intellectual monoculture hostile to criticism anf dissenting worldviews. This type of mindset is not conducive to increasing political diversity.

"remove parties from the ballot process"

Sounds nice. Alas, there's always winners and losers.

The fight is always people vs capital. Anything that weakens the party organizations empowers the monied interests.

"generate sufficient support to get their name on the ballot"

In my jurisdiction, any candidate paying the modest filing fee appears on the ballot. What are the rules where you live? Of course, the Presidential race is a whole tarball onto itself.

There has been interest to lower the bar even further. Such as gathering 200 signatures (to a petition) in lieu of the filing fee.

There's a signature requirement.

https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_access_requirements_for_polit...

The primaries bypass that, major party candidates (selected privately by the party, the thing I propose to remove) can either file a petition (with ~1/2 the signatures required of an independent) or pay $100.

Note that I'm not proposing preventing groups from organizing and participating in the gathering of signatures and endorsing of candidates, I'm proposing removing the provisions that make it easier for the incumbent groups to get on the ballot and putting them on equal footing with everyone else.

You mean Liberals, not Labour! Though I agree the party colours and platform and orientation are largely similar to the UK Labour Party.

There's a burden of compromise that will always be there. Right now, since it essentially requires us to choose between two candidates, the burden of compromise is mostly on the voter - we have to sift through a lot of thinking and decide which choice is better than the other.

If that burden were lifted from the voter and we were able to vote multiple parties into legislative bodies, then it just shifts that burden into the legislative body. Voters would find their representatives engaging in various alliances with other parties that the voter might not like. For the voters who dislike compromise entirely, they wouldn't like it - it would be trading one problem for another.

The other thing is that proportional representation governments are generally seen as being "more responsive" - they change more quickly, yielding larger effects from year to year (probably back and forth as different parties gain power). This means less stability.

The founding fathers found our slower, less responsive form of government more of a feature than a bug. They were aware of parliamentary forms of government but chose otherwise. Switching to parliamentary system is not a panacea, it has its own set of problems.

I think the problem with the US system is just that over time, partisans have discovered that lying about their beliefs is in their best interests. When you have a bunch of politicians claiming that they believe one thing when they know otherwise, their followers are encouraged to actually believe the falsehoods. I don't know if there's a more academic word for "shitposting" but that's basically what it is. (I believe this is more common on the right than the left, but that's beside the point.)

I'm not sure how to adjust the system so that the incentives are aligned more towards truthful debate, though. I think this is ultimately about a philosophical struggle that we used to have settled. Back in enlightenment ages, there was broad consensus that reality was an objective thing and that truth was a guide through it. But now it's pretty popular to believe that reality is just what we make it, by continually repeating whatever truth/facts we believe. I think that basically mirrors philosophical history in that romanticism came after enlightenment, but I don't know what that means about where we are now.

No form of government will ever be perfect. But while the coalitions and alliances of a parliament elected by a proportional representation system can change rapidly from election to election, it's actually the same system that ensures stability in terms of policies.

Since no party holds an absolute majority, all decisions end up being compromises, and therefore progress is dulled.

I am only arguing from the side of perspective of a democracy. There is something rewarding as a voter to feel that one's vote actually matter. I doubt a Republican voting for President in California feels their vote makes any difference.

But as a form of government? Then proportional representation doesn't scale well, which is why I am only recommending it for your state legislatures, not nation-wide.

The European Parliament is proportional represented but divided by constituencies, which in a lot of cases are just the member states, but member states are permitted to divide themselves into constituencies.[1]

All I am saying is, I do find it cringe-worthy when Americans refer to their system as 'democracy'. It's not even representational democracy, it's pseudo-representational democracy at best. Because if it truly was a representational democracy, then shouldn't D.C. or Porto Rico be represented at the federal level like everyone else?

The US is a Republic, and that's fine with me. Just don't pretend otherwise.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament_constituen...

Small nit, unrelated to your salient points: it's Puerto Rico. :)

"how France elects their president. Their system is a two round system. In the first round, anyone who is eligible can be on the ballot. But if no candidate receives more than 50% of the votes (not electors), it goes onto the second round, where the two candidates with the most votes are the only ones on the ballot."

California moved to that for their state representative elections a while ago. The upshot is you can (and several times have) had two Democrats or two Republicans running against each other at the end.

This system doesn't do much to stop the Two Party control over elections though.

>Indeed, a party-list proportional representation for the state legislatures would strongly encourage minority parties to obtain seats, as votes cast for a party not winning in one's district would be go on to matter on the state-wide level.

Is party-list proportional representation even constitutional under the one man, one vote principle?

Good question. But considering that a vote is more likely to matter under a PLPR system, I would assume it does. The system doesn't grant people more votes or less votes for that matter.

To summarise quickly: In district 1, parties A, B, C and D run. Each party has a list of candidates in order. Each voter can vote for a party or a candidate. If they vote for a candidate, they technically also vote for that party. If they vote for a party, they also vote for the next candidate on the party's list to need their vote.

District 1 has 4 seats. Party A gets two seats, party B and C gets one seat, respectively and D gets no seats. The remaining votes from this district (for each party) is used on the national level.

The national level has an additional 30 seats, here party D obtains 4 seats, despite not winning any district seats.

As an example of how FPTP is actually working against the one man, one vote principle, consider the last UK general election in 2015:

Every vote cast in a constituency for a candidate that did not win in that constituency is lost. That's about 50% of the votes. But also, every excess vote cast for the candidate that won (e.g. if the next candidate got 5000 votes, and the winning got 6000 votes, that's 999 excess votes) are also lost. And that accounted for about 25% of the votes.

In total, about 75% of votes in a UK general election are pointless.

As an aside; I'll grant that effectively, each vote is counted in the UK, it's just that a lot of them end up having no influence at all. So I guess, it's more a philosophical question about what we mean with 'one man, one vote'. Are we being literal or are we being meaningful?

I agree with going proportional but not party-list. There's a simpler solution: abolish districts. There's absolutely no constitutional basis for their existence and considering some states once has mixed member districts it seems that single member districts have simply emerged as a way to divide and conquer the voting population. The ultimate way to end gerrymandering would be to just get rid of districts completely. States are the only political division necessary.

Congressional delegations should instead be elected vis proportional representation using single transferable vote. A non-partisan Approval Voting primary would be used to nominate a selection of candidates for the general election and then STV would distribute votes up to a qualifying threshhold, followed by the runoff vote.

Parties could choose to nominate only one candidate as they do now, but there would be many more seats they could compete for. Without Parties controlling the nomination process it would be much more even ground.