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Comment by pmorici | Hacker News Reader

I don't buy the argument that "the system is fundamentally broken" because the political divisions of our times are some how uniquely worse than at any other point in US history. If you go read books like "A People's History of the United States" or other historical accounts that go beyond the typical 8th grade / high school US history you will find a lot of examples of when things were as bad as they are today or arguably much worse. The whole rural vs urban interests clash isn't even a new phenomenon that goes back to the beginning of the United States.

That's not to say that the system of government could never be improved but if your argument starts out with a premise that doesn't really seem true I question whether the whole idea isn't a little half baked.

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> I don't buy the argument that "the system is fundamentally broken"

This animation visualizes the increasing partisan nature of Congress over the last 60 years:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEczkhfLwqM

So the trend does not seem to be ideal here.

It seems like the proposed act will directly impact this increasing split.

More details: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/04/23/a-stu...

Partisanship didn't increase in a vacuum. The parties lined up more closely with longstanding ideological and cultural divides. There are fewer Southern conservative Democrats, but that's because they became Southern conservative Republicans. Liberal Northern Republicans became liberal Northern Democrats.

It's not clear to me how this proposal would change that fact. And it could very well do the opposite. If 51/49 super-districts are always electing one Republican and one Democrat, what incentive does either representative have to play to the center?

Interesting point about the north/south split -- I hadn't considered that. It very likely is just the parties stabilizing over time.

Here is an article on this divide during the Civil Rights era which, proportionally, was supported more by "Republicans" than "Democrats" but the true story is a little more complex (and largely geographical).

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/28/republ...

> The parties lined up more closely with longstanding ideological and cultural divides.

They don't though, for instance the dixiecrats ultimately had to choose between (to use the political compass's axis) left or authoritarianism with no party providing both. I'm sure there are left-authoritarian or right-libertarian voters in either main party which have to choose which they value most, unable to vote for any party which actually represents them as US politics puts them not just on a linear axis but on a completely bipolar one.

> This animation visualizes the increasing partisan nature of Congress over the last 60 years

I've worked in government, and when we were asked to generate reports, there was a conclusion that they wanted to draw and they were looking for data to back it. If you ever hear something like "during the Carter era" it's likely because that's the only time the data showed what we wanted to make a point.

In this case, I would need to see why they chose 60 years rather than say 100 years. 60 seems like an arbitrary number that needs to be investigated. They may be right, but having read their pitch, there are a bunch of red flags that scream that this is ideologically driven rather than actually being "fair".

I'd be interested if someone did a deeper analysis.

True. There indeed could be a selection bias in this range. The one reason why I was initially okay with that date range is because it is from after WWII (which was an exceptional event).

You can look up DW nominate scores from since late 1800s and you'll see the rise since 1975

https://legacy.voteview.com/Political_Polarization_2014.htm

There's an xkcd that used the same data to produce a graph since the beginning: https://xkcd.com/1127/

This "half baked" idea is just proportional representation. It's not like they invented it, and it seems to work well enough in New Zealand, in fact most complaints seem to be that it isn't perfectly proportional.

Agreed. Though this looks like it's an STV system more like Australia. Which would be the most logical system for the USA as implementing something like MMP would be a big shift requiring the formalization of the role of parties in government with party lists and a party vote.

One indication of a problem is that in a country split roughly 50-50 most Congress races are not competitive: the 50-50 area is jerrymandered into two 75-25% districts (with weird boundaries), so during election each party is guaranteed one seat.

This makes election not driven by general population, but party faithful during primaries and closed door maneuvering.

I agree that we should be careful trying to change things and use minimal actions -- the current system is not horrible

Sure, things were worse during the civil war for example. But that's a really low bar.

Even if you discount the civil war period as an extreme there are many examples.

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