Huh, TIL the Constitution doesn’t require Congressional districts. A state could technically switch to a model like this for assigning representatives at large.
True, but...
> A state could technically switch to a model like this for assigning representatives at large.
No, it can't because Congress itself is given the overriding power in the Constitution to regulate the "time, place, and manner" of elections to the House, and has exercised it to prohibit at-large districts (many times, with lax enforcement, but the most recent mandate, adopted in 1967, has not had the compliance problems the earlier ones often did.) The 1967 mandate was adopted under the dual specter of a some states failing to resolve districting controversies and potentially facing judicially-imposed at-large districts and several states having used at-large districts for non-federal elections to effectively disenfranchise Black voters and concerns that the same might be done to Congressional delegations as a way of blunting the impacts of new rules like the Voting Rights Act.
Additional detail at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43739929
California could make this change by referendum.
Because your constituents are better represented. California strikes me as a potent place to do this because I could see a constitutional amendment passing at the ballot box.
Suppose California were to do it, resulting in a proportional allocation of seats in the House for its delegation. If this causes the House to swing from Democratic majority to Republican majority, the net effect is the opposite of what most Californians wanted.
Don't get me wrong, I get the point that it is a more fair and equitable way of doing things, and in principle, I agree. But if you play fair at a table where everybody else cheats, you lose. My state (WA) also has referendums, and if such a proposal would come up, I would absolutely vote against it - unless it was some kind of interstate compact where another similarly-sized red state were to implement the same reform at the same time.
No, it could not, because Article I, Section 3 (emphasis added): "The times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing Senators." (the last part of that about choosing Senators has its effect eliminated by the 17th Amendment, but that isn't important here.)
And Congress has exercised its authority in U.S. Code Title 2, Section 2c (emphasis added): "In each State entitled in the Ninety-first Congress or in any subsequent Congress thereafter to more than one Representative under an apportionment made pursuant to the provisions of section 2a(a) of this title, there shall be established by law a number of districts equal to the number of Representatives to which such State is so entitled, and Representatives shall be elected only from districts so established, no district to elect more than one Representative (except that a State which is entitled to more than one Representative and which has in all previous elections elected its Representatives at Large may elect its Representatives at Large to the Ninety-first Congress)."
2. That's obviously unwieldy, and so we haven't had a bump in seats since ... 1910.
3. 'Factions' were viewed dimly by the Founders. I would argue in favor of two immediate changes:
- Term limits for everything, including shorter max civil service careers. Capitol Hill, like any compost heap, benefits from regular turning.
- A "bidder bunch" rule, whereby if Congress can't manage its key function--that of producing a budget--then none of these goofs (even the ones I admire) get to run for their seat when next up. There are copious talented alternative people to put on ballots. Do your job or face corporate punishment, say I.
This creates an obvious and huge perverse incentive to throw a wrench into the works any time you want a do-over.
How? You don’t think you could find Democrats, today, who wouldn’t roll the dice on a new Congress? The proposal essentially gives a narrow minority the ability to call no confidence.
If it gives your party a chance at retaking power? It would be an obvious trade for an administration to do.
I remind you that, under the current regime, Sen. Schumer (D-BY) played along with the GOP Continuing Resolution* not because he fancied the CR, but to avoid giving the Treasury the power of the purse that would come with a shutdown.
*And took a napalm shower for it in social media.
Sort of like the debt limit, it leads to a lot of political maneuvering but doesn't actually limit anything.
"Excuse me?" said the burgeoning national debt.
They don't call for a vote without a known outcome; politics hates surprises.
The question here is how to add enough feedback to keep the corruption minimal.
We've known anecdotally for a long time that our government has gone to seed; DOGE has both broadcast the problem and generated will to reform.
It seems plausible to me that it would decrease corruption. It is a lot easier for power brokers and interests to lobby a 435 member house, than 30K member house. Inversely, it is a lot easier for a citizen to lobby their representative when they are 1/12,000 instead of 1/800k.
30k members--that's a couple of Army Divisions--is more likely to form rigid authoritarian groupings simple to get in and out of the building in a reasonable amount of time.
People don't scale. The overhead of coordinating among so many people would be stifling.
No, the correct approach in my view is to delegate as much as possible back to the States.
Also, for all of the defects of First Past the Post, it's well-understood and supports entry-level participation.
The theoretical superiority of Ranked Choice Voting is overshadowed by the hidden assertion that everyone casting a ballot in RCV has done the homework.
Having served as an election officer for the last 12yrs, the KISS superiority of FPTP is the least-worst alternatives. I wouldn't want RCV even at the county level.
Why? There is no need to increase their number.
> overshadowed by the hidden assertion
Even then it’s still superior. Even if everyone ignores the individual candidates and votes for a party in e.g. a 5 member constituency where the vote is split ~70:30 the minority party would likely get at least one seat when now votes are effectively thrown into the thrash bin.
> Having served as an election officer for the last 12yrs
The implication being that it would make the job too hard for you?
FPTP is a horrible system any way you look at it. It results in almost 50% of the votes being outright discarded and permanently entrenches a 2 party system.
I don't see how either of these assertions follow.
The size of the mandate is important, and the connection between a 2 party "system" and FPTP is something that you'd need to elaborate upon, because there is nothing about the ballot as such stipulating the number of parties. I. Fact, other parties are frequently on the ballot, so the dominance of 2 parties is not obviously connected to FPTP as such.
RCV works and is simple to understand.
Hypothetically that was true. Until those founders started engaging in actual politics and became rabidly partisan.
There was a brief period when the Federalists collapsed and US effectively became a single party state with the Democratic-Republicans controlling everything but that was decades after the constitution was signed.
For a glance at Europe, I'm firmly in the skeptical camp.
As in?
People can legitimately disagree about what is right and wrong, or what even falls on a moral continuum. Nailing down a moment’s broad truth is among the most revered roles in any society.
If vandalizing a Telsa and vandalizing the US Capitol are both wrong and my focus is only the act of vandalism in asking this question. Overall, both acts are clear cut wrong!
Those who refuse to say both are wrong their brains are driven now by political emotional mind control babble where they've thrown out knowing and standing for right over wrong.
I guess you showed that your mind is driven/controlled by political emotional babble & narratives made up by the right (tho maybe your left or an independent who leans right) & it's media (right or left .. all make up narratives) you consume. But I don't want to jump to conclusions.
I rest my case that models that cast the world in black and white are the wrongest of the bunch, as they’re essentially a hard default for legalism and the status quo.
And I studied ethics. Meanwhile you have supporters of Trump vandalizing the capital because they couldn't accept the result of a democratic election with the goal to force their minority opinion onto the majority.
Those who don't equate the two simply realized that context matters in ethics. Example: Stealing is wrong. Not stealing when a child is starving and no one can help is more wrong. However stealing from someone whose child is starving is more wrong than stealing from a faceless multinational corporation that exploits millions. This is btw. something you can also observe in real life ethical decisions. That doesn't mean the excuse people find for themselves is always factually correct, but in US politics one side sees actively making shit up as a strength now, so that should tell us something about how much care is given for reality.
You likely tricked yourself into equating the two (vandalizing a symbol of a unelected fascist billionair VS a mob trying to force the senate to ignore the will of millions) by drawing a mental bubble around the word "vandalized" and assuming two acts are the same because their description may contain the same word. This is quite frankly an astonishingly simplistic stance to take. Words are things used to describe reality, yes, but reducing real acts down to one word, removing all the context and then equating words is not how ethics work.
Maybe you remember the trolly problem craze from a while ago. The original trolly problem premise is that murder is wrong and you have a lever where you can save 5 lives by switching the lever to a track with only one person stuck. The variations on the trolly problem are essentially a mental experiment to explore the ethical context of a decision. Our ethics prof e.g. liked to propose a variation where you have to push one person off a bridge in order to stop the trolly, suddenly everybody would deem it wrong. Turns out whether it is a lever or you have to touch a person makes a huge difference in how close to murder it feels.
Consider the point the parent of this side conversation was trying to make: What if there was a party with the guiding principal of keeping the country together and pursuing policy based on sound principals rather than "what will own the libs" or "stop the fascists"? The things you complain about are happening because of divisive politics. Trump is powerful because he listened to people who were being ignored or attacked by the political hegemony, and it turned out that was a small majority of the country. It's a shame that someone with admirable personality traits didn't think of it first.
How would you reform the political and voting system to improve the total happiness in the united states?
Another ethical question for you: that mob believed the election was rigged and that the senate was ignoring the will of the nation. Based on that belief, were they acting ethically? Keep in mind that this is bigger than the trolley problem. Sort of an iterated trolley problem, if you will.
I think AI should be the next party where people and all their b.s. cant affect it's rock solid moral and ethical code. It follows clear cut right over wrong, it is all about unity, peace/love for all human beings of all different types of backgrounds and it uses massive amounts of data to adjust how its ethics changes over time. So, it's M.O. (one i described) remains updated to per how society changes. Of course that could lead to an even worse system but just thinking out of the box as i do and getting downvoted for such thinking as usual lol
As well AI could be used to monitor all politicians day and night routine to ensure veracity in everything they do/push for and ensure those politicians are following the AIs ethical code of law and they're serving the people not the politician or any of the politicians cronies or interest groups that do not serve the people as a whole!
The closest equivalent would the a mob breaking into Tesla’s HQ while shouting stuff about hanging Musk.
Here's a paper by Markus Schulze proposing such a method: https://aso.icann.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/schulze4.pd... He uses some very large districts, but it should work for smaller districts too.
Also one of the main criticism of people opposed to proportional system is the lack of direct representation. STV solves that and even is superior to FPTP in that way because you are more likely to find a MP who is more sympathetic towards your cause/views if there are e.g. 3-5 members in your district.
Of course I’m not talking about the system proposed in the paper your linked, but rather about how MMP works in Germany. You get both part list and FPTP style party appointed candidates.
The House is a mess. So is SCOTUS. My proposal for the latter is redefining the Supreme Court as one drawn by lot from appellate judges for each case. This not only solves the appointment lottery. It also incentivises expanding the judiciary, which we need to do, and removes the modern perversion which is the Supreme Court just not bothering with controversial cases.
Most importantly, the edits to SCOTUS can be done by the Congress. The edits to the House can be done by the states. (EDIT: Nah.) Senate requires a Constitutional amendment; that window isn’t open at this time.
The Senate is elected similar to a parliament from other countries. Country-wide votes for parties, with proportional representation. It would balance out the regionality of the House.
The Supreme Court justices serve terms of 12-16 years. Each presidential candidate must select 2 supreme court picks at least 4 weeks before the election, and whoever wins has their picks placed on the court. (After their term, supreme court justices retire to the DC circuit).
This is important to understand, because the 17th Amendment is an on-again-off-again political issue; Republicans have, in recent history, held most state legislatures, so repealing the 17th Amendment would basically guarantee that the Republican Party would control at least one house of Congress for the foreseeable future, and give the party greater control over who is selected to the office.
There has been numerous proposals in the Congress to get rid of it, but they don't get ratified because two parties like the status quo.
People will have to make it an issue.