Even if the President had more power than it does now, it couldn't get away with these things if citizens had the ability to relevantly vote for another person/party. They would simply vote for whoever else was closest to their beliefs but not e.g. killing Americans without due process.
I believe the most effective way to solve this problem will be to approach it from many angles with the ultimate purpose of restoring accountability to the executive branch. Improving voting methodology seems to be one of many possibly useful angles. Another might be to put weight on congress to begin scaling back the powers of the executive, such as by repealing the Patriot Act, defunding the NSA, etc. Another still might be to support legislation to protect the voices of other power structures and communication enablers, such as the internet, journalism in general, and organizations like Wikileaks.
Sorry, I suppose this doesn't really bring any new insights to the table. Rather, my point is that there's this really big problem (an overly powerful branch of government) that's been brewing for a while, and it's going to take a lot more than a single fix the repair the whole machine.
Of course, any single effort is better than no effort---I absolutely do not wish to discourage!
Winston Churchill reputedly said "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they’ve tried everything else." Our system of "checks and balances" makes it extremely slow and difficult to accomplish anything. Consider the current defunding issue. The Republican party has been taking the US to the brink of shutdown every few months—despite the American people voting against them in the last election. I'm not trying to bash the Republican party. My point is, I think the Executive branch actually has fairly limited power. I think it might actually be better for accomplishing things if it had a bit more.
I think the real issue is legitimacy. One way to improve legitimacy is to elect the person Everyone Hates The Least, rather than who Everyone Loves The Most. Hence my ranked voting suggestion.
I definitely agree we should approach it from many angles. But as you say: accountability. I think the real problem is Legitimacy, not Power.
In short, the voting system is ingrained into the constitution and will not change in the foreseeable future.
The problem with FPTP isn't that its ripe for tactical voting, its that it maximizes the difference in expressed preferences that are completely ignored by the voting system, maximizing the need to vote tactically in order to have a vote that isn't equivalent to abstention.
"Rank voting" is dozens of different voting systems; its essentially one of the major kinds of ballots -- FPTP-style vote-for-one ballots are used in two main voting systems (both often referred to as FPTP): plurality and majority-runoff; "rank voting" is used in many voting systems (IRV, Borda, Bucklin, Coombs, and pretty all the Condorcet methods); and there are a few voting systems (e.g., approval) that use different balloting mechanisms -- though most of them (including the FPTP style and the approval style ballots) are special constrained cases of rank voting ballots.
> In short, the voting system is ingrained into the constitution and will not change in the foreseeable future.
Actually, nothing in the Constitution requires either FPTP or single-winner constituencies (except, arguably, indirectly single-winner for Senate seats by way of the 1/3-per-two-years requirement.) Forms of FPTP -- both majority-runoff and plurality -- are adopted as matters of state election law, and single-member, geographically-defined legislative districts have been required since the civil rights era as a matter of federal statute as a response to states that used FPTP in multimember state-wide districts to effectively disenfranchise minorities (the same could be prevented while allowing multimember districts by using a system that produces proportional results -- including candidate-centered systems like STV as well as things like party-list proportional.)
Very little of the US system of elections is set in the federal Constitution -- about the only part that is is the Electoral College for Presidential elections, and even there the matter of how electors are chosen is expressly left to the state legislatures.
Yep. There are actually a very few cities which use Instant-runoff voting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting_in_the_Un...
Unfortunately, the people who have to pass laws for non-FPTP voting, are the people it would displace :(
In many states, the only people needed to pass laws for non-FPTP voting are the people of the state -- at least for elections other than those for Presidential electors, because of initiative/referendum processes.
Sure, under the Constitution, the rules for electing Presidential electors are left to state legislatures, but once you've changed the election rules for those offices, it should be easier to get people in them that aren't attached to FPTP.
Electoral processes are certainly an issue, but it's distinct from the problem of separation of powers that has enabled Presidents to carve out immense impunities for themselves and their favored.
As in nationalized health care, the US should be following those countries with higher standards of living and incorporate a Parliamentary system (or whatever) and eliminate much Presidential power, particularly where the military is concerned.