Let's admit it...Congress is broken. Neither side agrees to anything. Everyone wants to show strength and defiance. We get constant bickering, finger pointing, and no compromises. The result? A lot of nothing.
The last 8 years have been the worse and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight.
How do we fix it? We are supposed to vote them out and vote in new people....so far it seems we are getting the same crap.
The big problem is that the "vote them out and vote in people who actually do something" doesn't really work because most of the worst offenders are effectively gerrymandered in more or less permanently. The people in their districts actually LIKE their obstructionist tactics, and the last time they had the chance, they reorganized districts so that was even more heavily the case. This means that the earliest things can even really *possibly* change is 2020, when the next census comes and areas can be redistricted again, which we wouldn't be able to see the effects of until 2021. But even that won't solve everything, because A) there's a decent chance the same people will still be in power then and can leave the districts as they are, and B) for many of the worst offenders, even insane re-gerrymandering can't get them kicked out.
The best I can hope for at this point is that the 2021 congress will skew heavily in my preferred direction to the point where they can bypass filibusters and etc, but I'm not even optimistic that that will happen. And six years is a long time for the current awful state of affairs to continue.
There are some steps that could be taken to improve the situation. Unfortunately, the people who would have to vote to approve these measures would be the same people they'd be designed to affect, so they'd never actually approve them. I'd start with some or all of the following:
1) Congress pay is tied to the median income of the US. Make it some large % if you think they should still be making six figures for whatever reason, but if you make it 200% of the median income, this gives them an incentive to improve the quality of life for the little man, rather than just the businesses, and stop them from just constantly voting to increase their own pay.
2) Any senator/representative who had more than half of the years he was in office for have a budget deficit is ineligible for re-election. Add a serious impetus to balance the budget
3) Congress benefits are tied directly to public benefits - their healthcare plan is Medicare/Medicaid, their retirement plan is Social Security, etc, so they can't just gut these things.
4) Limit and make transparent all campaign contributions and lobbying to reduce their impact in elections and lawmaking.
5) Any government shutdown or other budgetary lapse results in suspension of pay for Congress until it is resolved.
6) Seats are awarded on a state level, not a district level. Senate seats are both voted directly by the entirety of the state, while House seats are voted based on both party and candidate, with a proportional number of seats going to each party based on the % of the vote that party got, and assigned to candidates in descending order based on the number of votes. So, for a state with 10 seats in the house, if the vote goes 50/40/10% Dem/Rep/Green, then the 5 most-voted Democrats, the 4 most-voted Republicans, and the most-voted Green candidate all get seats.
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The big problem is that the "vote them out and vote in people who actually do something" doesn't really work because most of the worst offenders are effectively gerrymandered in more or less permanently.
I disagree, the big problem right now is the tea party, which is a new phenomenon. Establishment republicans and democrats are willing to compromise and get things done. the Tea Party came in as a direct response to ObamaCare, and with the explicit intention of "they said they didn't need Republican votes, so they won't have any, for anything." It's the new guys that were voted in, as well as the need for the establishment to satisfy the tea party voters in their districts, that are causing the extreme gridlock.
I said it about a year ago (I think. my timeline may be wrong), and I think its still true, what the republican party needs to do is sever ties with the Tea Party. Doing so would push the republican party to the middle, and push the democrat party to the left. The result would be republicans losing control of congress and the white house for about 3 cycles. After which they would have had time to rebuild and would be in a significantly better position.
It's not going to happen, but it would be the best thing for the Republican party, and also for the country.
I disagree, the big problem right now is the tea party, which is a new phenomenon. Establishment republicans and democrats are willing to compromise and get things done. the Tea Party came in as a direct response to ObamaCare, and with the explicit intention of "they said they didn't need Republican votes, so they won't have any, for anything." It's the new guys that were voted in, as well as the need for the establishment to satisfy the tea party voters in their districts, that are causing the extreme gridlock.
I said it about a year ago (I think. my timeline may be wrong), and I think its still true, what the republican party needs to do is sever ties with the Tea Party. Doing so would push the republican party to the middle, and push the democrat party to the left. The result would be republicans losing control of congress and the white house for about 3 cycles. After which they would have had time to rebuild and would be in a significantly better position.
It's not going to happen, but it would be the best thing for the Republican party, and also for the country.
This is actually a rather good analysis, but I'm not sure your solution is likely to happen either.
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I disagree, the big problem right now is the tea party, which is a new phenomenon. Establishment republicans and democrats are willing to compromise and get things done. the Tea Party came in as a direct response to ObamaCare, and with the explicit intention of "they said they didn't need Republican votes, so they won't have any, for anything." It's the new guys that were voted in, as well as the need for the establishment to satisfy the tea party voters in their districts, that are causing the extreme gridlock.
I said it about a year ago (I think. my timeline may be wrong), and I think its still true, what the republican party needs to do is sever ties with the Tea Party. Doing so would push the republican party to the middle, and push the democrat party to the left. The result would be republicans losing control of congress and the white house for about 3 cycles. After which they would have had time to rebuild and would be in a significantly better position.
It's not going to happen, but it would be the best thing for the Republican party, and also for the country.
I agree with your analysis of the current state of the Tea Party, except that I don't think these issues start with the Tea Party. The Tea Party is the end result of what had been brewing the Republican Party for decades. Simply excising the Tea Party won't solve the problems with the core beliefs that compose them. And if you don't deal with those issues the Tea Party will disappear back into the base and until they bubble up to the surface again in 20 years. The Republican's strength - being able to rally most of their supporters in a single direction (as opposed to the Dems having to herd cats) - is also their greatest weakness when those same supporters harbor far more fringe beliefs and start to employ those same tactics against the moderates in the party.
Do moderate Republicans want them gone? Absolutely. Will they actually get rid of them? Never, because they depend on the fringe and if they split the party - even by 10% - there is no way they'll recover enough to beat the Democrats in the near future.
Do moderate Republicans want them gone? Absolutely. Will they actually get rid of them? Never, because they depend on the fringe and if they split the party - even by 10% - there is no way they'll recover enough to beat the Democrats in the near future.
Yeah, short-term interests are the enemy of long-term interests here.
In twenty years or so, when the GOP can't win an election anyway due to demographic shifts, that's when we may start to see a real reinvention process.
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Let's admit it...Congress is broken. Neither side agrees to anything. Everyone wants to show strength and defiance. We get constant bickering, finger pointing, and no compromises. The result? A lot of nothing.
The last 8 years have been the worse and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight.
How do we fix it? We are supposed to vote them out and vote in new people....so far it seems we are getting the same crap.
Why do you think these people were elected into office in the first place?
Hint: It's not compromise. Everyone says they want political compromise, but they usually mean they want the other side to compromise to their team. The thing is, the other camp wants the same.
The fact of the matter is that these politicians are getting elected to go against the other party. And that's what they're doing.
It sounds like many are saying "The republican party is doomed, and doesn't want to accept it." I thought that for the Democratic party in 2004, but -clearly- I was wrong.
Watching videos like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo
I feel like our system is just worn out. ~250 years was just the expiration date for our kind of Democracy. The founding father's really didn't know what they were doing in the long run, and thought that reading Locke qualified them to make a new system. But, it didn't. I don't blame them or anything. They were trying something new, and they couldn't run computer simulations or something to know where it would go. The only way to fix it now is a major firmware update, but we're not going to do it. So, only a catastrophic system failure is going to get us to change, which is where we are headed.
Well... it's probably not going to be that bad; likely, just a slow death like the British Empire.
There are better versions of modern Democracy now, but we're still running the prototype.
Why do you think these people were elected into office in the first place?
Hint: It's not compromise. Everyone says they want political compromise, but they usually mean they want the other side to compromise to their team. The thing is, the other camp wants the same.
The fact of the matter is that these politicians are getting elected to go against the other party. And that's what they're doing.
Yes, just so. The Republicans ran on an explicit platform of opposing Obama, the people who elected them knew about that platform, and they made a conscious decision to support that platform with their votes.
Thus the question before my mind is whether or not the current political situation really reprsents a failure of American democracy. Here are some politicans running on a platform, getting voted in on that platform, and then executing that platform. Sure, the "platform" was to gridlock the legislative process, but evidently it is the case that sufficiently-many voters prefer gridlock to the furtherance of certain of Obama's policies.
And while we're on the subject, n.b. that recent attempts by the executive branch to ignore these voter preferences and bypass the legislative process might also be considered corrosive of American democracy as well. (By my own lights, more corrosive than the gridlock itself.)
The Tea Party is the end result of what had been brewing the Republican Party for decades. Simply excising the Tea Party won't solve the problems with the core beliefs that compose them. And if you don't deal with those issues the Tea Party will disappear back into the base and until they bubble up to the surface again in 20 years.
I agree with your assertion that Tea Party-esque groups are always lurking latent within right-wing parties, and will surface when sufficiently provoked. However, I am curious what specific issues you'd deal with concerning the influence of these latent groups, and how you'd deal with them.
My own opinion is that reactionaries are, well, reacting to the top-down imposition of social policies they oppose. If we lived in a hypothetical US where social policy was put in place bottom-up, then the Tea Partiers could all move to Arizona, where there would be no Obamacare, and they would suddenly find themselves without a hot-button issue to cry about. Of course, bottom-up implementation of policy is a plank in many right-wing platforms to begin with...
Watching videos like this: I feel like our system is just worn out. ~250 years was just the expiration date for our kind of Democracy.
...Okay. New rule: any video that proceeds to lambaste a voting system without explaining whyevery voting systemhas horrificcollections of flaws and it is ultimately a human choice concerning which of these collections of flaws you are willing to accept, should be regarded as propaganda rather than information.
Furthermore, simple majority voting has an interesting virtue which is not mentioned in the video -- once the system has been winnowed down to two parties, May's theorem guarantees that simple majority voting handles that case "correctly." In other words, one of the flaws of simple majority voting (winnowing to two parties) actually acts in such a way as to remedy all the other flaws!
Another deceptive thing about this video is that it mentions some flaws which have nothing to do with choice of voting system, such as "minority rule" (as long as there can only be one king/president ruling over a sufficiently diverse population, there will always be minority rule) and gerrymandering (which can happen in any voting system; districts which are more likely to highly-weight certain candidates can always be found in practice). (Also, a further word in favor of the Founders: they anticipated the problem of "minority rule" and attempted to correct for it by separating governing powers and putting some of them in the hands of a large legislature, which separation is presently being eroded, soo...)
So, bottom line: no matter what voting system is chosen, some snarky cynic with too much time on his hands is always going to be able to make a cute Youtube video with cartoon tigers lambasting that particular system. Call this the No-Voting-Utopia heuristic. And so, no matter what democratic voting system you, Taylor, find yourself in, you will be singing the same dirge.
To be sure, the founders made certain subjective choices regarding the voting system -- choices which, given their lack of sophisticated mathematics, they didn't even realize were subjective. Nevertheless, it has not yet turned out that their choice has been proven "wrong" in any objective sense. So, you've jumped the gun here.
...Okay. New rule: any video that proceeds to lambaste a voting system without explaining whyevery voting systemhas horrificcollections of flaws and it is ultimately a human choice concerning which of these collections of flaws you are willing to accept, should be regarded as propaganda rather than information.
Furthermore, simple majority voting has an interesting virtue which is not mentioned in the video
I am sorry if you took offence to the video, that was not my intent.
The big problem is that the "vote them out and vote in people who actually do something" doesn't really work because most of the worst offenders are effectively gerrymandered in more or less permanently. The people in their districts actually LIKE their obstructionist tactics, and the last time they had the chance, they reorganized districts so that was even more heavily the case. This means that the earliest things can even really *possibly* change is 2020, when the next census comes and areas can be redistricted again, which we wouldn't be able to see the effects of until 2021. But even that won't solve everything, because A) there's a decent chance the same people will still be in power then and can leave the districts as they are, and B) for many of the worst offenders, even insane re-gerrymandering can't get them kicked out.
The best I can hope for at this point is that the 2021 congress will skew heavily in my preferred direction to the point where they can bypass filibusters and etc, but I'm not even optimistic that that will happen. And six years is a long time for the current awful state of affairs to continue.
Part of me wants to see the districts removed from the voting system altogether, I think its an outdated system for setting up the congress as a "representational body" for the people of the country. let alone making up the voice of the people. we could be doing something better than districting.
The only purpose I see districts serving these days is giving the federal government a geographic boundary work with, for which it can give that specific geographic area or people with in specific things. "things" being legislation, assistance, etc. Districts also play a role in how the government distributes stuff nationwide, so its useful for those functions. Again, I think districts are bad for the voting process.
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The only purpose I see districts serving these days is giving the federal government a geographic boundary work with, for which it can give that specific geographic area or people with in specific things. "things" being legislation, assistance, etc. Districts also play a role in how the government distributes stuff nationwide, so its useful for those functions. Again, I think districts are bad for the voting process.
Districts, when done properly instead of gerrymandered for political purposes, ensure that significantly more voices are represented in the legislative body than the majority. Without districts, each state would effectively be represented only by the largest population density areas of their state. Michigan's voters in Northern Michigan / the UP would be overwhelmed by the voter's in Detroit for example. Removal of districts entirely would all but ensure the "tyranny of the majority".
I'm not saying districting isn't a problem as it currently stands -- gerrymandering does have flaws. But removal of districts entirely is not the solution.
Right, districts in theory serve a purpose because the rural areas will elect someone who represents their interests and the urban areas will do the same with someone who represents theirs.
But you could accomplish something similar by assigning seats based on the % of votes a party gets, as I detailed above. Detroit may represent the majority in Michigan, but even if it's 60% of the population and skews 90% Blue, that still leaves 6% of the total vote from them going red, and if the other 40% of the population is split 50/50, that would mean about a 75/25 split statewide, so with 8 Representatives (making this number up for exemplary purposes), that'd mean 6 Dem Reps and 2 Republican ones.
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That is unlikely to solve the issue though. When doling out seat as a proportion of the total vote for an area you are no longer directly voting for the person who represents you in congress/senate.
Instead you are granting the party that priviledge as they will have a ranked list of people from each state that they want in the House of Representatives/Senate and then depending on how many seats they get granted they just run down the top 8/2 names in your example and send those people to Washington.
This isn't so much of a problem if you are happy being represented by a party drone, who is willing to do whatever it takes to stay high enough up on the party list to guarantee that he stays in Washingtom, but not so good if you want to vote in the maverick who is willing to vote more on his own conscience rather than just following the party line.
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I agree with your assertion that Tea Party-esque groups are always lurking latent within right-wing parties, and will surface when sufficiently provoked. However, I am curious what specific issues you'd deal with concerning the influence of these latent groups, and how you'd deal with them.
The specific issues are numerous, but I think the most important change would be how the Republicans communicate with the public and discuss their policies. As it stands, there are too many 'on principle' policies in the party, and a large part of that is because of mostly fallacious beliefs about programs that were propagated in the 60's and 70's. This frequently leads to an antagonistic attitude towards the recipients of programs (like the perception that welfare recipients are lazy) and a reasonable debate about the merits of the program gets thrown out the window. My issue with that kind of attitude is that it leads to hypocritical stances and giant blind spots in the party. The three largest budget items in the US are the Military, Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security, but budget talks are always overshadowed by penny ante debates of welfare programs that really don't cost us very much.
If I would change things, I would change how Republicans communicated their ideals to be less truthy and more evidence-based. Drop the most dubious claims (like voter ID) and be specific about what entitlements you're talking about - because the biggest and most expensive are the ones they never discuss. Beyond that, I'd say it's most important to shut down the crazies before they can rally the base with their hyperbole. If the Democrats do one thing right, it's that they silence and marginalize their more fringe elements. It costs them in party unity, but they benefit from not sounding like insane people all the time. Which is why people frequently buy into the stupid ideas they do put forward, because they seem far more reasonable than the Republican alternative.
That is unlikely to solve the issue though. When doling out seat as a proportion of the total vote for an area you are no longer directly voting for the person who represents you in congress/senate.
Instead you are granting the party that priviledge as they will have a ranked list of people from each state that they want in the House of Representatives/Senate and then depending on how many seats they get granted they just run down the top 8/2 names in your example and send those people to Washington.
This isn't so much of a problem if you are happy being represented by a party drone, who is willing to do whatever it takes to stay high enough up on the party list to guarantee that he stays in Washingtom, but not so good if you want to vote in the maverick who is willing to vote more on his own conscience rather than just following the party line.
In my original post I suggested a solution to this, but I didn't really go in depth on it.
What I'd suggest is this:
Each party puts forth up to N candidates, where N is the number of total available seats.
Voters vote for their chosen party, and also cast X votes for members within that party. X might be half of N, or some other metric.
Seats are distributed to parties based on the % of the Dem/Rep(/3rd party) votes that party received.
Seats are awarded within a party based on the most popular candidates of that party.
So in the Michigan example above, the Republican candidates would likely focus their campaigning efforts on the rural areas, since that's where the majority of their voter base is. This gives them an incentive to do what's best for those people to get re-elected, rather than doing right by "their party".
Figuring out how the party nominates people is still a wrinkle I'd need to iron out, though.
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Thus the question before my mind is whether or not the current political situation really reprsents a failure of American democracy. Here are some politicans running on a platform, getting voted in on that platform, and then executing that platform. Sure, the "platform" was to gridlock the legislative process, but evidently it is the case that sufficiently-many voters prefer gridlock to the furtherance of certain of Obama's policies.
If anything, it's a demonstration of the effectiveness of system the American republic runs on, as the system is inherently arranged so that grand, sweeping change is very, very difficult to achieve. It requires a very broad basis of support to get anything done in Congress. It's not meant to be efficient. It's meant to make it really hard for anyone to get anything done without compromise and cooperation, so when you see nothing getting done because no one's cooperating, that's the system working exactly as it was intended.
Now, as for Republicans being obstructionist towards Obama, I feel it must be noted that it's not as though Obama isn't a divisive figure in the Democratic party. People are too quick to make this Republicans vs. Democrats, ignoring the obvious fact that Obama has alienated his party to varying degrees since he got into office. Remember that the Democrats started out with a supermajority in the Senate and the House. Yet, Obama had difficulty passing Obamacare. Why? Other Democrats. Specifically the fiscally conservative blue dog Democrats.
And needless to say, it hasn't gotten better since then. The last election was marked by the Democratic candidates doing everything they could to distance themselves from Obama.
And while we're on the subject, n.b. that recent attempts by the executive branch to ignore these voter preferences and bypass the legislative process might also be considered corrosive of American democracy as well. (By my own lights, more corrosive than the gridlock itself.)
That, on the other hand, is NOT how the system was intended to run and should be addressed.
If anything, it's a demonstration of the effectiveness of system the American republic runs on, as the system is inherently arranged so that grand, sweeping change is very, very difficult to achieve. It requires a very broad basis of support to get anything done in Congress. It's not meant to be efficient. It's meant to make it really hard for anyone to get anything done without compromise and cooperation, so when you see nothing getting done because no one's cooperating, that's the system working exactly as it was intended.
That's a good point. Not passing bills isn't a bad thing in the Legislature.
Shutting down the government and attempting to derail international negotiations, however, are problems. There is an ongoing arms race between which side (both in terms of partisanship and branch of government) can overreach the most.
And needless to say, it hasn't gotten better since then. The last election was marked by the Democratic candidates doing everything they could to distance themselves from Obama.
Which they reversed soon afterwards, to be fair. And it was a mistake, as several outgoing legislators noted. Midterm elections are always dominated by conservatives for a variety of reasons, and not having a united front against the incoming wave was a major mistake (which they always seem to make).
And while we're on the subject, n.b. that recent attempts by the executive branch to ignore these voter preferences and bypass the legislative process might also be considered corrosive of American democracy as well. (By my own lights, more corrosive than the gridlock itself.)
That, on the other hand, is NOT how the system was intended to run and should be addressed.
You guys lose me here, as you're getting a bit hyperbolic. That's why we have the judiciary, which is doing it's job right now blocking the action.
No discussion of Congressional factionalism would be complete without reference to the Federalist papers.
Madison, what do you have to say on this topic? (Federalist 10)
"The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning Government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for preëminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other, than to coöperate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions, and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold, and those who are without property, have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern Legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the Government.
No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause; because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time; yet what are many of the most important acts of legislation, but so many judicial determinations, not indeed concerning the rights of single persons, but concerning the rights of large bodies of citizens? and what are the different classes of Legislators, but advocates and parties to the causes which they determine? Is a law proposed concerning private debts? It is a question to which the creditors are parties on one side and the debtors on the other. Justice ought to hold the balance between them. Yet the parties are, and must be, themselves the judges; and the most numerous party, or, in other words, the most powerful faction, must be expected to prevail. Shall domestic manufactures be encouraged, and in what degree, by restrictions on foreign manufactures? are questions which would be differently decided by the landed and the manufacturing classes; and probably by neither, with a sole regard to justice and the public good. The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party, to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling, with which they overburden the inferior number, is a shilling saved to their own pockets.
It is in vain to say, that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm: Nor, in many cases, can such an adjustment be made at all, without taking into view indirect and remote considerations, which will rarely prevail over the immediate interest which one party may find in disregarding the rights of another, or the good of the whole.
The inference to which we are brought is, that the causes of faction cannot be removed; and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its effects.
If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote. It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution. When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular Government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens. To secure the public good, and private rights, against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular Government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed: Let me add, that it is the great desideratum, by which this form of Government can be rescued from the opprobrium under which it has so long labored, and be recommended to the esteem and adoption of mankind. "
That is unlikely to solve the issue though. When doling out seat as a proportion of the total vote for an area you are no longer directly voting for the person who represents you in congress/senate.
Instead you are granting the party that priviledge as they will have a ranked list of people from each state that they want in the House of Representatives/Senate and then depending on how many seats they get granted they just run down the top 8/2 names in your example and send those people to Washington.
This isn't so much of a problem if you are happy being represented by a party drone, who is willing to do whatever it takes to stay high enough up on the party list to guarantee that he stays in Washingtom, but not so good if you want to vote in the maverick who is willing to vote more on his own conscience rather than just following the party line.
In a two party system, it would not accomplish much by only having 1 or the other choice. If we had more parties available then the granting a seat based on an areas voted proportion wouldn't be so bad. when choice is so few its too easy for the two separate entities to be running a "defacto monopoly" on choice, even in this proportion system. they already accomplish that in the current system.
there is another systemic problem of local elections not having people running opposition against incumbents. I don't think this problem affects the House of representives elections as much, but all the same I'm not sure if Awarding seats based on proportion would solve that problem, or help to further it.
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This has always baffled me: people will look towards a situation of congressional deadlock, born out of two parties that are opposing each other, and then say, "You know what would make this situation better? If we had more parties."
Hey, the problem is factionalism, let's create more factions!
This has always baffled me: people will look towards a situation of congressional deadlock, born out of two parties that are opposing each other, and then say, "You know what would make this situation better? If we had more parties."
Hey, the problem is factionalism, let's create more factions!
This is definitely a Madisonian way of thinking, so the idea carries a lot of weight regardless of the actual merits of the idea. I'm sure there are good rebuttals in the Anti-federalist papers.
From wiki:
"Madison discusses at great length at the end the issue of political factions. He recognizes that factions will always be present and that the only way to counteract the effects of factions is to have numerous factions. In other words, even if individuals mingle with other members of the same social groups, ideals, and goals, no particular group should be able to become so strong as to thwart the interest of all other groups. No faction can become large enough to overthrow all other factions in a well-run republic."
In fact Madison's solution to factionalism by creating more factions is one of the reasons our Government is so split up.
Government Power -> Divided into Federal vs State --10th amendment. The rest is reserved to the people.
Federal -> Divided into Executive, Legislative, Judiciary w/checks and balances. Legislative further divided into 2 houses.
State -> Divided into State executives, legislatures, judiciaries.
Federalist 51.
"But it is not possible to give to each department an equal power of self-defence. In republican Government, the Legislative authority necessarily predominates. The remedy for this inconveniency is, to divide the Legislature into different branches; and to render them, by different modes of election, and different principles of action, as little connected with each other, as the nature of their common functions, and their common dependence on the society, will admit. It may even be necessary to guard against dangerous encroachments by still further precautions."
Basically when you have an idea coming from a founding father, the idea is going to hang around for awhile. Of course Madison's extremely generalized conception of factions shows that he almost certainly didn't conceive of our two party system in which the "factions" can remain united in spite of the deliberate separation of powers.
The last 8 years have been the worse and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight.
How do we fix it? We are supposed to vote them out and vote in new people....so far it seems we are getting the same crap.
The best I can hope for at this point is that the 2021 congress will skew heavily in my preferred direction to the point where they can bypass filibusters and etc, but I'm not even optimistic that that will happen. And six years is a long time for the current awful state of affairs to continue.
There are some steps that could be taken to improve the situation. Unfortunately, the people who would have to vote to approve these measures would be the same people they'd be designed to affect, so they'd never actually approve them. I'd start with some or all of the following:
1) Congress pay is tied to the median income of the US. Make it some large % if you think they should still be making six figures for whatever reason, but if you make it 200% of the median income, this gives them an incentive to improve the quality of life for the little man, rather than just the businesses, and stop them from just constantly voting to increase their own pay.
2) Any senator/representative who had more than half of the years he was in office for have a budget deficit is ineligible for re-election. Add a serious impetus to balance the budget
3) Congress benefits are tied directly to public benefits - their healthcare plan is Medicare/Medicaid, their retirement plan is Social Security, etc, so they can't just gut these things.
4) Limit and make transparent all campaign contributions and lobbying to reduce their impact in elections and lawmaking.
5) Any government shutdown or other budgetary lapse results in suspension of pay for Congress until it is resolved.
6) Seats are awarded on a state level, not a district level. Senate seats are both voted directly by the entirety of the state, while House seats are voted based on both party and candidate, with a proportional number of seats going to each party based on the % of the vote that party got, and assigned to candidates in descending order based on the number of votes. So, for a state with 10 seats in the house, if the vote goes 50/40/10% Dem/Rep/Green, then the 5 most-voted Democrats, the 4 most-voted Republicans, and the most-voted Green candidate all get seats.
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I disagree, the big problem right now is the tea party, which is a new phenomenon. Establishment republicans and democrats are willing to compromise and get things done. the Tea Party came in as a direct response to ObamaCare, and with the explicit intention of "they said they didn't need Republican votes, so they won't have any, for anything." It's the new guys that were voted in, as well as the need for the establishment to satisfy the tea party voters in their districts, that are causing the extreme gridlock.
I said it about a year ago (I think. my timeline may be wrong), and I think its still true, what the republican party needs to do is sever ties with the Tea Party. Doing so would push the republican party to the middle, and push the democrat party to the left. The result would be republicans losing control of congress and the white house for about 3 cycles. After which they would have had time to rebuild and would be in a significantly better position.
It's not going to happen, but it would be the best thing for the Republican party, and also for the country.
This is actually a rather good analysis, but I'm not sure your solution is likely to happen either.
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Oh, I know it's not going to happen. Its a shame, but it is what it is.
Do moderate Republicans want them gone? Absolutely. Will they actually get rid of them? Never, because they depend on the fringe and if they split the party - even by 10% - there is no way they'll recover enough to beat the Democrats in the near future.
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In twenty years or so, when the GOP can't win an election anyway due to demographic shifts, that's when we may start to see a real reinvention process.
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Hint: It's not compromise. Everyone says they want political compromise, but they usually mean they want the other side to compromise to their team. The thing is, the other camp wants the same.
The fact of the matter is that these politicians are getting elected to go against the other party. And that's what they're doing.
It sounds like many are saying "The republican party is doomed, and doesn't want to accept it." I thought that for the Democratic party in 2004, but -clearly- I was wrong.
Watching videos like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo
I feel like our system is just worn out. ~250 years was just the expiration date for our kind of Democracy. The founding father's really didn't know what they were doing in the long run, and thought that reading Locke qualified them to make a new system. But, it didn't. I don't blame them or anything. They were trying something new, and they couldn't run computer simulations or something to know where it would go. The only way to fix it now is a major firmware update, but we're not going to do it. So, only a catastrophic system failure is going to get us to change, which is where we are headed.
Well... it's probably not going to be that bad; likely, just a slow death like the British Empire.
There are better versions of modern Democracy now, but we're still running the prototype.
Yes, just so. The Republicans ran on an explicit platform of opposing Obama, the people who elected them knew about that platform, and they made a conscious decision to support that platform with their votes.
Thus the question before my mind is whether or not the current political situation really reprsents a failure of American democracy. Here are some politicans running on a platform, getting voted in on that platform, and then executing that platform. Sure, the "platform" was to gridlock the legislative process, but evidently it is the case that sufficiently-many voters prefer gridlock to the furtherance of certain of Obama's policies.
And while we're on the subject, n.b. that recent attempts by the executive branch to ignore these voter preferences and bypass the legislative process might also be considered corrosive of American democracy as well. (By my own lights, more corrosive than the gridlock itself.)
I agree with your assertion that Tea Party-esque groups are always lurking latent within right-wing parties, and will surface when sufficiently provoked. However, I am curious what specific issues you'd deal with concerning the influence of these latent groups, and how you'd deal with them.
My own opinion is that reactionaries are, well, reacting to the top-down imposition of social policies they oppose. If we lived in a hypothetical US where social policy was put in place bottom-up, then the Tea Partiers could all move to Arizona, where there would be no Obamacare, and they would suddenly find themselves without a hot-button issue to cry about. Of course, bottom-up implementation of policy is a plank in many right-wing platforms to begin with...
...Okay. New rule: any video that proceeds to lambaste a voting system without explaining why every voting system has horrific collections of flaws and it is ultimately a human choice concerning which of these collections of flaws you are willing to accept, should be regarded as propaganda rather than information.
Furthermore, simple majority voting has an interesting virtue which is not mentioned in the video -- once the system has been winnowed down to two parties, May's theorem guarantees that simple majority voting handles that case "correctly." In other words, one of the flaws of simple majority voting (winnowing to two parties) actually acts in such a way as to remedy all the other flaws!
Another deceptive thing about this video is that it mentions some flaws which have nothing to do with choice of voting system, such as "minority rule" (as long as there can only be one king/president ruling over a sufficiently diverse population, there will always be minority rule) and gerrymandering (which can happen in any voting system; districts which are more likely to highly-weight certain candidates can always be found in practice). (Also, a further word in favor of the Founders: they anticipated the problem of "minority rule" and attempted to correct for it by separating governing powers and putting some of them in the hands of a large legislature, which separation is presently being eroded, soo...)
So, bottom line: no matter what voting system is chosen, some snarky cynic with too much time on his hands is always going to be able to make a cute Youtube video with cartoon tigers lambasting that particular system. Call this the No-Voting-Utopia heuristic. And so, no matter what democratic voting system you, Taylor, find yourself in, you will be singing the same dirge.
To be sure, the founders made certain subjective choices regarding the voting system -- choices which, given their lack of sophisticated mathematics, they didn't even realize were subjective. Nevertheless, it has not yet turned out that their choice has been proven "wrong" in any objective sense. So, you've jumped the gun here.
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Part of me wants to see the districts removed from the voting system altogether, I think its an outdated system for setting up the congress as a "representational body" for the people of the country. let alone making up the voice of the people. we could be doing something better than districting.
The only purpose I see districts serving these days is giving the federal government a geographic boundary work with, for which it can give that specific geographic area or people with in specific things. "things" being legislation, assistance, etc. Districts also play a role in how the government distributes stuff nationwide, so its useful for those functions. Again, I think districts are bad for the voting process.
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Districts, when done properly instead of gerrymandered for political purposes, ensure that significantly more voices are represented in the legislative body than the majority. Without districts, each state would effectively be represented only by the largest population density areas of their state. Michigan's voters in Northern Michigan / the UP would be overwhelmed by the voter's in Detroit for example. Removal of districts entirely would all but ensure the "tyranny of the majority".
I'm not saying districting isn't a problem as it currently stands -- gerrymandering does have flaws. But removal of districts entirely is not the solution.
But you could accomplish something similar by assigning seats based on the % of votes a party gets, as I detailed above. Detroit may represent the majority in Michigan, but even if it's 60% of the population and skews 90% Blue, that still leaves 6% of the total vote from them going red, and if the other 40% of the population is split 50/50, that would mean about a 75/25 split statewide, so with 8 Representatives (making this number up for exemplary purposes), that'd mean 6 Dem Reps and 2 Republican ones.
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Instead you are granting the party that priviledge as they will have a ranked list of people from each state that they want in the House of Representatives/Senate and then depending on how many seats they get granted they just run down the top 8/2 names in your example and send those people to Washington.
This isn't so much of a problem if you are happy being represented by a party drone, who is willing to do whatever it takes to stay high enough up on the party list to guarantee that he stays in Washingtom, but not so good if you want to vote in the maverick who is willing to vote more on his own conscience rather than just following the party line.
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If I would change things, I would change how Republicans communicated their ideals to be less truthy and more evidence-based. Drop the most dubious claims (like voter ID) and be specific about what entitlements you're talking about - because the biggest and most expensive are the ones they never discuss. Beyond that, I'd say it's most important to shut down the crazies before they can rally the base with their hyperbole. If the Democrats do one thing right, it's that they silence and marginalize their more fringe elements. It costs them in party unity, but they benefit from not sounding like insane people all the time. Which is why people frequently buy into the stupid ideas they do put forward, because they seem far more reasonable than the Republican alternative.
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In my original post I suggested a solution to this, but I didn't really go in depth on it.
What I'd suggest is this:
Each party puts forth up to N candidates, where N is the number of total available seats.
Voters vote for their chosen party, and also cast X votes for members within that party. X might be half of N, or some other metric.
Seats are distributed to parties based on the % of the Dem/Rep(/3rd party) votes that party received.
Seats are awarded within a party based on the most popular candidates of that party.
So in the Michigan example above, the Republican candidates would likely focus their campaigning efforts on the rural areas, since that's where the majority of their voter base is. This gives them an incentive to do what's best for those people to get re-elected, rather than doing right by "their party".
Figuring out how the party nominates people is still a wrinkle I'd need to iron out, though.
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Now, as for Republicans being obstructionist towards Obama, I feel it must be noted that it's not as though Obama isn't a divisive figure in the Democratic party. People are too quick to make this Republicans vs. Democrats, ignoring the obvious fact that Obama has alienated his party to varying degrees since he got into office. Remember that the Democrats started out with a supermajority in the Senate and the House. Yet, Obama had difficulty passing Obamacare. Why? Other Democrats. Specifically the fiscally conservative blue dog Democrats.
And needless to say, it hasn't gotten better since then. The last election was marked by the Democratic candidates doing everything they could to distance themselves from Obama.
That, on the other hand, is NOT how the system was intended to run and should be addressed.
Shutting down the government and attempting to derail international negotiations, however, are problems. There is an ongoing arms race between which side (both in terms of partisanship and branch of government) can overreach the most.
More than that, Obamacare was simply hard to understand and it simply wasn't the Healthcare reform we needed.
Which they reversed soon afterwards, to be fair. And it was a mistake, as several outgoing legislators noted. Midterm elections are always dominated by conservatives for a variety of reasons, and not having a united front against the incoming wave was a major mistake (which they always seem to make).
You guys lose me here, as you're getting a bit hyperbolic. That's why we have the judiciary, which is doing it's job right now blocking the action.
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Madison, what do you have to say on this topic? (Federalist 10)
"The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning Government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for preëminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other, than to coöperate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions, and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold, and those who are without property, have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern Legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the Government.
No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause; because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time; yet what are many of the most important acts of legislation, but so many judicial determinations, not indeed concerning the rights of single persons, but concerning the rights of large bodies of citizens? and what are the different classes of Legislators, but advocates and parties to the causes which they determine? Is a law proposed concerning private debts? It is a question to which the creditors are parties on one side and the debtors on the other. Justice ought to hold the balance between them. Yet the parties are, and must be, themselves the judges; and the most numerous party, or, in other words, the most powerful faction, must be expected to prevail. Shall domestic manufactures be encouraged, and in what degree, by restrictions on foreign manufactures? are questions which would be differently decided by the landed and the manufacturing classes; and probably by neither, with a sole regard to justice and the public good. The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party, to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling, with which they overburden the inferior number, is a shilling saved to their own pockets.
It is in vain to say, that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm: Nor, in many cases, can such an adjustment be made at all, without taking into view indirect and remote considerations, which will rarely prevail over the immediate interest which one party may find in disregarding the rights of another, or the good of the whole.
The inference to which we are brought is, that the causes of faction cannot be removed; and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its effects.
If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote. It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution. When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular Government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens. To secure the public good, and private rights, against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular Government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed: Let me add, that it is the great desideratum, by which this form of Government can be rescued from the opprobrium under which it has so long labored, and be recommended to the esteem and adoption of mankind. "
In a two party system, it would not accomplish much by only having 1 or the other choice. If we had more parties available then the granting a seat based on an areas voted proportion wouldn't be so bad. when choice is so few its too easy for the two separate entities to be running a "defacto monopoly" on choice, even in this proportion system. they already accomplish that in the current system.
there is another systemic problem of local elections not having people running opposition against incumbents. I don't think this problem affects the House of representives elections as much, but all the same I'm not sure if Awarding seats based on proportion would solve that problem, or help to further it.
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Hey, the problem is factionalism, let's create more factions!
communist...socialist... "democrat" out of the white house.This is definitely a Madisonian way of thinking, so the idea carries a lot of weight regardless of the actual merits of the idea. I'm sure there are good rebuttals in the Anti-federalist papers.
From wiki:
"Madison discusses at great length at the end the issue of political factions. He recognizes that factions will always be present and that the only way to counteract the effects of factions is to have numerous factions. In other words, even if individuals mingle with other members of the same social groups, ideals, and goals, no particular group should be able to become so strong as to thwart the interest of all other groups. No faction can become large enough to overthrow all other factions in a well-run republic."
In fact Madison's solution to factionalism by creating more factions is one of the reasons our Government is so split up.
Government Power -> Divided into Federal vs State --10th amendment. The rest is reserved to the people.
Federal -> Divided into Executive, Legislative, Judiciary w/checks and balances. Legislative further divided into 2 houses.
State -> Divided into State executives, legislatures, judiciaries.
Federalist 51.
"But it is not possible to give to each department an equal power of self-defence. In republican Government, the Legislative authority necessarily predominates. The remedy for this inconveniency is, to divide the Legislature into different branches; and to render them, by different modes of election, and different principles of action, as little connected with each other, as the nature of their common functions, and their common dependence on the society, will admit. It may even be necessary to guard against dangerous encroachments by still further precautions."
Basically when you have an idea coming from a founding father, the idea is going to hang around for awhile. Of course Madison's extremely generalized conception of factions shows that he almost certainly didn't conceive of our two party system in which the "factions" can remain united in spite of the deliberate separation of powers.