What are Democrats doing?

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I did go over that in previous posts but perhaps more detail will help:

- Abolition of the office of President, or reduction to a merely ceremonial role. If that is not possible, then an instant runoff system should be used and the electoral college should be scrapped. The Speaker of the House should become the Prime Minister and take the majority (or all) of the President’s duties.

- Make elections to the House of Representatives no longer tied to states, and instead using nationwide proportional representation. So if the Bernie Sanders Party gets 5% of the vote they get 5% of the seats.

- a similar amendment mandating that states use a proportional system for their own elected houses.

- this wouldn’t need a constitution change but only really works if you have the above: campaign finance reform. Strict spending limits that make it impossible to “buy an election”.

- only tangentially related but I’d make franchise universal to all citizens and residents. Should be the case everywhere. Is the case nowhere.

Implement those changes and third parties would become viable overnight.

So you could have local parties from each state wielding influence in temporary blocks around issues in the senate?

(Have to say I’ve also wondered if the US would benefit from having the head of government in the lower house: Just wondered, there are probably arguments against I’m not aware of)

Ok,then what you are saying is that the US should switch over to a parliamentary system,you should have said that and we would have known all the details.

The English parliament goes back almost 1,000 years,we don't have that tradition,it would be just as hard to convince any significant amount of Americans to do that,then would it take to get Americans to embrace multiple party's.

I am not saying it's a bad idea,the parliamentary system works throughout Europe and the world and vastly out numbers our system of government.

But the issue is more would any real number of Americans want that system of government,I am not putting down your suggestion,I'm just not seeing it ever gaining any real popularity.I understand what your saying now.

Not true. The US constitution does not mandate first past the post in any election. Even proportional representation is allowed, and in the past Congress had multi-member districts, though Congress outlawed them in 1967. Today, some states use more of a run-off system for Congressional and state and local elections, such as California where the primary today is not at all based on party and the top two candidates regardless of party go on to the general, Louisiana, and maybe some other states. For Presidential elections, the Supreme Court has ruled that states have plenary power to decide how their electors are chosen, so if a state wanted to they could switch to proportional allocation of electoral votes.

The issue isn't the constitution, it's the lack of will. For decades, money in politics has allowed donors to game the system, and the people in power are largely happy with the way things are. And though lots of people are unhappy with the current system, they're unable or unwilling to expend the energy required to actually build and sustain a movement. For a lot of people, they're often working multiple jobs, they've got student loans and medical bills to pay off, they don't have the time and money to do what's needed.

What he is suggesting is voting districts in perportional precincts where the states are a non issue.That would require Constitutionally action.

I'm not sure you mean when you said we used to have more than one representative in a district,that impossible,how could you have two congressman in one district,that defeats the point of a district.

They existed in the past. In fact, the constitution doesn't say anything about Congressional districts at all. Here's more on multi-member districts:

http://centerforpolitics.org/crystalbal ... -the-past/

Line item veto was attempted under Clinton.

You’re familiar with the phrase “Be careful what you ask for, because you just might get it?”

Our government has been totally corrupt since Woodrow Wilson was president, and gets worse with each election. I’m still amazed that I get my SSDI check every month, and Medicare, through my Private advantage plan, mostly pays the medical bills. Give it time, since Trumpty Dumpty and the Rethuglicans AND the Dopeycrats want to relieve us that paid into the system of all of our hard earned benefits., just like Reagan attempted to do back in the 1980’s.

So how does election work in a multiple member district,do they have 5 candidates and the two with the most votes get elected congressman,how does that even work,how do you possibly have two congressman from one district.

As far a voting districts crossing state lines,the issue is state sovereignty,if voting districts were carved up based on population perportional precincts with the states being a non issue.

We don't have province's here in America,we are a federation of 50 miniature independent nation's,that's what states are.States have sovereignty and the federal government is the glue that holds the states together.

By carving up new districts that cross state lines your taking away states right to form districts and have voting be a representation of there state values.

Massachusetts and Colorado have legalized marijuana but pot is still illegal on the Federal level,but the federal government will not raid pot shops or in anyway interfere with pot legalization in some states because they respect state sovereignty.Unless your arrested for another federal offense and happen to have pot on you,the feds won't make marijuana arrests in states where pots is legal.

We fought a civil war over what's states rights were,the Republicans who evolved out of the Federalists,said the federal government could ban slavery.The democrats,said the states had the right to decide for themselves on slavery.This conflict led to war,and the federal government won and rightly so but it still led to war because states do have certain rights.

It may be right to re do voting districts with states as a non issue,but that would require Constitutionally action.We are not a nation of provinces,we are a federation of 50 miniature independent countries,with a strong federal government as the glue that holds it together.

This type of redistricting would be a major assault on state sovereignty and would mean at there very least a word from SCOTUS,if not an actual constructional amendment.

You cannot elect a President proportionally. What are you going to do, have a Democratic President in the morning and a Republican President in the afternoon? A proportional electoral college is still a form of FPTP.

Similarly if your state only has one representative, or two senators (I might have that the wrong way around) then you cannot elect them proportionally in any meaningful sense. Depending on the system, you need at least five or six representatives before smaller parties start to have a chance.

Each state has at least 3 electoral votes, and the state gets to choose how to allocate them. So if a state wants to proportionally allocate 3 electoral votes, then for example if the R candidate gets 33% of the vote, the D candidate 33% of vote, and a third-party candidate also 33% of the vote, then the state would allocate 1 elector for each candidate.

If you're talking about the vote of all the electors for President, then no it's not FPTP, because the top candidate has to have a majority of electoral votes to actually win. Otherwise the election is thrown into the House, which has only happened twice in history, once in 1800 and again in 1824. One could make an argument that the election in the House at least partly incorporates FPTP, because while the winning candidate must win state delegations comprising a majority of all the states,--right now, that would be at least 26 state delegations out of 50 states--each state delegation's vote as I understand it is based on an FPTP count of who all the representatives from that state vote for.



You make a good point on if a state has only one representative and two senators (and the two senators are not normally both elected in the same year), but states can and California and Louisiana at least have a run-off system of some kind, so that the winner must get a majority of the vote. If a majority is required and not merely a plurality, then it's not FPTP.

My point was that the Constitution does not mandate FPTP, which I should remind people allows a candidate with only a plurality to win. (Though I can see I was technically incorrect on House run-off elections for President, as the state delegation's vote is in practice based on an FPTP count of that state's representatives and who they vote for. Then again, the Constitution doesn't actually say anywhere that the state delegation's vote has to be allocated this way. Still, it's hard to imagine how it could be done otherwise.) I didn't say that proportional representation could be used everywhere or in every context.

This is an interesting perspective:

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpoli ... -dunleavy/

Apparently, this rule only applies to the United States. It does not apply to other FPTP systems. And apparently, in the US there is a tendency for the 3rd party vote to concentrate more in districts which much more heavily lean toward one of the 2 major parties over the other. But in other FPTP countries, the tendency is the opposite, as there the 3rd party vote tends to cluster much more heavily in districts where neither Labour nor the Conservatives dominate. The same is true in India for the Lok Sabha (lower legislative house), for Congress vs. the BJP.

For the US House of Representatives in 2006, here is a chart where each data point represents a Congressional district; the x-axis reflects the lead in Republican votes over Democratic votes to vice versa, while the y-axis reflects the total number of votes for 3rd parties. So essentially, we're looking at the R over D/D over R lead and the total number of votes for 3rd parties for each district:



The same kind of chart for the UK House of Commons constituencies in 2005, for Labour vs. Conservatives:



The same for the Indian Lok Sabha districts, for Congress vs. BJP:



Notice how in the US, the 3rd party vote is only really significant in districts where one of the two major parties in dominant; but in at least 2 other FPTP countries, the 3rd party vote tends to cluster in districts where the vote is very close anyway. In the US, the 3rd party vote clusters away from the center of the x-axis, but in the UK and India the 3rd party vote clusters in the center of the x-axis.

So the dominance of the two-party system in the US appears to be due to factors other than FPTP voting.

From the article:

One such state where the senators out number the representatives is Vermont,and before Bernie Sanders was a senator,he was Vermont's sole congressman.And yes he was a independent,yes a third party,he was actually a socialist but then called himself an independent once elected to congress.

The truth is third party's can work in any type of district if people really want them too,and there is a more pragmatic likelyhood of people minds on third and fourth party's changing then all this complex political theory you guys are talking about will come to pass.

As far as having voting districts that that are constructed without consideration of the states,in that case just get rid of the states and divide America into 12 or 13 very large Provinces and call our selves "The American Republic" or something of that nature.

I'm not sure who you're talking to about this, but I wanna make clear that I never mentioned "having voting districts that are constructed without consideration of the states." If anything, I was talking about giving states greater flexibility to allocate within their borders the representatives apportioned to them, such as allowing them to create multi-member districts, which some states did do in the past. I never spoke of districts stretching across 2 or more states, or depriving states of representatives.

I'm getting the sinking feeling that a communication problem may be starting to form in this thread.

Communication had been an issue throughout this thread from the beginning.

We have three different posters all misunderstanding each other.

We definitely need to get on the same page.

Cut for length.

I agree that talk of absolute laws is wrongheaded.

I think the UK chart lacks proper context. For one thing, the electoral map has changed a lot since 2005. I tried to find maps of how US Representatives were apportioned in various years but could not find any to compare.

Lib Dem victories were the result of years of hard campaigning. They didn’t just magically find that it was possible for them to win a seat suddenly, they spent years building it up. Monthly newsletters to residents, door knocking, highlighting issues important to locals. Win local elections and then build up to winning a seat.

In the US, this concept seems to be almost alien. You do campaign, but you don’t seem to view it as a way you can make a party viable. The Libertarian Party don’t decide that they can win the state seats for Colorado’s sixth district and then compete for the sixth district in Congressional elections. The Green Party doesn’t go door knocking in San Francisco outside of Presidential election season. You have two parties that do things, and then a bunch of people who LARP as politicians for a few months every four years.

After the coalition, of course, Lib Dem support went massively to the Conservatives and they were entirely shut out of seats where they used to compete with Labour. In 2019, there were only four seats where all three major parties were competitive, and they were all in London. The only other seat where the LDs challenged Labour at all was one where the Labour incumbent was found to be an internet troll and then he didn’t do any constituency work. And in Scotland, there are no seats where two parties challenged the SNP. I think the best third place finish was around 15%.

If you have a proportional system then suddenly you don’t need to do quite the same level of local campaigning (although it helps, particularly when you start from nothing). You also don’t need to worry so much about the spoiler effect or the other psychological factors that keep people bound to their parties.

An analogy: British people will often say that they want their food to be environmentally sustainable, free range, locally produced, etc. But then you give them the choice between food like that, and food which is slightly cheaper, and over 90% choose the cheaper option.

American people say they want third parties, but they put in none of the work necessary to make third parties viable in non-proportional systems.

If you want more options, then once the election is over, hit the streets to campaign for a party that fits you perfectly. Maybe in 2024 you’ll have a new LREM.

Specifically what are you defining as a "proportional system".