CRGreathouse said:
Suppose my electoral method was to take a first-past-the-post vote in Maine and declare the winner the US President. Sure, parties could campaign across all 50 states, and could allocate federal monies fairly across them all. But they would be smarter to spend their time campaigning in Maine and preferentially funding Maine projects (so voters say, "hey, Party X is great because they built us this expensive bridge").
I think we both know that this is
not how presidential primaries work...
replace the voting system for President (largely, first-past-the-post winner-takes-all state by state) with a national Condorcet election
This is just a complicated (and
French) method for handling runoff elections. There is already a mechanism in presidential election law for runoffs if no candidate receives an independent majority of the votes. We never have them, so the institution of the rule would complicate the elections process with no useful effect on the vast majority of outcomes. Can anybody think of a single cast in American electoral history where a candidate did not receive a majority of the EV's?
Then replace the first-past-the-post methods for Senate and House elections with appropriate statewide multiple-winner proportional representation method.
What is with populist outrage at the American system of direct representation? Frankly, its loss would be a
tragedy, especially since we are the only country on Earth (as far as I know) to grant citizens the priveledge.
A European style proportional-election system would have at least the following unintended consequences:
- To increase, not decrease, party influence - since candidate elections would effectively be made less local, and voters tasked with selecting from a greater range of candidates, individuals would naturally become less important relative to party affiliation.
- To muddle the electoral process - the Representative system insures a given population is directly represented a given congressman. There is no question on the part of the congressman whose interests are supposed to be served, and who the constituent should call if they have a political concern.
- To increase the loyalty of elected politicians to the party - as above, the loss of local political influence is offset by a gain in statewide party influence. When every race becomes regional (and no race is local), the same rules apply. The current system effectively divides power between the parties (Senate elections) and the people (House elections). Why you would presume to dismantle this, I cannot say.
- Philosophically, it would do serious damage to the principle of American electoral politics - that we elect local residents to represent a given district directly in Washington. We don't election "shares of anonymous seats" and we don't send "groups of the ideologically like minded". Again, this is a European style of governance, but philosophically, the Europeans have never had the same confidence in direct local elections that we Americans do. The parliamentary propertional system isn't intended to increase local/individual influence, but to dilute it in favor of philosophical voting - the people elect an ideology, and wiser men choose their leaders. This is distinctly unamerican.
This is, to the extent, that it is a
real problem and not a
political one (Republicans cannot win election in San Francisco, ergo San Francisco must be hopelessly gerrymandered by eeevil Democrats, and vice versa) a legitimate critique of the current system, and about the only one I don't reject on its face.
In practice, I have no idea how effect or
necesarry deliberate political manipulation of voting boundaries is. Populations naturally tend towards the homogeneous, along every line (racial, social, income). Why do you assume that ideology should be any different? If we assume it is true that people with similar voting patterns tend to live together, and that this effect is increasing over time as the relative value of alternative living preferences diminishes and the importance of political outcomes increases, then you would naturally expect apparently gerrmandered outcomes, even if the states were perfectly impartial in their divisions.
Assuming it is a problem, and without dispensing the sacred privilege of direct representation, how do you fix it? I had this whacky idea that you appoint a special, ostensibily non-partisan and politically otherwise powerless "Redistricting Committee" to handle the drawing of redistricting boundaries every 10 years, subject to the low but otherwise with no direct oversight - a sort of redistricting supreme court. Vacancies are then filled on an as-opened basis by sitting Governors, with the consent of the Legislature. This basically insures an ideologically diverse board, since it is unlikely that you'd have a significant number of retirements under anyone governors tenure. The cyclical Republican might get to appoint 3, the cyclical Democrat gets to appoint 2, etcetera. As a working model, though, it seems pretty inefficient for a group that only has decision making powers once every 10 years.
Disenfranchises voters in non-battleground states*
This is only true to the extent that you imagine outcomes of primary elections would have been any different had the order of races been different. How likely is this? I cannot say, but I'd imagine pretty slim. One could argue that early race winners have a psychological advantage over their counterparts ("ride the wave"), but any argument that this psychological advantage is overwhelming over any technical disadvantage ("i really don't want to choose this guy") presupposes that voters are basically ignorant, emotional children incapable of consistency in their political selections and ruled by emotional swings.
To the extent that voters change their minds for rational reasons based on early primary results (electability, maybe, like deciding their first choice ideologically might not be so unelectable after all), then the current system isn't problematic.
I'm in the latter camp, of course.
Congressional representation not proportional to electorate (percentage voting Democratic does not match percentage of, e.g., senators that are Democratic)
Why is this a bad thing? True, larger state are disenfranchised in presidential elections. In the case of presidential elections, this is almost always without consequence. Only twice in history, I believe, has the victor in a presidential race not received a majority of the popular vote. In the long run, this is an important check on the power of the larger states relative to the smaller states. The present electoral system (both with the EC and the battleground primaries) protects the prestige of smaller states that would otherwise be marginalized in national popular campaigns.
As for copngressional disenfranchisement, this is true in the Senate (by design), but not really in the House. There isn't any significant variation in the population-per-Representative, and where there is variation, it does not correlate well with the size of the House (it's due more to population trends between census). Do we really need to go over why the Senate deliberately disenfranchises the big states relative to the smaller states? The entire system was designed a great big check on the obvious major power players. Big states are major power players, with a distinct advantage in the House. This is checked by the fixed representation of the Senate.
Clearly, I get rather defensive when I observe these populist trends in attacking the very carefully designed American system of electoral politics, mostly because I worry they just might succeed, in my opinion because people seem to think it "sounds good" and makes them culturally relevant (who isn't with the earmarks and electoral colleges are bad program, am I right?) without really thinking through the systemic consequences of the "reforms".
Color me conservative on this one - I like things just the way they are :)
