Right. If were to have a unicameral legislature, we would need to do away with gerrymandering and have a fairer system overall.
It’s hard to say exactly what is at fault, the system itself or the voters, and the opposite (voter apathy) can be bad as well. I first went to Japan in 1992 and lived there a total of eight years. My career has been based on knowing Japanese and working with Japanese people. Now I never really took an interest in Japanese politics, and one of the main reasons for that is that Japanese people don’t either. Nothing in Japan ever changes, and they are unable to fix any of their problems, despite the fact that they have some big advantages over the US (100% literacy, the lowest crime rates in the world or close to it, and extremely high social cohesion). Sometimes I wonder whether, if Japan can’t fix its shit, any country can.
Also, on the topic of courts, I interpreted for a Japanese judge visiting the US (for my part, the federal courthouse in Indianapolis) to study the jury system. This was maybe 2013 or so. They were looking at introducing jury trials there. Not sure if they ever did that. (I just googled, and it’s still hard to tell exactly what changed when. Oh well.)
People have an emotional attachment to a whole bunch of shit we need to change, which means that it is unlikely to change anytime soon. E.g., “Wyoming” is just a rectangle drawn in the wilderness that never should have had the rights and powers of a state in the first place, but you know that people are going to fight for its ongoing existence.
OTOH, China has four Direct-administered municipality - Wikipedia. We should turn the whole New York, LA, and Chicago metro areas and probably several others into cohesive local governments, but since Indy and Marion County did unigov back in 1970 (FFS!), what kind of progress have we made in this area? Close to zero. Chicago is just one of 134 municipalities in Cook County, Illinois–it’s fucking madness! Also, far be it from us Amuricans to learn something from China–or anybody else.
It’s like the Holy Roman Empire, and look at all the change and upheavals that were required to turn that into Bismark’s unified Germany (which was still a bit of a mess).