No it wouldn’t. That is based on each person voting once. Assuming no supporter of the left party approves of the right, and vice versa, but that supporters of both the left and right are more likely to be willing to tolerate the center party, you are going to have a situation where the center grouping picks up votes.
yes, a better way of putting it is that 40% have left as first preference, 40% right, and 20% center. And of course you don’t think it is bad, as you have already expressed a preference for centrist government. I think it is bad, as I have said repeatedly, because it encourages politicians to be as inoffensive as possibly to the largest group of people, rather than actually bloody doing things that might result in them not being liked. It is a recipe for inaction.
As for the rest (which I cut), well, I believe party activists should be influential in determining the party’s direction. Then let the general population decide whether they support them or not (as opposed to determining whether they don’t dislike them) in a general election. Democracy isn’t about placing a cross in a box once every 5 years. It runs a lot deeper than that, and should, I would hope, be centered on activism, on civic organizations, unions etc.
Not exactly. Each state decides how it awards its electoral votes; several states have already passed legislation entering into the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, wherein, once states with enough votes to decide the election join, all of the votes of the states in the compact go to the winner of the nationwide vote. That doesn’t even require federal legislation.
I agree with this (except for the parenthetical). But I think democracy is better served by allowing the voters to better express themselves. If a policy does not have majority support, it should not be enacted. I believe inaction is more appropriate than action that only a minority supports.
It sounds to me like you’re objecting to approval voting because you fear that the majority of the population does not want what you do and will choose inaction over your policies. I’d say that means your policies do not have enough support. That’s what activism should be for–making a case for specific policies, rather than trying to convince just enough people so that you narrowly win a election.
Any party that’s representing its members well will not lose anything under approval voting. It’ll still get the votes it was before. The difference is that parties that represent a slightly different electorate will also get votes. A strong party will take the hints and adjust its position to keep its lead. If it doesn’t, and loses votes, then why does it deserve to be in power anyway if it can’t win the most votes?
In other words, while approval voting makes a centrist government more likely, it also makes it much easier to move the center. I think government supported by a broad majority and responsive to changes in that majority is a democratic ideal.
Good point. I think that is harder to do than federal legislation, but since this thread is a wish list, go for it.
It sounds to me like you are making things up that i am saying. What I fear is middle of the road pap. Government by sound bite. Government so scared of annoying people it does nothing. I’d rather have had the Tories in power in the UK than the bloody Liberal Democrats (back of course when the Labour Party actually was a left wing party).
Approval voting isn’t, and never has been, about obtaining support for policies. It is about avoiding opposition to them. It is about keeping one’s head below the parapet and relying on them disliking someone else more. Like transferable voting, it rewards those who can make a career of not being annoying to enough people.
How so, exactly? Most (all?) Commonwealth countries have Parliamentary and Legislative rules that mean a bill can only be about one subject at a time (or, if it’s about multiple subjects, they’re either clearly related or are very minor amendments to existing legislation being passed as part of a “Sundry purposes” act), and they don’t have this problem.
Besides, there’s nothing stopping “Deals” being done- but it just happens in separate legislation.
So, instead of having the “Dig Up The Roads To Congest Traffic Act” having a totally unrelated section about changes to bag limits for Fishing Licences, you’d get two bits of legislation: The “Dig Up The Roads To Congest Traffic Act” and “The Fishing Licences (Bag Limits Increase) Act”.
Greater transparency for everyone, and it stops the Government from doing underhanded things like inserting a clause making Puppy-kicking a felony offence into the Dig Up The Roads bill and then, when anyone objects to the “Digging up the roads” part, saying “Senator So-and-So voted against legislation that would make Puppy Kicking a felony offence!”
Single-issue bills work almost everywhere else, and there’s no reason why it can’t work in the USA- except that I don’t think your Government wants that, somehow (People being able to see exactly what the Government is doing, not just in a C-SPAN sense).
I realise it could never happen, but my suggestion is compulsory voting. I firmly believe that it, despite some unattractive aspects, genuinely raises the sense of involvement of the population with the government. Too many people in the US see the government as an enemy, as an “other” not connected with them.
In how many Commonwealth countries does the PM have the power to unilaterally strike down a bill? In the Canadian system at least, the PM can force a bill to pass via party discipline, but he’s still part of the process of getting the bill past the House. In the US system, this isn’t the case, and you can’t guarantee that a bill the gets past the House and Senate will have the approval of the President.
From what I’m reading, that’s where the problem lies–regardless of what goes on during voting, one man has the ability to unilaterally block any legislation he doesn’t like. So sometimes the answer is to somewhat ‘hide’ smaller items in bigger bills to get them past the President and thus passed into law.
Not that I don’t agree with the ‘one bill, one subject’ idea, but this sounds more like a problem with the system and not the way bills are drafted.
Perhaps it could be taken as read that a change to “One Bill, One Subject” would also remove the Presidential Veto power if more than X% of the House is in support of the Bill?
How many of those Commonwealth countries have similar separations of power with the Executive and Legislative branches being placed in, essentially, adversarial roles?
In the US, the agenda of the legislative branch can differ from that of the chief of government. It isn’t a bad thing that Commonwealth countries choose to do it differently, but unless Americans want to wholesale change the character of their government, I think it is important to maintain the competition of agendas. Maintaining the competition of agendas also means maintaining checks and balances between the branches of government.
That would be severely undermined if the power of the President keeps growing and the power of the legislative branch keeps shrinking. That’s particularly a problem in the American system, as we can only remove a President for severe misconduct, as opposed to forcing a resignation, call for elections, or deal with a vote of no confidence, all of which are essentially means of checking the agenda of the chief of government often based on policy differences.
As opposed to resorting to hypotheticals, why do you suppose that a deal on minimum wage legislation couldn’t be struck until it was bundled with something that the President really wanted?
I thought if we wanted it bad enough to tell enough of our elected officials to vote for it that they could over ride the veto? And can not they go against what is good for the country and over ride a veto that is in our best interest?
It can work both ways, you know. What if inclusion of the minimum wage bill was what got the Iraq War funding bill over the hump? Is that the kind of dealmaking you’d be willing to support?
See I think the best way to encourage everyone to feel they have a part in government is to have a flat (everyone pays, there are no exemptions) tax and with no withholding to boot. That way everybody is paying part of the government’s bill by writing a check once a year, and if you had to pay those taxes, say, the day before election day. Well then we’d see some motivated voting!
In fact, that was the case. And yes, that is exactly the sort of deal making I’d support. Passing funding for the war was an inevitability, despite the pipe dreams of some. Getting a long-overdue minimum wage increase that would not have passed as a stand-alone bill is a very valuable consolation prize.
I’m afraid I don’t fully understand what you’re saying here. Just because “we” want it bad doesn’t mean that representatives have to abide by our will. That’s the nature of representative democracy.
Another vote for “get rid of the electors”. We’re not choosing a Holy Roman Emperor. All of the governments that used the United States as an inspiration when drafting their own constitution ditched this one, and it’s responsible (imo) for much of the apathy at election time (2008 being a bit different).
It’s quite possible the United States wouldn’t even exist without the EC though. It doesn’t make much sense to me to advocate getting rid of something that was a necessary part of the founding of the country.
Though it should be updated, weight votes as is done now via electors, but get rid of the actual electors, they’re pointless in modern times.
In general I like the idea of weighting votes from less populous areas higher though, so maybe I don’t count…
Forgive me for being blunt, but how do you justify this? If state A has 100 people and state B has 200 people, why shouldn’t each individual in state A have exactly as much voting power as each individual in state B?
See, I would flip this. 100% of campaign funding provided by the government, no one is allowed to spend his own money on his campaign, and no one is allowed to donate money to anyone’s campaign. IMO, this would take the politics out of statesmanship, and go a long way to eliminate the “ruling class.”
Yeah, you might get 50 people running for each position, but what’s wrong with that? At least none of them owes anybody any political favors, and one of them is likely to be the best person for the job. This could bring back a multi-party system, and would break the backs of the corrupt political machines. In an ideal democracy, the person does not seek out the office: the office seeks out the person. And full government sponsorship of campaigns would help that happen.
ETA: Scanning back, I see several other posters have suggested similar ideas. Damn my reading comprehension!
I’d get rid of financial donation / lobbying. It’s just way too corrupting of a process. Also make recusing mandatory for legislators - if they or any of their known associates have a financial interest in a bill, the legislator must abstain from voting on it.
