[EM] Making a Bad Thing Worse

[Greg Nisbet]

The United States uses FPTP, surprise surprise. However how bad would FPTP
really be if you remove some of the stupidity?

1) Primaries

Especially the presidential primaries. Why Iowa and New Hampshire I ask you?
The Republican winner-takes-state primaries are especially bad. The will of
the people is distorted. And the winners of primaries get legal protection.

2) Sore loser laws

If you lose a primary, you can't even run in some areas. The state will
attempt to prevent you from stealing votes away from your party.

3) Really bad ballot access laws.

If people can't even run... it doesn't matter what voting method you are
using.

4) The Electoral College

Someone explain to me how this makes sense. We elect a group of 538 people
who will then elect one person. Umm... why elect these people? They aren't
doing anything complicated, they are just signing their name and the name of
a candidate. Electing Congress makes sense, how else would you handle the
loads of legislation that they create every so often?

5) The Senate

States aren't represented by their population. This means rural bias etc.
How can their opinion be regarded as representing America's?

6) The House

Whose bright idea was it to let the states decide how to redistrict
themselves? Seriously.

7) Gerrymandering

In addition to (6) and gerrymandering at the local level, the state
boundaries themselves were gerrymandered. It was mostly due to slavery, but
the vestiges of these funky decisions still remain. There are also a ton of
low-population states between California and the Mississippi River, whose
brilliant idea was that?

8) Two Parties

This might be a consequence of FPTP, but seriously. The Libertarian Party,
the third largest, is still TINY by comparison to the Democrats and
Republicans. It is no wonder we have so many independents in this country.
Many people dislike both parties but have no idea what to do. The UK and
Canada seem to manage more parties.

9) Elections on Tuesday

why not make election day a holiday? or hold it on weekends?
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