[EM] Making a Bad Thing Worse

[Raph Frank]

On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 1:41 AM, Greg Nisbet <gregory.nisbet at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

This shouldn't be an issue at all.  Parties should be allowed to pick
whoever they want, however they want.

I think, if you are going to have plurality, then it's probably better
to have them than not.

> 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.

Yeah, that is bad, candidates should be allowed to run if they want.

> 3) Really bad ballot access laws.
>
> If people can't even run... it doesn't matter what voting method you are
> using.

Agreed.  Apparently, a federal law that allowed anyone with 2000
signature automatic ballot access to any given race would be unlikely
to result in more than 10 or so on any given ballot.  Would anyone
bother to collect 100k signatures in order to put 50 names on the
ballot?

Also, there are some criminal laws linked to this, so collecting
signatures could put you at risk.

> 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?

It is a good idea.  But it seems like it was broken from the start.
The Electoral College should meet and then make its decision.

This is compounded by the fact that all states have switched to winner
takes all methods of selecting the electors, so it is double broken.

> 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?

Well, in theory, the US is a federation, not a democracy.  In any
case, that requires 100% of the States to agree for it to be changed.

OTOH, if you want to be evil, you could strip the Senate of all its
power, that would 'only' require 75% of the States.

> 6) The House
>
> Whose bright idea was it to let the states decide how to redistrict
> themselves? Seriously.

The same people who let legislatures redistrict for themselves.

In fact, I think that having the States do the redistricting is better
than allowing Congress do it.  If the States were independently
controlled, then there is less of a conflict of interest.

However, the 2 party system is entrenched, so the State legislatures
aren't independent.

> 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?

I think that once off gerrymandering isn't as bad as gerrymandering
after the census.

It isn't self reinforcing.  As time passes, things change.  With
Congressional boundaries, they are re-adjusted as things change to
cancel it out.  You can't readjust State boundaries.

> 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.

There is a need for 3rd parties to concentrate their efforts on
specific areas.  The problem is that the 2 parties use their power to
reinforce the 2 party system.

Also, each level of government is held by the 2 parties, so it is hard
to break it.

Anyway, maybe the Libertarians should pick a state and focus all their
national effort on getting a Libertarian elected to the House of
Representatives in that State.  Once they achieve that, they can move
on to getting a second one elected from the State.  Ofc, their seat
would likely be gerrymandered away since their Representative wouldn't
be a member of one of the two parties.

Maybe the reason that 3rd parties are more viable in the UK and Canada
is that there is more independence in setting the boundaries.  This
means that they can't be gerrymandered out of existence if they manage
to get one seat.

> 9) Elections on Tuesday
>
> why not make election day a holiday? or hold it on weekends?

I thought they were held over multiple days with 'early voting', or
was that changed?