[EM] Re Raph Frank wrt 3-seat LR Hare and RV for US Senators by proxy.

[Raph Frank]

On Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 1:40 AM, David L Wetzell <wetzelld at gmail.com> wrote:
> dlw: There are ways to increase intra-party discipline for major parties to
> prevent their fragmentation and
> help them to coordinate the making of serious needed changes that perhaps
> were spotlighted by 3rd parties.

I think if there is PR, then there will be more than just 2 parties.
I am not sure how things would go if there is PR for one house and a 2
party system for the other.

In Australia, there seems to be exactly that.  Smaller parties do get
elected to the Senate.  However, it is the IRV (2 party) House that
has the power to elect the PM.

It is less clear how it would work if they shared power in a
presidential system.

> dlw: I think it's a states' rights matter and people shd insist that most of
> it get decided in the more proportional state legislative branch.

The constitution says that the State Legislature decides, so
restricting it to one house by State law might not be acceptable.

However, having State law specify the procedure is probably OK (though
having a house agree with less than a majority might not be).

A rule that has the legislature meet as a single house for making the
decision should have no problem.  That gets mostly the same result if
the more representative house is larger.

Ofc, I am not a lawyer, and that is just what I think would be a
reasonable interpretation.