[EM] Election-method reform bill in U.S. Congress

[Jameson Quinn]

Here's the bill text as a google doc
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nfpFrGNXA8KJHw0Rd6YByyXyx2Gj_awi16apSUr9L0s/edit>
.

It requires all states to use "RCV" for the House, which means IRV for
single-seat states and STV in districts of up to 5 seats for multi-seat
states. It also spends over half of the bill defining and requiring
independent redistricting commissions, even though with PR the issue of
gerrymandering is far less serious.

Here's a draft of the bill which I've rewritten to use GOLD voting
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AWhaCWxG2TkvsASkbYt6Gf4NihvzCupcJL5cM9Qu9BQ/edit>
.

2017-07-06 21:09 GMT-04:00 Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com>:

> On Thu, Jul 6, 2017 at 5:40 PM,  <fdpk69p6uq at snkmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Is that bad?  A government that has trouble passing laws until they're
> > modified to appeal to a diverse majority seems like a good thing to me.
>
> I think it's important to distinguish between political parties and
> political opinions. Parties always contain within them some amount of
> diversity, and fragmentation of parties may not significantly increase
> diversity beyond a certain point of diminishing returns. Parties can
> split because of personality conflicts and struggles for power that
> have nothing to do with larger ideological differences in the general
> population.
>
> I don't know if this is harmful under all circumstances. It is IMO
> definitely harmful if you generally want your government to be formed
> with and sustained by an affirmative majority in parliament, because
> you end up with lots of parties who, by behaving "rationally" within
> their self-interested context, end up unable to form a government: "We
> said clearly beforehand that we would never form a coalition with
> party X, so we cannot now break this promise, or voters will punish us
> next time around."
>
> If, like Norway, you're comfortable with minority gov'ts and ad hoc
> parliamentary majorities, fragmentation may be less harmful.
>
> Erik
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