Pimp my Legislature

I use "pimp" to mean "make more effective and/or awesome". They are arguably performing the "sell out principles and/or bodies for money" quite well themselves.

Disappointment (at the very least) of the US Congress seems to be pretty much universal at this point, so I'd like to hear your ideas on your optimal form of legislature. I'd like to avoid implementation details as much as possible (like campaign financing) and focus more on the basic structure of the legislature (number of legislators, number of chambers, how they are voted in, etc).

I feel like the the main weaknesses of the current US system is the unavoidable long-term slide to a two-party system (caused by first past the post voting). This is a basic facet of our democracy that can't be changed with any sort of implementation details I can imagine, unlike things like Gerrymandering, which can be addressed with at least some success on a higher level, and in some states that has been done.

That said, my optimal legislature would be designed to do away with Gerrymandering as well, although that's more of a bonus in my search for a more nationally representative system as opposed to the local representation we have now.

Anyways, on to the system. The basis is "Proportional Representation", which I like a lot and want so, so badly. It would also be national as opposed to local. When you went to vote you would go to the ballot, and mark or write in your party, NOT your representative. First of all, lets increase the number of votes available for a more fine representation, lets say we're tied to 1 vote per 100k people in the last sentence. We'll use 3000 votes for our example. Now that sounds like a lot, but later on I'll get to how we can manage that a bit better.

Nationwide all the votes would be tallied, copying existing party-ish structures for an example, lets say the Tea Party got 15% of the vote, the Republicans got 35% of the vote, the Democrats got 35% of the vote, the Green Party gets 10%, and the Justice Party gets 10%. In our example the Tea Party gets 450 votes, The Republicans and Democrats get 1050 each, and the Green Party and Justice Party get 300 votes each.

Each party itself decides how those votes are used, they could choose their own Representatives for each vote like we do now, or choose fewer Representatives with more votes each, vote as a single large block, whatever.

Representatives would be handled slightly differently, in an effort to get the higher granularity of having a ton of votes available with less of a slowdown from having 3000 Representatives. Perhaps there are only a fixed number (say 500) "speaking" Representatives which have the right to address the entire floor and whatnot. The others can still tweet and hold press conferences and vote, but if there isn't enough time they don't all get to talk. So in our example the Green party has 300 votes, so they could have 300 Representatives, but only 50 of their Representatives would be able to speak. (So maybe they would just 50 Representatives that each had 6 votes.)

You'd do Committee members similarly. If there are 100 committee positions then the Green Party gets 10 committee seats.

obligatory

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I like Norman's suggestion, and he seems to be a Republican so that makes it a bipartisan proposal. Let's get it done.

Also, how do you counter the fact that people on the other side of any issue can score cheap points by pointing to the most unreasonable people representing your view point and claiming that they represent everyone on your side of the divide?

Endrio wrote:

Also, how do you counter the fact that people on the other side of any issue can score cheap points by pointing to the most unreasonable people representing your view point and claiming that they represent everyone on your side of the divide?

I think you start by making sure that truly unreasonable people don't represent your view point. If they actually do, you may need to review if your view point is actually reasonable.

Endrio wrote:

Also, how do you counter the fact that people on the other side of any issue can score cheap points by pointing to the most unreasonable people representing your view point and claiming that they represent everyone on your side of the divide?

While I don't think that sort attack is one of the bigger problems our government has, eliminating first past the post voting do that more than two parties can develop lessens the effectiveness of that rhetoric. Right now nearly everyone in US politics has to be in the Republican or Democratic party. This naturally makes each party wider than would be comfortable, and increases your association with others you disagree with on many things but are still in your party.

If there were 7 or 8 major parties all agreeing and disagreeing with each other on separate points then the spectrum of during beliefs among people in the same party will shrink substantially, and I bet most of the efficacy of that rhetoric would vanish if the person you were being compared to was in an entirely different party.

Ah, waiter, there seems to be spam in my thread...?

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At least the robots care about my thread...

...Hope you understand. Regards.

I like that even spammers flounce out of P&C threads.