I'd like to see the GOP split into the 2-3 parties it shelters, and the Democrats go their 3 or so ways as well. I'd bet it'd significantly stabilize US policy and reduce the zero sum power plays that are becoming quite common.
If you go out and talk to these actual Democrats and Republicans, the bipartisan distinction seems more and more like a fraud.
Seriously, have you ever met a person who's "core driving force" is money and "all they care about"? Does that description fit about half the people your know?
Seems pretty cartoonish to me.
The people around me are not mega-rich. It is not a problem of that people being "bad people". It is a circumstance problem. The situation is that they have so much money that can change the laws.
Cut lobbing, redistribute wealth and you will stop this cartoon evil behavior. Keep people so rich that they don't understand what being middle class is, and they will continue pressing for ridiculous reductions on our rights.
Americans keep complaining about their politicians, then elect the same parties they complain about over and over again. I work with an American who explained it - she voted for a party she didn't like because she was desperate to do anything she could to prevent the other party winning. It turned out the other party won afterall so her efforts just went towards entrenching the two party system and discouraging anyone else from voting for what they actually want next time.
Approval voting is much simpler than ranked-choice, and more appropriate for the general public.
I did get the chance to flick through a Californian voter information guide for this last election and it seems like if your goal is to make voting simpler then looking at ballot initiatives would be far more useful.
http://scorevoting.net/WhatVotersWant
Maybe they think it's too complicated.
I think his points are pretty good ones. There was a lot of anger and unhappiness after the 2010 election and the role preferences played in it. I'm not going to change my mind entirely on one poll which hasn't ever been repeated when there are valid objections to the question and the signal isn't even that large. You could have polled people on if the electoral college should be gotten rid of after the last US election and you'd probably get a similar sort of polarised answer for the same reasons.
More importantly, I don't really care about what people prefer in their voting system. That probably sounds bad, and I think it's important that people trust it but it's a technical answer to the question of how we discover what people want. That's what I care about, which is why I support compulsory voting which ensures a more representative government at the cost of forcing everyone on the rolls to vote.
I'm also not some weird person who thinks we have it perfect here. Obviously optional preferential voting in all cases would be better, not just for the federal senate, and Hare-Clark nationwide would be even cooler than that. There's always improvements to be made.
http://www.fairvote.org/why-approval-voting-is-unworkable-in...
Later-no-harm is a silly "anti-criterion" that causes more harm than benefit. See explanation by a Princeton math PhD who co-founded the Center for Election Science.
http://scorevoting.net/LNH.html
He refutes similar FairVote FUD here.
http://scorevoting.net/RichieRV.html
FairVote lacks expertise and lies a lot.
https://sites.google.com/a/electology.org/www/fact-check
Here's a layman friendly talk I gave to the Colorado League of Women Voters a few years back.
I suppose we'll see how Maine handers their newly-implemented ranked-choice scheme in the coming election cycles.
This can be objectively measured via metrics like ballot spoilage and precinct summability.
http://scorevoting.net/Lorenzo.html
Here's a read-through of a talk I gave on this.
True, but equilibrium is not the goal. The mere fact that a political system has been around long enough to approach equilibrium means that people have been sleeping at the wheel for a long time.
For example, I've heard from a small but non-trivial number of swing supporters that they would have voted for Sanders, but instead voted for Trump. Ranked voting might have allowed them to vote Sanders > Trump > Hillary in 2016. Others may have preferred Rand Paul, or Gary Johnson, etc.
FPTP is directly responsible for our dichotomous and increasingly unstable political system. We need more choice at the ballot box.
If there's a sizeable proportion of people like that, they'd be able to get their candidate in the primary. By and large you need far fewer votes to win the primary than to win the general.
It always surprises me that there are people who don't bother to vote in the first round of voting, and then complain about the quality of candidates that made it to the second round. Well, yeah; you can't sit things out and hope that other people will pick the person you like. Only 28.5% of eligible voters voted in the presidential primary in 2016 (and non-presidential primaries often have lower turnout).
This was the focus of my post, though I guess it wasn't clear...
What you're suggesting doesn't work across party lines. The Democrat primaries don't care whether Republicans would have voted for Sanders over Trump, and the Republican primaries have a similar problem. Primary systems acts to amplify the passionate voices within each party at the cost of bipartisan preferences.
Really, do people expect the public to be able to rank their candidates?
And what's the problem? Everyone wants to be a king. Government's job is to make sure no one is, with a social contract.
Two.
So Americans choose to agree with either EVERYTHING person A says, or EVERYTHING person B says.
That's what it boils down to. And it freaks me out that in a day and age where we're so educated and "free", we still think that this is a good solution.
Apologies for veering off topic. Had to get it off my chest for once, as I don't normally voice this stuff. (Because I'm sure others have said it better before.)