This one is manageable. You could do proportional voting within each state without changing the balance between states. Say 5 instead of 2 senators from each state and proportional voting within each state.

I'm not saying this doesn't have other problems, it's just an example that the rural states problem is not a hard blocker for proportional voting.

Yes it is a hard blocker. You haven't described any negotiation so far as to why rural states would like to surrender power without corresponding wins.

5 senators proportionally represented or 2x-3x representatives proportionally represented does not weaken small state power at all. It simply ensures more views within each state get heard.

PR != no districting.

That means the state which normally would've been a solid block of red now turns purple. Surely that is a compromise of power for those who hold it?

What is the rational incentive to do so?

Any one state is incentivized not to do this alone. It only works if everyone does it at the same time. In addition, if every state did this, states could break away to increase its influence.

That doesn't mean that this is impossible. There seem to be two ways this coordination and prisoner's dilemma problem could be resolved. First, by a constitutional amendment (unlikely) or second in a similar way to the National Popular Vote.

National Popular Vote is a bill with the goal of making the winner of the popular vote the winner of the presidency. The way it works is that states pass a law to give their electoral votes to the winner of the popular votes ONLY until enough states with enough votes pass the same bill.

This bill currently has been enacted by 15 states (195 electoral votes) [1]

[1] https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/

The popular vote has been swinging in the direction of the national Democratic party for over a decade; Democrats would love proportional representation.

Why would the GOP want to give middling members the room to break rank when the margins of power are so razor-thin? What is the selling pitch?

You're shifting the goal posts: is the issue small state power, or republican power via small states?

Small state power is unchanged. Full stop.

Republican power is also not necessarily worse for the reason you gave: blue big states will also be more purple. PR is certainly in the favor of moderate republicans, whoever they may be.

What Ericson2314 is referring to is the coordination + prisoner's dilemma problem. It appears that if every state enacted this at the same time, almost everyone would be better off. That being said, any state that is strongly one party or the other is incentivized not to do this.

California's legislature can choose between giving a high percentage (63.48%[1] in 2020) or 100% of it's electoral votes to the democratic candidate. Alabama's legislature can choose between giving a high percentage (62.03%[2] in 2020) or 100% of it's electoral votes to the republican candidate.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidentia... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidentia...

That is very true. This would best happen if the level of government above the elections in question requires they all work the same way. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Representation_Act_(Unite... would require that all the house districts go SVT PR at once. Likewise, a state could reform all their state legislature districts at once.

I can't wave any magic wand for gridlock at that level, but that bypasses the coordination failure by not requiring coordinated steps at all.

We could abolish states. Gigantic unilaterally-voting political bodies are a bad design. Accepting legislation purely because some group is in the majority is a bad design.

Say you have two very large groups of junior developers and a handful of senior devs. Both groups of juniors propose conflicting pull requests using diametrically opposed designs. Then everyone votes on a PR. The group with more juniors ends up getting their PR merged. Even though both designs might be total crap, and in fact the groups might intentionally avoid good code just because it looks like the other group's code.

The solution is to disband the two gigantic groups and either A) create one mega-group, or B) create small "two-pizza" groups. Enable peer review, and empower the seniors to provide the necessary guidance and control to prevent a group of incompetents from merging shitty code just because they didn't like some other group's code. Oh, and mandate validation testing, and metrics to show whether the code should be kept or reverted.

I'm not sure about this. There are a bunch of "rural" states that still have large populations in pretty urban areas (eg Nevada, Vermont). It seems totally plausible that the urban parts of enough rural states are more than happy to give up their electoral power to shift the political balance.

I'm assuming a Constitutional Convention would be required to change the way the Senate and EC work, though. That's impossible now and perhaps forever.

Not really. States can choose their electors however they want, including following the National Popular Vote. At least, that’s the theory behind the NaPoVoInterCo [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...

It's a bit more complex than that, in that the constitution guarantees a republican form of government. In reality, those who oppose republican forms of government will push for these compacts and they are in a minority, so there aren't enough electoral votes to make this relevant and actually trigger the compact, but if it were to be triggered, you'd bet that there would be some constitutional challenges.

Approval voting would allow third parties to win without having to change the number of seats.

But would they actually win enough and consistently, to allow for a proper third party with a healthy organization to form and stay alive?

Almost certainly, though not necessarily right away. In two-party first-past-the-post, you never vote for the people you like the most. Approval gives you the chance to vote for who you like the most /and/ the one you think is most likely to win amongst people basically on your side.

Political power is never given freely. It must be taken. If they do t like it, too bad.

So just a second Civil War then? That's how you think we should resolve it?

Presidential systems are unstable are known to be unstable. It's high-time the US stopped thinking it is exceptional.

I don't want war, but I think taking the threat of war, mass unrest, etc. seriously is the only way we're going to be able to muscle-through the reforms needing to avoid it.

Our current institutions are massively politically unsustainable, and doing nothing about it is not going to maintain the peace in the long term.