Reminds me of an old joke.

Back in the 60s, a Soviet diplomat ran into an American diplomat on the sidelines of some conference.

"I want to congratulate you Americans", says the Soviet diplomat, "your propaganda is amazing, it's much better than ours".

"What do you mean?", replies the American. "We don't have propaganda?"

"See what I mean!"

Still true today.

Uhm, what? I think UK politics is pretty sane actually. It has a lot of problems, but definitely not this almost civil-war-like type of language that you have in the USA. And although the UK is getting worse and worse, there are European countries that still have a worse political environment.

Well, leaving the EU strikes me as only good for the 1%'ers, so...

I'm not sure that just the force of rhetoric used is a good measure for how sane politics is.

You can be polite, and still be insane or evil (see: Brexit and all of the politicking and --from what I can tell-- outright lies that were sold to people). That whole process was mostly civil and polite, but not necessarily healthy.

Both countries suffer from winner-takes-all district systems, and would probably be much improved by a system of proportional representation.

Because Italy and Israel benefit so much from their proportional representation systems...

It's obviously not a silver bullet that will magically fix everything, but a lot of countries are doing very well with proportional representation.

Also, I think Italy actually has a hybrid system.

Italy certainly did [1]. In fact Italian politics became much worse since the proportional system was weakened.

[1] yes governments were weak and were replaced often, but that's a feature, not a problem.

What makes you believe that is desirable?

the belief that wider representation in the government, less polarization, a strong parliament and a weak executive is more desirable.

A weak executive would seem to reduce representation in government though?

As each member of parliament must necessarily represent the biggest groups in their constituencies.

So a decent size group scattered across many dozens of constituencies into relatively tiny groups would simply never get taken seriously without a strong executive.

No, you've got that exactly backwards. Parliament is the representation. Because of proportional representation, parliament represents all groups in the country, and not merely the majorities in each district.

Exactly.

What? Parliaments obviously cannot represent every group within any given country.

For example, non-residents, tourists, diplomats, etc..

You're right. Parliament represents only the entire electorate. And only really those opinions that are shared by enough people to be worth an entire seat. Still, it's far better representation than you get in a district system, where only local majorities of the electorate in each district are represented.

So then in a country with a weak executive, who collectively represents the interests of non-residents, tourists, diplomats, etc.?

Because each group certainly has some real interests in common.

Positing moving from one extreme to another doesn’t avoid the fact that there’s plenty of middle ground.

Rank choice and optional preferential voting have their own special tyranny. I just voted for a council election where I had to order at least 5 alderman out of 55 listed candidates. No parties, no voting guides. It was a lot of reading for me.

Yeah, parties do make that sort of thing a lot easier.

In Netherland we have elections for "waterschappen" ("water council"), apparently our oldest governmental body and responsible managing surface water, dikes, etc. So obviously very important in a country like this, but I have no idea what the actual issues involved are, and yet I have to vote for these people.

Reading? In this economy? The gall!

No offense but if the idea of finding 5 candidates you can feel comfortable voting for is too much work, you shouldn't be voting.

Well I did vote and I did read all 55 pitches from the candidates. They only recently made the voting compulsory so that's going to make things interesting for all the people out there who don't do any reading and want to avoid the fine.

Right or wrong, it is fair to assume many will cast their vote without doing the reading in such a system. Speaking from a German perspective, I sometimes think how inefficient it is to count 60M votes - just counting 1M votes will give you the exact same result, iff you get the sampling right. What if we could choose a subset of 1% of citizens at random for every election (still far too many to directly bribe), giving them some pride in their responsibility, make sure they have some/better access to the candidates etc.. Again, if the sampling is sound, this won't change the outcome (other than the average voter being more motivated/informed). Of course, I see the problem that people will not feel represented if they, by chance, never get to vote in their whole life ...

Is there a way to guarantee that you "just get the sampling right?" Even if there is, is it possible to explain it to someone with a high school education such that they understand it?

Even if you could do both of those, will it hold up when the populist candidate loses and starts railing about how they have so much support, the best support, and the election was stolen from them by the elite-chosen sample?

I already have a job. Parsing 5 from 55 sounds like paid work not voting.

Please never vote.

To be fair, I imagine that guy thought the same of you.

I am from Brazil, at least you don't have "Electoral Judges" that will happily fuck with the elections and ignore constitution to make sure their preferred candidate win.

The Electoral Judges in Brazil, are censoring actual facts, because despite being facts, they consider it "misinformation", it go so bad that a former supreme court judge of ours got censored for explaining something technical... Despite the fact our constitution explicitly bans any form of censorship. (ironically, as defense against US... our constitution promotes free speech to prevent CIA from subverting the country again).

> at least you don't have "Electoral Judges" that will happily fuck with the elections and ignore constitution to make sure their preferred candidate win

Lets revisit this observation in 2024 when the next US Presidential election is held. Many localities have been electing people to oversee their local election process who are 2020 deniers, and who supported overturning Biden's win in order to keep Trump in office. I think 2024 could be interesting.

Funnily enough, in the U.K. you’ll hear the inverse refrain!

I'm holding off from any attempt to rank the two for at least three weeks.

The UK and US systems share a lot of similarities, which is not surprising considering the history, but UK politics seems better (or rather, less bad) to me? Both Boris and Truss were forced to resign by their own party, whereas the GOP's relationship with Trump is... well, different. Plus in spite of the first-past-the-post system there are actually candidates of alternative parties being voted in, even if we ignore the regional parties like SNP, DUP, etc. The Lib-Dems have a chequered history, but it's better than nothing.

> Boris and Truss were forced to resign by their own party, whereas the GOP's relationship with Trump is... well, different

Different in the sense that Trump remains extremely popular with Republican voters, independent of his actions. If Trump weren't so popular, his own party would have tossed him out long ago. They only grudgingly allowed him to become their leader in the first place because to oppose him meant almost certain defeat in their own next election.

The US has the most effective propaganda machine ever devised.