Re:Why are close elections so common?
by tayloramurphy on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @03:55PM
(#41999488)
In the US system, I'd be in favor of just having the House of Representatives by done via a sortition process. I have a hard time imagining the Senate and President being done that way... but maybe it actually wouldn't be any worse than the status quo!
Re:Why are close elections so common?
by NoMoreNicksLeft on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @04:29PM
(#41999887)
This would ruin the political parties. The only way they survive is that any rep or senator who says "screw you, I'm in office now and you can't make me do anything" finds that the party withdraws campaign support next go round.
With no one (hardly ever) getting a second term in office, without there being campaign money, parties die. Maybe the polarization dies too.
Oh, and no need for term limits anymore. Sort of baked in, without needing to be explicit.
I'm undecided on whether we'd get more ijit populism or less.
Quite honestly, I think senators should be picked by the states... the 17th was a mistake. It made a bicameral Congress essentially unicameral.
Re:Why are close elections so common?
by candiddevmike on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @03:52PM
(#41999458)
Sortition also helps with the whole "those who crave power should be the furthest from it".
If we could somehow "fix" voting (in many or all cases this is a constitutional modification, no simple task), why would we even keep voting at all? Voting's just bad. The things that you and everyone else like about democracy, ironically, have nothing to do with voting. You like the idea that any small child, boy or girl, can grow up to become president. That there is no ruling caste, and so on. That we have peaceful transitions of power from one administration to the next. That there is some sort of time limit on how long one can hold office.
All these things are achievable in a superior system: sortition. Everyone who qualifies (35 and up, no a felon, natural born citizen) has an equal chance at becoming president (similar for other offices). We do 20 or 30 drawings so that if anyone rejects, we go on to the next.
Trying to fix voting when the fundamental flaw with it is that all of us, to the last, is simply not intelligent enough to cast a vote wisely, can't be fix with vote diddling and runoffs and ranked choices and whatnot. The defective portion of the mechanism's still there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition