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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geode00 who wrote (185840)	4/28/2006 8:43:50 AM
From: jttmab	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I'm not sure which 'representative' system is the best. The original point about having 2 Senators per state and an electoral college system appeared to stem from fear of the unwashed masses and tyranny of the majority which is always the unwashed masses. "Best" isn't knowable. It's hard enough to figure out what's going to be "better", given the propensity of parties to game the system to get an advantage. From what I recall reading on the design of our system. They started with the notion of two houses. It worked for the Brits, we can copy that part. Though we couldn't call it the House of Lords and Parliament because we revolted against them. We revolted about the notion of taxation without representation; better drop the idea of an appointed House of Lords [now called the Senate], and make them elected. There was more decorum and institutional memory in the House of Lords than there was the Parliament. That's good....let's elect the Senate for a 6 year term and the House for two years. Check. More people in a State should have more say in the Government. States like New York thought that was brilliant; States like Rhode Island thought that sucked. How about if we give the populace more say in the House, but we'll design the Senate [2 members per State] to make sure that New York doesn't roll over Rhode Island? That's clever, let's go with that. How about voting for the King, Prime Minister or Great Lord of America, or whatever we're going to call him? He's the leader of the country it should be a popular vote. New York thought that was brilliant; Rhode Island thought that sucked. There's only thirteen States, if the candidate from New York is very popular in New York he could sweep the election and a very popular candidate in Virginia would get the number two slot. What if New York has two very popular candidates? New York could sweep them both. New rule! They have to be from two different States. And how about if we copy the thought process for the Senate and House? The number of House seats are based on populace, but the number of Senate seats give the States equal weight. We'll have the people vote for electors based on a tally of their representatives in the House and the Senate. That way "the people" have a strong say in who is President, but not strong enough that a single State could sweep the election. Let's give it a go! [I've skipped all the parts where they were throwing things at each other, walking out in protest, being dragged back into the Constitutional Convention by the unruly crowd ouside and being conned by Ben Franklin to sign the Constitution.] What if the people don't like it? Screw 'em, we're not going to let the people vote on it. Attach a sticky note to the Constitution. It should be voted on by the State legislatures, not the people. The people are too stupid to know what's good for them. Don't forget, these are the same people we conned into believing the Quebec Act was an Intolerable Act. I think 300 million people is way too many for any one person or group of people to 'rule' or 'lead' or whatever. In the case that another Dubyette kind of insanity takes hold in Washington local politics acts like a bulwark against nationwide stupidity. Not that local politicians and 'government' is any better (same kind of thuggery) but at least they're different. I tend to look at government as having the primary characteristics of waste, fraud and abuse. With more emphasis on waste and abuse at the federal level with fraud being more important at the local level. Congressional lines should be drawn in nice even squares...like brownies. The ones on the edges get a little oddly shaped but that's to be expected. Visually, I'd say rectangles and the size of the rectangle is based on how many people are in the rectangle. Within a state each rectangle has the same number of people as other rectangles in the state. Urban areas have little rectangles, rural areas are big rectangles. I don't think that you could make that a rigid rule, the concept is to keep the district boundry lines simple and you figure if you have a non-partisan group draw the districts you'll be ok with "keep it simple." In the end, I can't see anything improving in the US without 100% publicly funded campaigns. Probably not achievable in this country the way you would like it to be. I don't think it's possible to say that group x, can't spend any money on the candidate they like. You run afoul of the first amendment. You can limit expenditures, that's ok, but exluding them 100% isn't going to work. You could point to Britain as an exmaple. 100% public funding in a free speech country. But it works because the culture there is to accept public funding as a good thing and there's little to no indirect group funding of a candidate for no other reason than, Brits don't do it, because it's not proper; it's not cricket. It would defeat the whole purpose of public funding...That's not US culture. US culture is you do whatever you can get away with to win. Even if you can't get away with it in the long run, can you get away with it long enough to win. jttmab