The piece argues that the crisis is "negative polarization" and that the fix is proportional representation. Getting more parties into the mix to build consensus. But this misses the root issue completely. The problem isn't the number of factions at the trough; the problem is that the state has unlimited power over individual lives, forcing everyone into a desperate, existential war to control it.
Whether you have two massive parties or six smaller coalitions, if the fundamental premise of the system remains central planning rather than the uncompromising protection of individual rights, it is still authoritarianism.
Introducing proportional representation doesn't save a republic; it just changes the math of how a shifting coalition of mobs gets to vote away your property, speech, and liberty. You cannot fix a collapsing, unconstitutional democracy by adding more factions to the ballot box. You fix it by stripping the state of its power to violate rights in the first place.
In short, politics isn't about elections and voting and political parties.
I agree that electoral systems can have a major influence on political incentives and public debate. Proportional representation could encourage broader cooperation and give voters more meaningful choices. For anyone researching local property information alongside civic issues, https://pulaskicountyassessor.org can also be a useful reference. The discussion raises important questions about how institutions can reduce division and encourage representation.
The discussion about negative polarization raises an important point about how political divisions can affect constructive public dialogue. I especially liked the focus on finding practical ways to encourage more balanced conversations and cooperation. For readers interested in public records and local civic information, https://rockcountycourt.org can also be a useful reference for researching court-related matters. Clear, accessible information can help people stay better informed about issues affecting their communities.
My country (NZ) shifted to proportional representation some years ago. It has made a difference to the diversity of voices in Parliament, and removed the frustration of voters who felt their vote was meaningless because they were in an electorate that was a safe seat for the party they didn't like. There is a lot of concern about small parties having undue influence, but I think that's largely a result of the main parties not negotiating their coalition agreements well. I think that will settle over time as the country has more experience. It does tend to make the small parties more extreme/populist as they need to keep above the 5% threshold to get in, so tend to focus on a particular group of voters and pander to them. But the very minor, extreme groups that have tried to create a viable party have all failed. I favoured a system that involved ranking candidates, and have voted for local bodies using that system. As long as people are taught that they can just put 1 next to their preferred candidate and stop there it is a good system. It allows tactical voting and means you can vote for multiple people who will be acceptable.
The Voting Rights Act was enacted to stop expected future nasty shenanigans against Black voters. It was not remedial to redress past shenanigans. Big difference. Words matter. SCOTUS did us a favour by consigning the redundancies to the waste bin of history.
Was I hearing a defense of proportional representation by race or did I imagine it? What a horrible idea. So who would we deem deserving of rep by group? Red haired people ? Descendants of Irish/Poles/Italians/South Asians/Those who like pina coladas and gettin caught in the rain? Where does it end?
Nothing of the sort. As I noted, the point is there would not be anything about the system based on race, it makes the whole idea unnecessary. Rather, where there is racially polarized voting (such as in southern states where black people vote predominantly Democratic and firm majorities of white people vote Republican), the results of PR would naturally reflect that, based on the votes cast. Nothing is locked in based on race, it's about outcomes accurately representing how people choose to vote. The same would be true based on whatever other factors influence how people vote, it is just particularly salient in the face of racial gerrymandering because it makes that tactic ineffective, in the same way it makes partisan gerrymandering ineffective.
Decent discussion, but it would've been a lot better if they had offered an argument, and really any argument on why parties are a necessity. Basically what we got is we need parties because we do.
Even if I grant you that, it still doesn't follow that they have to be stronger in order to be functional. A discussion of the negative ramifications of parties, polarization, us-vs-them thinking, etc. would have been nice.
The criticism of ranked-choice voting at the end was frankly incoherent. We've just spent 10 - 15 minutes talking about parties creating lists, and voting for parties and not individuals, but it turns out ranked-choice voting won't work 'cause you usually want to vote for the "one guy." Ranked choice voting allows for voting for the "one guy" if you want, whereas party line voting requires me to vote for a bunch of guys I may or may not like.
Finally, the idea that proportional voting will be intuitive to the average voter, but also that that same voter can't compile a top 5 list is risible.
The support for a party-based system of PR in the US usually comes down worries about the history of single transferable vote (proportional ranked-choice voting) being repealed in the US.
A lot of the PR movement in the 1910s came from anti-party populists/progressives who wanted to get rid of parties altogether. That is why so many cities run nonpartisan elections now. The party infrastructure was very opposed to this, so a lot of these cities had a series of repeal referendums (similar to what has been happening in Alaska) until eventually every city that had PR lost it, except for Cambridge, MA.
Whether we want parties is an interesting discussion, though. For many voters, a party platform is a shortcut to understanding if a politician aligns with your values. The problem with our current party system is that the two parties are so big that being a Democrat won't tell you where a politician stands on foreign policy, taxation, specific environmental policy, etc. There are similar divides within the Republican party. If we had four or five parties, it would be easier to understand which candidates align with you. Independents have two major issues: most states have restrictive ballot access laws for independents (which probably should be reformed) and being independent or nonpartisan doesn't tell you where someone stands on social issues, taxation, etc. It means voters would need to do research on every independent candidate. Is that enough to dismiss STV? I wouldn't say so, but there are drawbacks from systems that require more informed voters, and parties tend not to like a system where you could rank a Democrat 1, a Republican 2, and then a different Democrat 3.
I think the best mix of these systems is Australia's above-the-line/below-the-line system, where you can rank parties OR rank candidates, which gives voters an easy option or a more specific option. It keeps parties important while giving independents a fair shot.
Nice comment, but I think the parties are too small now. Craig and Drutman get into this in the discussion, the parties used to be "big tent" coalition parties before the primary system. The latter plus the choice of only two parties has inflated the influence of the most radical factions in each. What we have now are two parties each of which is way out of step with the mainstream and represents a tiny minority of voters.
I don't think most people research candidates or parties at all. They go with what the people they trust tell them. Right now the only two choices are equally unpalatable.
I agree, although I think it's hard to argue that the Democratic Party isn't a big tent coalition right now between the DSA candidates, the Elizabeth Warren wing, and the establishment wing. I hope all of this infighting helps incentivize the party to support PR. I think it would be easier and fairer for everyone involved.
The Republican Party, despite Romney and Cheney's best efforts, is pretty uniform at this point, although who knows what will happen when Trump is no longer on the ballot or in the picture. That, to me, would be a great time to support PR if I were a center-right Republican.
The piece argues that the crisis is "negative polarization" and that the fix is proportional representation. Getting more parties into the mix to build consensus. But this misses the root issue completely. The problem isn't the number of factions at the trough; the problem is that the state has unlimited power over individual lives, forcing everyone into a desperate, existential war to control it.
Whether you have two massive parties or six smaller coalitions, if the fundamental premise of the system remains central planning rather than the uncompromising protection of individual rights, it is still authoritarianism.
Introducing proportional representation doesn't save a republic; it just changes the math of how a shifting coalition of mobs gets to vote away your property, speech, and liberty. You cannot fix a collapsing, unconstitutional democracy by adding more factions to the ballot box. You fix it by stripping the state of its power to violate rights in the first place.
In short, politics isn't about elections and voting and political parties.
I agree that electoral systems can have a major influence on political incentives and public debate. Proportional representation could encourage broader cooperation and give voters more meaningful choices. For anyone researching local property information alongside civic issues, https://pulaskicountyassessor.org can also be a useful reference. The discussion raises important questions about how institutions can reduce division and encourage representation.
The discussion about negative polarization raises an important point about how political divisions can affect constructive public dialogue. I especially liked the focus on finding practical ways to encourage more balanced conversations and cooperation. For readers interested in public records and local civic information, https://rockcountycourt.org can also be a useful reference for researching court-related matters. Clear, accessible information can help people stay better informed about issues affecting their communities.
My country (NZ) shifted to proportional representation some years ago. It has made a difference to the diversity of voices in Parliament, and removed the frustration of voters who felt their vote was meaningless because they were in an electorate that was a safe seat for the party they didn't like. There is a lot of concern about small parties having undue influence, but I think that's largely a result of the main parties not negotiating their coalition agreements well. I think that will settle over time as the country has more experience. It does tend to make the small parties more extreme/populist as they need to keep above the 5% threshold to get in, so tend to focus on a particular group of voters and pander to them. But the very minor, extreme groups that have tried to create a viable party have all failed. I favoured a system that involved ranking candidates, and have voted for local bodies using that system. As long as people are taught that they can just put 1 next to their preferred candidate and stop there it is a good system. It allows tactical voting and means you can vote for multiple people who will be acceptable.
The Voting Rights Act was enacted to stop expected future nasty shenanigans against Black voters. It was not remedial to redress past shenanigans. Big difference. Words matter. SCOTUS did us a favour by consigning the redundancies to the waste bin of history.
Was I hearing a defense of proportional representation by race or did I imagine it? What a horrible idea. So who would we deem deserving of rep by group? Red haired people ? Descendants of Irish/Poles/Italians/South Asians/Those who like pina coladas and gettin caught in the rain? Where does it end?
Nothing of the sort. As I noted, the point is there would not be anything about the system based on race, it makes the whole idea unnecessary. Rather, where there is racially polarized voting (such as in southern states where black people vote predominantly Democratic and firm majorities of white people vote Republican), the results of PR would naturally reflect that, based on the votes cast. Nothing is locked in based on race, it's about outcomes accurately representing how people choose to vote. The same would be true based on whatever other factors influence how people vote, it is just particularly salient in the face of racial gerrymandering because it makes that tactic ineffective, in the same way it makes partisan gerrymandering ineffective.
The fact is party affiliation is a proxy for race in the South right now, and I suspect the justices know that.
They instead invented a hypothetical world where there's no racism in the South and applied those counterfactuals in their decision.
I'm not going to mince words, the Court endorsed racism in districting, and likely knowingly so.
Decent discussion, but it would've been a lot better if they had offered an argument, and really any argument on why parties are a necessity. Basically what we got is we need parties because we do.
Even if I grant you that, it still doesn't follow that they have to be stronger in order to be functional. A discussion of the negative ramifications of parties, polarization, us-vs-them thinking, etc. would have been nice.
The criticism of ranked-choice voting at the end was frankly incoherent. We've just spent 10 - 15 minutes talking about parties creating lists, and voting for parties and not individuals, but it turns out ranked-choice voting won't work 'cause you usually want to vote for the "one guy." Ranked choice voting allows for voting for the "one guy" if you want, whereas party line voting requires me to vote for a bunch of guys I may or may not like.
Finally, the idea that proportional voting will be intuitive to the average voter, but also that that same voter can't compile a top 5 list is risible.
The support for a party-based system of PR in the US usually comes down worries about the history of single transferable vote (proportional ranked-choice voting) being repealed in the US.
A lot of the PR movement in the 1910s came from anti-party populists/progressives who wanted to get rid of parties altogether. That is why so many cities run nonpartisan elections now. The party infrastructure was very opposed to this, so a lot of these cities had a series of repeal referendums (similar to what has been happening in Alaska) until eventually every city that had PR lost it, except for Cambridge, MA.
Whether we want parties is an interesting discussion, though. For many voters, a party platform is a shortcut to understanding if a politician aligns with your values. The problem with our current party system is that the two parties are so big that being a Democrat won't tell you where a politician stands on foreign policy, taxation, specific environmental policy, etc. There are similar divides within the Republican party. If we had four or five parties, it would be easier to understand which candidates align with you. Independents have two major issues: most states have restrictive ballot access laws for independents (which probably should be reformed) and being independent or nonpartisan doesn't tell you where someone stands on social issues, taxation, etc. It means voters would need to do research on every independent candidate. Is that enough to dismiss STV? I wouldn't say so, but there are drawbacks from systems that require more informed voters, and parties tend not to like a system where you could rank a Democrat 1, a Republican 2, and then a different Democrat 3.
I think the best mix of these systems is Australia's above-the-line/below-the-line system, where you can rank parties OR rank candidates, which gives voters an easy option or a more specific option. It keeps parties important while giving independents a fair shot.
Nice comment, but I think the parties are too small now. Craig and Drutman get into this in the discussion, the parties used to be "big tent" coalition parties before the primary system. The latter plus the choice of only two parties has inflated the influence of the most radical factions in each. What we have now are two parties each of which is way out of step with the mainstream and represents a tiny minority of voters.
I don't think most people research candidates or parties at all. They go with what the people they trust tell them. Right now the only two choices are equally unpalatable.
I agree, although I think it's hard to argue that the Democratic Party isn't a big tent coalition right now between the DSA candidates, the Elizabeth Warren wing, and the establishment wing. I hope all of this infighting helps incentivize the party to support PR. I think it would be easier and fairer for everyone involved.
The Republican Party, despite Romney and Cheney's best efforts, is pretty uniform at this point, although who knows what will happen when Trump is no longer on the ballot or in the picture. That, to me, would be a great time to support PR if I were a center-right Republican.
just do approval voting
IT WILL TAKE YEARS TO BRING THE TRUST BACK TO AMERICA. IT WILL ALSO TAKE YEARS TO BRING TRUST BACK TO THE MEDIA.
True that…!! America has fallen from grace to an absolute laughing stock…in a jiffy. Like you said, it will take years to regain lost ground.