Do you think America should adopt party politics, as in, you vote to elect a party. So the party has a leader, a Prime Minister, and if he/she is hopeless, the party elects a new Prime Minister? Basically, the American constitution would be classed as outdated and due an overhaul to bring it up to the 21st century.
Basically a commonwealth system. You get fewer dorks in for long periods but downside is you can end with rotating leaders
We had that system early in our history. George Washington was elected unanimously, but starting with John Adams, the presidential candidates were selected by caucuses of each party.’s senators and representatives. As the Federalist Party faded away, the Democratic-Republicans were in charge. Whom ever the caucus picked was elected president. The results were John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe. By 1820 there was one political party, and Monroe got all but one electoral vote. All that changed in 1824 when people got tired of “King Caucus.” There were four presidential candidates.
I voted no because I would not care to see people like Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi or Mitch McConnell as prime minister.
No thank you. Each country should pick it's own system because not all systems are compatible for all people, but I think in the US the Constitution and it's system is working more or less as designed, and I don't like the instability of the Westminster system.
Yes, break the impasse, Britain (Canucks/Aussies/Kiwis etc) is always better. Now, the King will need an official residence in Washington. something impressive but tasteful.
Not really my call but I don't think the system is the cause of the problems. If you changed the system you'd just have a different set of problems instead (take the word of this Brit; a Prime Ministerial system is no guarantee of great leadership!). The underlying problems pretty much anywhere remain human nature and conflicts of interest (real, imagined or manufactured) and a key issue here is that the people who define the rules of the governmental system can be just as subject to that as the rest of us.
I'm not opposed to amending the constitution. As long as its done via the processes prescribed in the constitution. ...and if we're going to do that, first and foremost on my list would be to create a legitimate and realistic process for allowing secession, both from states to other states and from the nation entirely.
I agree with you. The "two-party" system in the U. S. has grown to be dictatorial and completely corrupt. What works better more often seems to be the "parliamentary" system, where there are about four or five (or more) parties who try to gain leadership, and they frequently have to put together coalitions in order to do it.
I think the electoral college is one thing that is keeping the two party system safe. Imagine the chaos every presidential election after there are more than two viable parties, and no candidate ever gets 270 electoral votes. Do we really want it to be more chaotic? I think the electoral college would have to be eliminated before we could do anything about the binary political system we have.
I've never understood why that is better. In Europe, and those places with a parliamentary system, you vote, then after the vote you find out what kind of coalition you are going to get. In the US system, you are voting directly for the coalition, since US political parties are more like coalitions than political parties in the European sense.
A parliamentary system doesn't always work terribly well, Mike, but at least many more people are able to participate in the political affairs and future of their country, and can have individuals who actually do represent them in positions of power to make decisions instead of just being marginalized on the sidelines. Maybe I'm wrong, but, as an unaffiliated Independent, it's very clear that neither Democrats nor Republicans care at all about people like me, who are probably more like Libertarians than anything else. There's a lot of us these days, but not enough yet to actually get anything of any significance done! This article from two months ago is interesting: https://www.axios.com/2023/04/17/poll-americans-independent-republican-democrat
So what would be be different for you in a parliamentary system? Consider...You vote for and get Libertarian representation in the American Parliament. After the election there is a scramble as the different parties try to put together governing coalitions. Finally...the libertarians align with the Social Democrats and your side gets legal weed nationwide, and they get your votes for increasing tax rates on "the rich" to 70%. I'm not sure how that's better than having two super coalitions that are more or less permanent rather than reinventing the wheel after every election. This sort of parliamentary coalition politics is how the Germans shut down all of their nuclear power plants and got a 40% power increase the next day.
@conservaliberal, I think you may already be aware of this, but @GrayMan, @WhoDatPhan78, @Lil Mike; as a potential alternative to European-style parliamentary systems, have you guys thought at all about the pros and cons of moving to a Ranked Voting system instead? Something like Instant Runoff or Ranked Pairs for example? As far as getting rid of or lessening the polarization of the currently entrenched two-party duopoly we have here in the U.S. (or just generally giving voters more than 2 viable options to pick between) I personally think Ranked Voting is an important option to include in the conversation. -Meta
Nothing I see says how parties fit into this type of voting system. I am assuming this eliminates parties as having any say in the voting process?
I hadn't given "ranked-voting" much thought in much else besides restaurant menus until you made us aware of it as a political alternative recently, and the more I read about it, the better I think I like it! I can see how comprehensive ranked-voting could have even more advantages than today's "parliamentary" systems throughout the world. And, it's certain that both today's Republican and Democrat parties would think of ranked-voting as anathema to everything they use to control and sustain their power.
In that case every election would go the House Representatives with each getting one vote regardless of size. Think of pressure and potential for bribery one the representative from Delaware, for example. The House has voted in the president twice. In 1800, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr ended up in an Electoral College tie. The country also fell apart as a result. In 1824, John Quincy Adams won despite the fact that he finished second on the general election. Andrew Jackson’s supporters called it “the corrupt bargain.” It came close to happening in 1968.
We are heading to a one party system by converting voters and ballots into data points. California comes to mind.
All a multiparty system will do is place the Democrats in complete control. The Democrats are a monolith with virtually perfect party discipline. Once they dump Joe Manchin in the Senate, they will vote as group with virtually 100% precision. Their voters are very much the same same way. Look at the leftists here. One would think that more of the hard core would support replacing Biden given his obvious weakness. But no. Once the party told them that Biden is their next nominee, they had their marching orders. This is how the Communist Party works in all of the nations where it has control. If you don't bow down to the leadership, you are forced out of the party or worse.
Not necessarily. But it certainly would lessen the impact of party-based politics on our government. That said, parties could still exist under a Ranked Voting system if folks wanted to keep them around. They wouldn't be necessary, but they could still have their primaries and run them however they wanted. Though if the general election is run using a Ranked Voting method, there would be an incentive for parties not to pick anyone who was too extreme, because under a Ranked system, candidates from the extremes have less advantage than they do under a Plurality system, since moderates, independents, third/fourth parties, etc. are given a fighting chance under such a system... and no one has to worry about being a spoiler candidate... Imagine being a third party candidate under that system vs being a third-party candidate under our current Plurality system. As a third party candidate who actually wants to win (as opposed to just sending a message), which system would you rather have? I imagine that if we did go the direction of Ranked Voting, that political parties could actually become completely obsolete at some point thereafter, but the cool thing about Ranked Voting over other systems imo, is that it's really not about compulsing such things,... rather it's all about evening the playing field and giving folks a real choice. -Meta
Maybe, but I think that if enough of us voters demand a change like this from them, that it wont matter how much the ruling class might prefer to hang onto the status quo. Since even flawed as it may be, they still do rely on our votes under the current system to stay in office. So as more folks find out about the benefits of Ranked Voting over what we have now, and as more folks start to require of them commitments to move us towards things like Ranked Voting, I'd imaging that they'd start to find it increasingly difficult to resist. -Meta
Many Americans, like me, may not have been familiar with "ranked voting", so I'm posting a link to a little, generalized wiki article on it. At least it may open some people's eyes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranke...used,presidential general elections in Alaska. All my life I've bellyached about having to choose the "lesser of two evils". I'm really beginning to think that ranked voting may finally provide the answer to free us from that after all!
