One is to get rid of party primaries. Have everyone in one primary and then the top 3, 4, or 5 candidates go to the general election. (Must be more than 2 so that it’s not a binary choice)
The second reform is that voters can vote for every candidate they find acceptable. Thus the winner must be broadly acceptable to the public.
The first seems to be a normal primary without party attachments, which are already done in most states for local and state elections. If anything, I'd be mostly okay with doing away with primaries if it's only two at the end to choose from. That way they must each work to obtain as many voters as possible, FPTP, rather than building coalitions with minority preferences.
The second is already true, it seems to me. People can vote for anyone they like and the candidate who wins must already be broadly popular.
The problem with gerrymandering is that it's a deliberate manipulation of their own competitiveness, which impedes tangible outcomes from changes in public opinion. We should want those in power to not have that power and be actually worried they could lose again. I'm not sure how these reforms help us with this, but it's definitely interesting to think about how to improve the primaries.
I didn’t mean that they would address gerrymandering.
I live in IL, I know why gerrymandering is bad, you don’t have to convince me.
As for Sand’s proposals, it’s essential that there are more than 2 candidates that get out of the primary. It sets up the opportunity for candidates to have to appeal to other candidates’ voters. The best example I can think of is in Alaska, in which 4 candidates get out of the primaries. Peltola appealed to the Republicans who hated Palin and picked up more support when the 4th and 3rd candidates were eliminated by ranked choice voting.
In California, I suspect that if 3 candidates made it out of their jungle primaries it would change campaigning and maybe even outcomes.
I actually think ranked choice voting would be ideal, but I don’t think Americans care enough about politics to do it. Some find it confusing. Voting for every candidate you find acceptable is easier.
I encourage you to give some thought to the selection of electors for the electoral college. The presidency is very powerful right now, so there is serious leverage in improving the way presidents are elected. The electoral college system has well-understood disadvantages, but a number of advantages which are less discussed. One underrated advantage is that it allows state-by-state experimentation. If a single state changes the way electors are chosen in that particular state, other states can observe the results and decide if they want to adopt the same method for themselves. That lets us do a "trial run" before rolling out a change to the entire nation.
The more general problem with this sort of reform effort is that people will always evaluate the reform proposal based on whether it hurts or helps their preferred political party. It might be possible to design a reform so it simply improves the process without severely hurting or helping either party. Perhaps this could be achieved through the use of interstate compacts somehow, e.g. imagine if a red state and a blue state with an approximately equal number of electoral votes / Congressional seats agreed to implement the same reform simultaneously. If California and Texas are currently defecting in the interstate prisoner's dilemma, what would cooperation look like?
Anyways, I have my own zany idea for completely rethinking how state electors are chosen, but I'm curious if you come up with anything.
That actually is an interesting point I've never heard before now.
I'm all for states experimenting within constitutional bounds--I say let some try it out. I think you're right about how people typically evaluate reforms, and that's why I try to use the framework of whether it helps or hurts people's ability to remove those leaders if they want, so it works on a non-partisan basis. But I also recognize and understand the complacency that comes with an advantaged system, and Republicans seem to have that in the bag for the most part.
I haven't given much thought to the EC. I was a big supporter even in Trumps first term when all Dems were against it due to Clinton's loss, but I've slowly shifted to popular vote. Seems like the most common and simple solution, at least to try for a time. But your idea is intriguing and I'll be on the lookout for other ideas. The problem for me though is this doesn't seem to be a major problem right now; the time to do it was 2017. Maybe some states will find a way to do it, and if so, I'll watch closely.
Anyways, on the redistricting question, my suggestion would be that each congressional district can include a maximum of one "partial county". You can't just force district boundaries to conform to county boundaries, because some counties have a massive population which will require more than one representative (e.g. Los Angeles County has 17 congressional representatives). And of course, in some cases it will be necessary to consolidate lots of sparsely-populated counties into a single representative district. But there's no reason I can see why a district should ever need to take little bite out of more than 1 county. I suppose in some cases a "wildcard" district might be necessary to make the population math work? But limiting the number of wildcard districts would still appear to constrain the district-drawing work a fair amount. It should be possible to legally challenge any district-drawing scheme which includes more than the necessary number of wildcard districts, how about that.
The other trick is to place limitations on the frequency with which county boundaries and legislative district boundaries are redrawn. If legislative district revisions are infrequent, gerrymandering is less of a big deal because it has a tradeoff: giving yourself a very thin margin of victory in lots of legislative districts puts you at risk of a massive loss of seats, if your party loses just little bit of popularity. And there is always fluctuation in voter populations over time; hard to predict that demographic info perfectly in advance.
Have you heard Rob Sand’s proposed reforms?
One is to get rid of party primaries. Have everyone in one primary and then the top 3, 4, or 5 candidates go to the general election. (Must be more than 2 so that it’s not a binary choice)
The second reform is that voters can vote for every candidate they find acceptable. Thus the winner must be broadly acceptable to the public.
What do you think?
I'm not sure they address gerrymandering.
The first seems to be a normal primary without party attachments, which are already done in most states for local and state elections. If anything, I'd be mostly okay with doing away with primaries if it's only two at the end to choose from. That way they must each work to obtain as many voters as possible, FPTP, rather than building coalitions with minority preferences.
The second is already true, it seems to me. People can vote for anyone they like and the candidate who wins must already be broadly popular.
The problem with gerrymandering is that it's a deliberate manipulation of their own competitiveness, which impedes tangible outcomes from changes in public opinion. We should want those in power to not have that power and be actually worried they could lose again. I'm not sure how these reforms help us with this, but it's definitely interesting to think about how to improve the primaries.
I didn’t mean that they would address gerrymandering.
I live in IL, I know why gerrymandering is bad, you don’t have to convince me.
As for Sand’s proposals, it’s essential that there are more than 2 candidates that get out of the primary. It sets up the opportunity for candidates to have to appeal to other candidates’ voters. The best example I can think of is in Alaska, in which 4 candidates get out of the primaries. Peltola appealed to the Republicans who hated Palin and picked up more support when the 4th and 3rd candidates were eliminated by ranked choice voting.
In California, I suspect that if 3 candidates made it out of their jungle primaries it would change campaigning and maybe even outcomes.
I actually think ranked choice voting would be ideal, but I don’t think Americans care enough about politics to do it. Some find it confusing. Voting for every candidate you find acceptable is easier.
I encourage you to give some thought to the selection of electors for the electoral college. The presidency is very powerful right now, so there is serious leverage in improving the way presidents are elected. The electoral college system has well-understood disadvantages, but a number of advantages which are less discussed. One underrated advantage is that it allows state-by-state experimentation. If a single state changes the way electors are chosen in that particular state, other states can observe the results and decide if they want to adopt the same method for themselves. That lets us do a "trial run" before rolling out a change to the entire nation.
The more general problem with this sort of reform effort is that people will always evaluate the reform proposal based on whether it hurts or helps their preferred political party. It might be possible to design a reform so it simply improves the process without severely hurting or helping either party. Perhaps this could be achieved through the use of interstate compacts somehow, e.g. imagine if a red state and a blue state with an approximately equal number of electoral votes / Congressional seats agreed to implement the same reform simultaneously. If California and Texas are currently defecting in the interstate prisoner's dilemma, what would cooperation look like?
Anyways, I have my own zany idea for completely rethinking how state electors are chosen, but I'm curious if you come up with anything.
That actually is an interesting point I've never heard before now.
I'm all for states experimenting within constitutional bounds--I say let some try it out. I think you're right about how people typically evaluate reforms, and that's why I try to use the framework of whether it helps or hurts people's ability to remove those leaders if they want, so it works on a non-partisan basis. But I also recognize and understand the complacency that comes with an advantaged system, and Republicans seem to have that in the bag for the most part.
I haven't given much thought to the EC. I was a big supporter even in Trumps first term when all Dems were against it due to Clinton's loss, but I've slowly shifted to popular vote. Seems like the most common and simple solution, at least to try for a time. But your idea is intriguing and I'll be on the lookout for other ideas. The problem for me though is this doesn't seem to be a major problem right now; the time to do it was 2017. Maybe some states will find a way to do it, and if so, I'll watch closely.
Thanks for reading!
Anyways, on the redistricting question, my suggestion would be that each congressional district can include a maximum of one "partial county". You can't just force district boundaries to conform to county boundaries, because some counties have a massive population which will require more than one representative (e.g. Los Angeles County has 17 congressional representatives). And of course, in some cases it will be necessary to consolidate lots of sparsely-populated counties into a single representative district. But there's no reason I can see why a district should ever need to take little bite out of more than 1 county. I suppose in some cases a "wildcard" district might be necessary to make the population math work? But limiting the number of wildcard districts would still appear to constrain the district-drawing work a fair amount. It should be possible to legally challenge any district-drawing scheme which includes more than the necessary number of wildcard districts, how about that.
The other trick is to place limitations on the frequency with which county boundaries and legislative district boundaries are redrawn. If legislative district revisions are infrequent, gerrymandering is less of a big deal because it has a tradeoff: giving yourself a very thin margin of victory in lots of legislative districts puts you at risk of a massive loss of seats, if your party loses just little bit of popularity. And there is always fluctuation in voter populations over time; hard to predict that demographic info perfectly in advance.