This topic will be about what policies you feel are important for this new political party. Don’t be afraid to downvote to disagree, but remember: more can be done with discussion, debate, and constructive criticism than downvotes alone.
This topic will be about what policies you feel are important for this new political party. Don’t be afraid to downvote to disagree, but remember: more can be done with discussion, debate, and constructive criticism than downvotes alone.
Electoral reform
The choice of Electoral System is one of the most important institutional decisions for any democracy. Therefore, I believe it’s important to achieve proportional representation, and I’d also prefer to have an election method that meets good criteria like independence of irrelevant alternatives.
The electoral systems commonly in use in the USA naturally lead to only having 2 choices where neither really represents the majority of the population. Any political activity that isn’t focused on electoral (or constitutional) reform will, at best, manage to replace a party (but any institution replacing a party will become similar to the one it replaces in the process).
“First-past-the-post voting” has deprived us of a legitimate decision-making body. Without that, accomplishing other goals will be difficult.
Single-winner systems
Academics agree that the most important influence on proportionality is an electoral district’s magnitude, the number of representatives elected from the district. Because of this, I suspect the method for electing representatives to the Senate of the USA should be changed (whether that be by increasing the number of senators, or changing the electoral districts for the Senate, or something else), and that the method for electing executives should also be changed.
A particular problem is posed by executives, since it seems natural that every system has one person that is at least slightly more important than all others. However, this is addressed to some extent by making sure that the primary executive is one that can be supported by a majority of the population, whether that be through a popular election using a system that selects the candidate that is offensive to the smallest number of voters, or investing executive power in a prime minister that must survive a vote of no confidence from a legislative body, or some other method.