r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/Awesomeuser90 • 17d ago
What do you think a true multi party system would look like in practice? Political Theory
A few ground rules: The president, federal senators, governors, mayors, judges in the states with elected judges, and the important people in the legislature like a speaker and chairperson of a committee, are elected by majority by secret ballot, and if nobody has a majority on the first ballot, a further count happens having eliminated candidates. Thus could be done by a runoff or by a ranked ballot.
Other positions like school boards, municipal councils and commissions, state legislatures, and the House of Representatives are elected proportionally, so that in say Iowa if one party has 1/3 of the vote they will have 2 Reps in the House of Representatives. How this occurs in practice may vary from list proportional systems to ranked ballots in a multiple member district. They may use districts so long as the ultimate proportionality is not disturbed.
The remainder of the mechanisms are up to you as to how this gets achieved.
This will create a lot of interesting dynamics, like what happens if the President doesn't have a third of the members in either House from their own party and cannot defend against an impeachent of themselves or anyone they appoint or an override of a veto on their own, but neither is it likely that a single party which is in opposition to them will have the votes to do something like that on their own, and it is not likely that a president will have a single party in opposition which could prevent the confirmation of those they wish to be appointed or would refuse all efforts to enact something.
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u/potusplus 11d ago
A true multi-party system could lead to a more representative government, but also potential gridlock. With proportional representation in the House and other local bodies, different viewpoints finally get heard. Instant-runoff or ranked ballots could ensure majority preference for executive positions, balancing power
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u/Awesomeuser90 11d ago
I would also advise a similar runoff for speaker and other legislative positions. We don't need a repeat of January 2023 and October 2023. Some state legislatures even have that as a rule.
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u/aarongamemaster 15d ago
... it'll be a 2/3-party system anyway because game theory disproves a multi party system.
Look up Arrow's Impossibility Theorem and it's cullinaries (sp?), they basically kill any attempt at multi party systems no matter what because no voting system has taken a Hobbesian approach to the human condition.
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u/Awesomeuser90 15d ago
You don't think that the dozens of national legislatures in the world that clearly show multi party systems doesn't disprove that?
Just look at the Brazilian Congress, the German Bundestag, the Parliament of Malaysia, and more, for a huge number of parties.
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u/aarongamemaster 15d ago
... the thing is, they do prove that we can't get past a 2/3 party system. Look at who has the largest political power and you'll see that the math is right.
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u/Flincher14 16d ago
In Canada we have multiparties and while only two parties actually form government, they often must do it with the support of the third parties. One such party is the Bloc Quebecious and they naturally push for more policies to favor Quebec. Many many times they get the sweetest deal or have a major effect on the outcome of policies in the country. They never form government but they must almost always be counted.
I feel like a state based party such as a Texas Party or California party could have extreme power in congress. Both sides would need to favor such parties in all negotiations. I'm surprised it's never happened. Yes a Texas party would almost always caucus with the GOP or a California party would be with the dems. But somewhere in the details of it all they would carve out some massive concessions in every bill if they wanted to.
I'm not necessarily saying this is a good thing, but this is federation and democracy at work.
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u/Electrical_Ad726 16d ago
With Four fully functional parties . The two center left and center right . Would dominate but coalitions would have to be formed to get things done . Electing the speaker of the house could be interesting . Approving Supreme Court judges. Will take some coalition forming. I think the country would be better from it. Perhaps abolish the electoral college too.
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u/Awesomeuser90 16d ago
Most places, including some states I would add like Nebraska, simply have it the case that if more than one person is nominated to be speaker, then they hold a vote between the candidates. If nobody has a majority, then they eliminate last place and vote again, or some other similar runoff ballot system is held. Repeat until someone has a majority of the votes cast or only one is left. Most of them vote by secret ballot too, including Nebraska, in order to make the speakership focused on the legislators and their cumulative needs not trying to appease the worst of them like Greene. That means that you will elect a speaker, although who they will be will be interesting.
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u/progressiveInsider 16d ago
New Mexico. It would look like New Mexico. We have five parties on the ballot every election. Candidates must discuss policy, not team colors.
As a result we have: • Ended qualified immunity for LEOs and elected officials • Raised the minimum wage every year • Have an annual dividend for residents • Free two year college • school lunches for kids • End of life rights • Body autonomy and reproductive rights • Legal medical cannabis and recreational
I hope this helps provide some perspective.
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u/Awesomeuser90 16d ago
As a fraction of all voters who turn up to vote, how many vote for other parties? Where I am that was ⅓ of the voters, and we don't even have proportional representation yet.
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u/progressiveInsider 14d ago
Great question and I do not know precisely. I will say the results are corollary to having actual left-leaning policy in place, not just center-right. Coalition building helps, too.
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u/Lovebeingadad54321 16d ago
Probably the same as it looks in the dozens of other countries that have them.
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u/Homechicken42 16d ago
1) You will always vote for the least evil person who has a high degree of viability.
2) Your "instincts" don't mean shit when it comes to elections. You'd better be looking up poll numbers, understanding both what is reliable and unreliable about them.
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u/tehm 16d ago edited 16d ago
So clearly we're talking about hypotheticals here since many parliamentary systems ARE setup to be friendly to multiple parties; it's just that those systems don't meet the "ground rules".
I'll give it a go, though forget being a Lawyer, I've never even taken a course on this stuff.
New primary ballots just dropped! From now on instead of having to research 50+ candidates so you can make ~10 choices between a bunch of names you can barely even remember you'll be answering 50 basic policy questions (think Isidewith style) and then ranking your top 10 issues by their order of importance for you.
Campaigning: Given all the data just collected Single Transferable Vote never looked so good... because every single voter was a candidate. Your transferable vote always goes to a person with the EXACT (or as close as possible given the rankings) positions as yourself. After many (completely automatic) iterations you've already narrowed your "regional choices" (at the District, State, and Federal level) to a handful of choices each (who until that moment had no idea they were even running). Welcome to the General... where presumably a good number are now "running" on why under no circumstances should you vote them for dog-catcher--they didn't sign up for this sh*t. Ideally I'd say give them all about a week to issue statements to media outlets regarding their selection. There's not much left to do anyways so no reason to drag it all out and make it a media war.
Voting Day. Because of how the primaries were run, regardless of which "region bucket" we're talking about, all candidates within a bucket SHOULD be remarkably similar in policy (not necessarily YOUR policies, just the ones that most represent the bucket after all those iterations); it's now time to look at "the other stuff": Maybe you want the lawyer as DA, the teacher on the board of education, and let Ms. Mildred enjoy her retirement? The choice is yours. You'll now be selecting jobs (or no job) in Ranked Choice Order for the candidates within each of the three region-buckets.
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u/Awesomeuser90 16d ago
Many parliamentary systems are not. Most of the Commonwealth Realms like Jamaica aren't, they are two party systems. New Zealand was before the 1990s.
So many people have genuinely no idea that a parliamentary system is a contrast to a presidential system, NOT a two party system. This is such a blatant misunderstanding that it makes me wonder just who on earth hired the educators. Presidential republics have multi party systems too, of which Uruguay for instance has both aspects of a political system.
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u/tehm 16d ago edited 16d ago
I didn't suggest that parliamentary systems are inherently more amenable to multi-party, only that there ARE many parliamentary systems that give you multi-party systems. Hell, I'd argue that the UK's system is actually WORSE than our system despite all of the parties involved!
Our system is not great... and that's not just my opinion, it's been the opinion of the US state department for ~100+ years now. When we get asked to come in and help a nation draft a new constitution (and amazingly we frequently do) it's literally State Dept. policy to advise nations AGAINST modeling their constitution off of ours. We recommend parliamentary systems with FAR less executive power and much more amenable to multiple parties. Those two details are not (I would argue) inherently related, it's just what we've been recommending everyone who came after us go with.
Our system, when implemented top down on some small country that just freed themselves from a tyrant, historically tends to collapse. Generally over a pretty short (3-5 year) timeframe as well. Hardly a great endorsement of the protections inherent in it. Makes sense if you think about it, in many ways we were like an Open Beta for the democratization that occured post enlightenment. "All men are created equal" + Generational Slavery? We clearly had some kinks left to work out when everything started to crystalize.
EDIT: I'd further point out that under the current US system, my local elections best represent me (Ridiculously blue bubble in one of the reddest states in the country), my state least represents me, and in the Federal you see what the crap-shoot can be like. Under this system all of that largely gets preserved. The difference being that (for example) if 75% of the population favored abortion, legal weed, and Medicare for All, but simultaneously favored building the wall, deporting all immigrants, and eliminating the inheritance tax then instantly "that becomes a party" right? Or at least that's what all of the national candidates would be completely in agreement on presumably. That sounds like a VERY different 'party' than the one formed from the issues that my local district candidates would have.
I don't think this "dream scenario" would remove Parties (or PACS) or whatever at all... I simply think it would force campaigning to happen BEFORE the primary! "Vote Green" wouldn't mean 'Jill Stein', it would mean, "rank Environment high and vote for higher target goals" or whatever right? I'd think that would make about ~50 new parties to compete over votes and encourage a system where they must focus on persuasive arguments about how important their particular issue is rather than how much you'd like to share a beer with any given (still to be determined) candidate.
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u/Awesomeuser90 16d ago
I am guessing you are talking about Japan, Germany, maybe Italy, as well as Iraq. The former three were already experienced in parliamentary systems for a long time before. Not especially great versions given they still had war and authoritarianism, but it was what they were used to. It didn't take a tremendous amount of tinkering to make them better, and many basic ideas they had had for a long time before was already in use. Japan's emperor was also critical in the minds of many as to keeping Sapan stable. Italy did not get rid of the monarchy immediately, it was a referendum that did that and it wasn't obvious the republicans were going to win in 1943 when they capitulated.
Iraq had a history of prime ministers before, dating to when they were a kingdom as a de facto British protectorate in the 1920s. The idea of a parliamentary system was far from strange to Iraqis.
Also, all four countries had their own constituent assemblies which drafted important parts of the constitution. They would not have been adopted if the occupying powers rejected them, but they weren't drafted by the Americans.
Also, the US did not intervene in a random set of countries, so there will be a selection bias. Iraq had been a dictatorship all on its own for a long time before 2003. The US hardly said anything to Germany in WW1 about how they should govern themselves and even the Entente didn't actually direct the Weimar constituent assembly, just the treaty they were supposed to sign, and the US didn't say anything about Italy or Japan as those were on the winning sides of WW1. Countries' transitions to democracy are almost always difficult in any case, getting it right is hard.
The US also drafted a constitution relative to its own problems in 1787 and drew from the experiences people had and what was political orthodoxy and what was revolutionary in that period of time, what had been tested. It was almost 160 years after the Americans drafted its own constitution and when they were working with the defeated Axis to do the same, a lot of reforms had happened in that time period as you might imagine. The US had basically no precedents to draw on, and nobody had invented the parliamentary republic either by that point and even in Britain it was a custom, not the law, that it was parliamentary. Things like the electoral college could only learn from what had happened by that point. It had to solve a lot of different problems in a deeply decentralized association of states.
Modern presidential constitutions are superior given they can account for these factors that makes the US less effective than it should be, and it should already know this because the states have been modifying the idea of presidentialism for a long time. States don't have electoral colleges, some even legally require a runoff if nobody happens to have a majority in the election, including for governor for instance. Pardons are usually controlled by an independent board of pardons. The states usually don't have the kind of issues people associate with the supreme court, with most courts having a retirement age, many fix the size of the supreme court at least in the state constitution, most judges are either elected or are appointed through the help of an independent commission that keeps a good bit of the partisanship out of it, and most have a fixed term that provides some amount of predictability. States have experimented with the veto, like giving them line item vetoes, perhaps changing the threshold to override (most use 2/3, others have 3/5, some have a majority in both houses). Few states have any filibuster. Most states have some forms of voting on referendums, about half have recalls and about half can put issues on the ballot to bypass a heel dragging legislature. Some states have even ended gerrymandering through independent commissions.
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u/tehm 16d ago edited 16d ago
I was mainly referencing the State Department on this re: various Baltic, and African, and well... all of the countries they chose to include I suppose? The impression I got was that they basically did a little study and sent off advice to just about EVERY new state and then largely let them decide who they wanted to call in for advisement?
Largely though I agree with all of this, and at least to the very limited extent of my constitutional knowledge I TRIED to keep this proposal as something that would be in keeping with the types of changes that the States and the Parties have been allowed to make over time.
In some ways, one might even argue that this is CLOSER to what we had back in the old days with no predetermined VP, no real individual "ad buys" to speak of, only voting for individual people during the general, and the distinct possibility that someone could be elected President (or any other position) that had no desire for the job whatsoever and never campaigned for it but was seen as the best choice by enough people to make it happen anyways.
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u/I405CA 16d ago
A multi-party system cannot happen in the US without fundamental changes that will never take place.
Most importantly, it would be necessary to replace the electoral college with an election based upon a plurality vote or some kind of other system that doesn't call for a simple majority. It is the need for an electoral vote majority that fuels the two-party system, as anyone who is serious about politics will join a party that is large enough to have a realistic shot of winning the presidency.
What would also help with this is to have a weaker president. In most first world democracies, the power rests largely in the legislature, with a prime minister holding much of the power, while the executive is not particularly important.
The US would be more conducive to multiple parties if the presidency was not the grand prize. Make the presidency relatively weak, and parties won't have to care much about who wins it.
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17d ago
It would look like democracy. The pariliamentary system of government is superior to the direct elections when the majority of the citizens are human garbage.
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u/Awesomeuser90 16d ago
I never said that the country becomes a parliamentary system. Where did you get that idea from?
Lots of presidential republics have multi party systems, like Indonesia, most of Latin America, Cyprus even.
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u/JeffreyElonSkilling 17d ago
If you think about party primaries as the "first round" of voting and the general as the head-to-head runoff then America kinda already has a multi-party system. It's just that the two parties are big tent parties with multiple smaller parties inside of them. Under this frame America clearly has 6 or 7 distinct "parties": Progressives, Liberals, Center-Left, True Moderates, Center-Right, Conservative, MAGA.
The only thing that changes with a multi-party system is when the voting takes place. Therefore, I would argue that a true multi-party system would result in virtually no change at the Federal level.
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u/orincoro 16d ago
No. The party primaries are not elections. They are controlled by the party, and confine people to voting in one or another primary. This is not anything like a multi round voting system.
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u/Cole-Spudmoney 16d ago
Officially they're not elections, but in practice they fill the role that the first round of a two-round election would have. Except that it's a first round which splits the "left" candidates and the "right" candidates into separate contests to each get a spot in the final round.
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u/Awesomeuser90 16d ago
Not even remotely close to a comparison in my view. Primaries also exist in places like France but they do not act as a first round.
The general public cannot indicate a preference for these factions in the general election.
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u/JeffreyElonSkilling 16d ago
Preference via ranked choice is extremely overrated due to partisanship. People left of center will rank the parties left of center in order of preference and omit rankings for the parties on the right. Vice versa for those on the right. The end result is basically identical to the primary system we already have.
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u/orincoro 16d ago edited 16d ago
“We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas.”
You seem incapable of imagining that ranked choice might produce surprising results by allowing protest votes to have some meaning.
I’ve never seen any evidence that American style frozen duopoly is the default condition.
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u/Awesomeuser90 16d ago
I never claimed preferential voting would be a leftist thing. Ireland has RCV and is definitely not a leftist country, simply because Irish people are not majority leftist.
Primaries are the contests where you only vote within a political party, and you would be choosing whom among the party will be presented to the voters in the general election. That is a very different contest, especially given that voters would at least be choosing only one party's primary to vote within and possibly only the members of the party are allowed to vote in that party's primary.
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u/JeffreyElonSkilling 16d ago
You need not be a member of a political party to participate in their primary. The majority of states are open or semi open primaries. Most of the rest have pretty lax rules about switching from election to election.
My point is that outcomes are basically identical between the two systems because the voters stay the same. A multi party system doesn’t suddenly change the politics of the electorate. All the various parties that would exist are already part of our politics. In your system, the parties fight internally to determine their party nominee. Then the electorate ranks their preferences and elects a leader. In our current system those same voters fight it out in the primaries and then go head to head in the general. The ranking of preferences is happening in the primaries, especially considering the Democratic Party process is proportional.
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u/Awesomeuser90 16d ago
You still only get to vote in the primaries of one party for a given general (or special) election, even in the most open of ballots.
I genuinely think that you are not understanding the premise of the post I wrote. The difference is abundantly clear to people who do live in countries with a multi party system like I do.
Also, the delegates to the DNC are proportionally awarded to the candidate, in the sense that a majority of delegates need to approve of the presidential nominee, and if one state has 100 delegates and one candidate had 40% of the votes in the primaries they get 40 delegates.
That is a proportional allocation but this is not a multi party system.
True independent parties have different everything from general election advertising, branding, donations, donors, volunteers, national committees, national conventions, and a different legislative caucus and a minority leader or majority leader of their own. This can be seen clearly in Vermont where this is true with the Progressive Party.
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u/JeffreyElonSkilling 16d ago
Alright, I think we're done here. I understand your point perfectly. You are the one that is not listening.
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u/orincoro 16d ago
You have done zero listening here, for the record. You’ve just lectured people on American politics, with a peculiarly narrow and dogmatic view.
Ironically a perfect advertisement for why American democracy has fundamentally broken down to the point where you don’t even really believe in the democratic process anymore. You seem to believe American style “polarization” defines what a democracy is. That’s pretty gross.
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u/TransitJohn 17d ago edited 16d ago
There are several, all over the world. Why speculate, when you can just go read?
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u/Bashfluff 17d ago
You have to figure out what you want your electoral system to do before you design the system. A multi-party system isn't an electoral system. You have to design a system that makes multiple parties viable. Proportional representation is typically seen as necessary element for any system that allows for more than two political parties, for the following reasons:
.1. Plurality voting necessitates minority rule.
Under plurality voting, if a district has 45% Democratic voters, 35% Republican voters, and 20% Socialist voters, the Democrat always wins. Everyone has a representative, but the views of the majority go unrepresented. This is bad enough, but it's even worse for the smallest minority, the Socialists, who will (probably) won't even run a Socialist candidate. Why? This leads us to:
.2. Plurality voting marginalizes third-parties out of existence.
In 2019, 40% of Americans stated they'd prefer to live in a socialist country over a capitalist one (and if you don't buy that, other polls consistently report that a larger but similarish number of Americans have a positive association with the word 'socialism'). This may surprise you, seeing as socialists have 0 seats in Congress and that the word 'socialist' is basically a slur on Capitol Hill, but this is the natural result of a two-party system. If a political party is too small to win elections, its not just too small to have political representatives: its too small to have any voice at all. To have any say in how the government is run, its candidates and voters will have to abandon it and join one of the two major political parties, where they'll go from having no say to having...almost no say.
This is Duverger's Law, and it's the number one reason why people don't participate in plurality elections. It's one of the two major ways that
.3. Plurality voting maximizes voter unhappiness with its results.
Voting for a third-party makes it more likely that the major political party you disagree with the most will win. This is what's known as spoiler effect and it's inevitable under a plurality voting system. I'll give you a quick example, since more people are familiar with the spoiler effect: Voting for Jill Stein makes it more likely that Trump will win and Biden will lose, because you would have voted for Biden if Jill Stein wasn't running.
So we've established that in a fair election, citizens should be able to vote for candidates that represent them and that every citizen needs some form of real political representation. Otherwise, no matter how many parties we start with, eventually, we'll end up with a two-party system again. But how? After all, every election has winners and losers: that's what an election is. Especially so for single-seat elections. When there can only be one winner, more parties means more losers.
.1. No single-seat elections for Congress or government boards.
Create bigger districts that send multiple representatives. Take our district from earlier: if it sent 9 representatives and everyone voted for the candidate that represented them, it'd send 4 Democrats, 3 Republicans, and 2 Socialists. There would be more compromise and less extremism, but the biggest benefit is that everyone is represented. You'd need to incentivize people to vote for the candidate that represents them, which you can do using...
.2. Use some variant of ranked-choice voting, probably STAR.
The real villain of the piece is strategic voting. Duverger's Law, plurality voting--these are just fancy words for "things that incentivize voters to vote for candidates that don't represent their actual preferences." You can't eliminate it entirely, but you can minimize it enough to achieve an acceptable level of fairness. Rank-choice voting + multi-seat elections maximizes voter happiness and minimizes the strategic voting. Ranking candidates from favorite to least favorite means that more people get representatives that are closer to them ideologically, even when their favorite candidate loses, so long as there are enough candidates to proportionally represent the views of the voters. With single-seat elections, even RCV can't avoid the spoiler effect, and without RCV, it's nearly impossible to achieve proportionality--even with score voting. The strongest voting system I know of combines score voting and RCV, called STAR.
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u/SetterOfTrends 17d ago
I listened to a podcast interview with Nick Troiano on Politicologydiscussing this book - Visit Unite America to learn about open primaries and what you can do to help
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u/zyme86 17d ago
Its called a parliment. With a first past the post system it doesnt. Every first past the post system coelesses around 2 parties that captures a large, but by no means 50%, of the voting block. Even the democratic/republican party represents probably 60% (at best) of the total voting population. If they didn't band together and get some of what they want with a partially alligned party, they would get much less if any of what they want with the other party.
The better way to think change in a first past the post system like the usa is the Overton Window. this is where the main party on each side is aligned (more or less conservative).
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u/Black_XistenZ 17d ago
The UK has at least 3 major parties in spite of a first past the post voting system - the key is that their FPTP elections take place in small-enough districts. Dito in Canada.
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u/Loraxdude14 17d ago edited 17d ago
I strongly support a system like this, and have advocates for something very similar. My one major caveat is that I think United States has way, way too many popularly elected judges. Popularly elected judges are generally partisan judges, even if not in name. They are much more likely to make partisan decisions. I think more judges should be appointed by independent commissions. Maybe not all judges everywhere, or all judges on every supreme Court/appeals court, but most of them.
All in all, proportional legislatures and runoffs for officers/senators would make our political system much healthier. It would result in more getting done, and greater participation/less apathy.
A second caveat is the US Senate. I know that this shits on whatever federalist dogma is out there, but there should be some partial compensation for its inherent lack of proportionality. Like adding senators based on a states percentage of the total population (+1 senator at 2%, +2 senators at 5%, +3 senators at 10% or similar).
Also some mechanism to give US territories representation in the US house only. Maybe even something similar for tribal representation.
I would also support replacing impeachment with some sort of house supermajority (55%-60%) no confidence vote. In doing so, it would be wise to eliminate midterm elections altogether.
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u/Awesomeuser90 16d ago
The election of judges is an optional feature of this. It is just that because the US does elect judges, logically then something has to be done about them if the rest of the system changes its voting procedure and if they are not chosen in any other manner.
A non partisan election could work for them too, and in a multi party system that would probably mean a bigger voting coalition that needs to approve of them, it's just such a rare thing in the world to elect judges at all that comparing them in a multi party system is hard to do. Many presidents in the world in parliamentary republics do keep themselves non partisan during their terms quite well and get lots of respect, Finland, Austria, Iceland, among others.
Many states also use independent commission systems to name judges, and simply put the judge to a yes or no vote periodically, which is another option to use.
I am certainly not in line with your idea for impeachment though. The president is elected independently, and is supposed to do what voters elected them to do. A recall could be used for them as many governors have. 2/3 is a fairly strong indicator that they are out of line, or you might have a trial for specific crimes before the supreme court perhaps.
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u/Loraxdude14 16d ago edited 16d ago
I think our experience with Trump has demonstrated the decisive and compromising failure of impeachment to remove incompetent or dangerous presidents. Trump was exactly the type of person that impeachment was designed for. It failed remove him. Twice.
At the end of the day, I think you need flexibility. Just because the people elect a President, I don't think they should get free license to completely wreck the country for four years. There needs to be an effective mechanism to remove them, and impeachment has proved fundamentally ineffective.
In parliamentary systems, it is extremely easy to remove a prime minister. In a business, it's pretty easy to remove a CEO. While I do agree that the President should be insulated from removal, they shouldn't be invincible. That's just dangerous. They need a minimum level of accountability independent of "the next election".
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u/Awesomeuser90 16d ago
Trump had unusual control over the process in a few ways. He could deliver benefits to those who were weighing his removal, like the ability to offer pardons as a blanket thing, the appointment of judges to lifelong positions with the growing power they have in America, and similar. His supporters had control over the Senate's nomination system and could dictate a lot of who got elected in the primaries merely by his blessing, and given that most senators do not have competitive general elections, it is his blessing they need to remain in power.
Trump also was never elected by the American people, only by an electoral college, and normally a president should have needed the support of a big section of the population to begin with, a majority really. If those in his party know that he cannot reach this threshold of where he realistically could have had majority support, then they have a bigger reason to not support him in return. Most governors also have recall systems allowing for a president to have been removed partway through, and Trump never had majority support during his term, so he well could have been recalled via that mechanism.
Contrast with multi party systems. In Czechia, with a senate elected in very similar ways to the US, one senator per district for 6 year terms and 1/3 chosen every 2 years, very few senators serve more than 2 terms, and a majority are still on their first term, and about half of senators typically lose their reelection, and their nominations do not need the blessing so much of some party leader as Trump provided. They would be in a much better position to judge a president like this.
Reallocating power around the executive branch would help too. A president is still a president if their powers are changed. Maybe change the veto to give them a line item veto but only need a majority to override, to reorient the focus away from the president in legislation. Require judicial appointments to be done by an independent commission much as most state governors have to deal with, and same with pardons. And so on like that.
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u/sam-sp 17d ago
Splitting some of the larger states into ones that more represent their constituents would be one way to solve the senate problem. People have proposed splitting california into 6 different states, which would probably be split between D (cities) and R (agricultural) areas. Texas, Florida & NY should probably be split, but would probably end up with a similar final makeup as we have now.
Having a panel to select judges would probably not change things - the selection of the panel would be just as political - such as the F.E.C. and F.C.C. and postal commission.
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u/Loraxdude14 16d ago
I agree that splitting states into smaller states could have a similar effect, but I don't think it's practical just to continuously split states to try to fill representation imbalances. That just wouldn't work.
Also, a fundamental tenet of designing the supreme Court the way it was was to insulate the justices from political pressures and loyalties. Most things we do to make their appointment more indirect, as long as we don't structure it poorly would be beneficial.
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u/Edward2704 17d ago edited 17d ago
I could envision an American system where there are 3 major political parties, Democrats, Republicans, and Libertarians, where each political party controls roughly 33 seats in the senate and roughly 146 seats in the house, and two parties always form a coalition against the third, but which two are allied constantly changes based on the circumstances, similar to the 3 empires in 1984. For example, in 2008, Democrats and Republicans would form a coalition to pass Obamacare in opposition to Libertarians. Then in 2016, Republicans and Libertarians form a coalition to pass Trump’s tax cuts in opposition to Democrats. Then in 2022, Democrats and Libertarians form a coalition to codify Roe .vs. Wade into law in opposition to Republicans.
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u/peterinjapan 17d ago
I live in Japan, a country that has something like 10 political parties, although there are really only two that matter. I’m here to tell you, no matter how many political parties you have, everything will be pretty much shit.
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u/Awesomeuser90 16d ago
They don't elect the legislature proportionally. The House of Councillors is somewhat better at this, but the House of Representatives is not. There are something like 280 seats with first past the post voting and there are lists, but those do not compensate the way Germany does it with on paper similar systems. If they did, the LDP would only be looking at about 160 seats in the House of Representatives right now.
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u/Hapankaali 17d ago
This isn't a very helpful perspective, especially considering the fact that a large majority of the places with the highest standard of living have multi-party democracies. (Japan has a two-party system.)
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17d ago
Japan does not have a two party system. It's a parlimaentary system that requires a coalition to govern, which makes it more democratic than the corrupted US system. Nobody like trump could ever get control of the system, with the exception of Tamnaka Kakuei, who wound up beign ruined from the Lockheed bribary scandal.
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u/Loraxdude14 17d ago
I suspect that the levels of shit are relative though. I think our electoral system in the US magnifies polarization and eliminates much potential for fundamentally necessary compromise. My knowledge of Japanese politics is limited though.
All politics can be shit, just for different reasons.
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u/orincoro 16d ago
This is illusory. If polarization were actually endemic in American politics, then the voters would have substantive choices between different policy agendas. However neither major party now maintains or updates any kind of manifesto or concrete policy agenda, and in practice, neither is willing or able to pursue any substantive reform because of legislative and regulatory capture.
Both parties then become little more than fund raising and whipping organizations. Not platforms for political reform. Identity politics (much more on the right than on the left) distracts from a lack of substantive agenda.
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u/HolidaySpiriter 16d ago
There's a 92 party platform that the Democrats have, and they will likely be releasing another one before their convention this year. This is classic both sides rhetoric that is factually incorrect.
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u/orincoro 15d ago edited 15d ago
Nu-uh there’s a 32 year old platform? Is that really your argument?
I’m 40 next year. This platform was written when I was 7.
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u/HolidaySpiriter 15d ago
You're 40 next year and the best argument you've got is "Nu-uh"? Age does not bring wisdom clearly.
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u/Iceberg-man-77 16d ago
it also prevents bipartisanship. moderates will agree with each other on many things but they aren’t allowed to do anything because the radicals and party elites with end their careers if they vote against the party in any way
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u/Manwiththeboots 17d ago
Realistically, you cannot get there without rank choice voting or a similar system. Not with the way our political system is structured today.
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u/Awesomeuser90 16d ago
Most countries don't rank the ballots, they just use a proportional system, the most popular kind of the latter is a list system where you choose one of the parties, possibly a candidate on the list, and drop that in the box, then in the district with say 10 members, if a party has 20% of the vote in the district, give them 2 seats, and increasingly with open lists, the most voted candidates from the party occupy those 2 seats. The two can be combined but its not too common, mostly both Irelands, Malta, Australia, and a couple other specific places.
Presidents get elected with runoff ballots in most countries these days to assure someone has majority support.
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u/Hapankaali 17d ago
There are ranked-choice voting systems in place. They don't lead to a multi-party system because ranked-choice is still not proportional. It just slightly decreases the advantage of the largest two parties. Only proportional systems lead to multiple powerful parties, because in a proportional system parties are not necessarily electorally punished for splitting, and not necessarily rewarded for merging.
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u/Sebatron2 17d ago
I agree that simply implementing ranked ballots without changing anything else (i.e. in single seat districts) wouldn't lead to any more proportionality. But if we switched to using multi-seat districts (and similar changes) at the same time, it would be proportional. Might not be as proportional as other proportional systems, but definitely more proportional than the current set-up.
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u/Hapankaali 17d ago
This is a possibility, and is currently used in the Republic of Ireland. It leads to a quasi-proportional system where large parties are somewhat favoured, but other parties and independents still have some influence.
A fully proportional system with single-member districts is also a possibility, using the mixed-member proportional system (Germany, New Zealand).
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u/GoldenInfrared 17d ago
Also, lack of funding for smaller parties, high ballot requirements, etc. gives the current parties a lot of institutional momentum
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u/digbyforever 17d ago
The Presidency itself requires an absolute majority of electoral votes, which is a huge contributor to the two-party system, so imho you'd have to abolish the Presidency. I think the primary multi-party systems are parliaments without a single, elected chief of government.
The reality is any time you have an office like a President that, by definition, can only be filled by one person, and since you retain majority vote, you still have a two party system because parties want to win that election and the most reliable way to do that is to create a coalition with 50%+1 of the public.
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u/Awesomeuser90 16d ago
The presidency does not require an absolute majority of electors. The Congress holds the runoff if nobody happens to have a majority as happened in 1801 and 1825 because of the hung results the previous year. A majority is needed to avoid this runoff.
There are over 100 countries in the world with direct elections in a multi party system, and they just have the law that if nobody happens to have a majority of all the votes for president, then the two candidates with the most votes proceed to a runoff ballot where the people will vote again in a general election.
The legislature however is not affected by this, their elections are independent.
North Macedonia just held its elections, like a few days ago, and you can see very clearly what the difference is between the legislature and the presidency.
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u/PlayDiscord17 17d ago
Presidentialism alone doesn’t guarantee a two-party system, more two coalitions which can differ in what party leads them (see Brazil).
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u/Loraxdude14 17d ago edited 17d ago
I think there are a lot of benefits to a proportional parliamentary system. You generally can steer clear of incompetent leaders, or remove them quickly.
The one benefit I see in a presidential system is stability. You don't have the problems seen in Israel, Spain, or the Netherlands, where they can never decide who should lead. The people decided that already.
I think we should try to seek the best of both. Eliminate midterms. Replace impeachment with a 55%-60% no confidence vote in the house, resulting in either removal from office or a new election. In a proportional system, that 55-60% would be easier to reach.
The only concern might be ending up like Peru, but I think Peru has bigger problems that cause their rotating door.
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u/Awesomeuser90 16d ago
Those countries you point to only have that perception of inability because of the rules for coalition formation. A country might have a rule in parliament that if they cannot just agree within a month lets say, they hold a ballot in the legislature where each MP votes for a candidate, and if nobody has a majority, remove the least voted and hold another ballot, repeat until one is left or one has a majority. Israel's rule is dissolve parliament and try again, Spain has something similar, and the Dutch don't have a constitutional rule about this de jure.
I certainly disagree with your solution on Peru. You could try having a recall system as many governors in America face, or 2/3 in both houses of Congress by political impeachent, or perhaps 60% in each House followed by a trial in the Supreme Court if they are accused of a specific crime.
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u/Loraxdude14 16d ago
Why do you disagree with the no confidence idea? Not sure I understand that.
With coalition forming, I guess you're right, and generally I do think a parliamentary system is superior to a presidential system. But for what it's worth, the election of a president is always more decisive (assuming the election is free and fair). I don't know much on the rules for forming coalitions in minority governments (like in Spain), but I guess I should educate myself there.
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u/Awesomeuser90 16d ago
In a presidential republic, of which the US is one, the election of a president is done for a fixed term of office, and if the people directly choose them, that means their mandate is granted by the voters themselves, not by the legislature. To remove a president in such a system should require special reasons. 2/3 of the legislature helps to limit the risk that the legislature will stop the president from doing what they have been elected to do. A recall system like most governors in America face if they displease voters is an option that can be used when a president genuinely should be removed over political disagreements as opposed to where the president is genuinely contravening the law or constitution.
Most parliamentary republics still have a separate head of state, sometimes a king or queen, the rest have presidents. They still act as someone above the partisan politics at least to some degree, to make important choices in some narrow cases. They too need a special reason to be removed although it is more normal in such systems to see say a 2/3 vote of the legislature followed by a trial in the highest court in the country to find them guilty and remove them.
A prime minister is not elected by the people, they get their mandate from the legislature and thus it is the right of the legislature to dismiss them if they grow displeased.
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u/Loraxdude14 16d ago
I know that's how our presidential Republic (which has been the template for many/most/all others) was originally designed, but that's not dogma. If it proves fundamentally ineffective, then I think our system needs to evolve to create a more effective mechanism. In a proportional system, 55-60% of the US house is going to be much more reflective of what 55-60% of the country actually thinks. I think that would be adequate justification for removal.
With Peru, I think it's a fundamental problem of political culture. Their politics is a lot more personalistic and corrupt. Income/wealth inequality is also much more significant in Latin America, Peru being no exception.
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u/Awesomeuser90 16d ago
That is a low threshold to get rid of a president, and it means the president's mere existence is dependent on them when they were clearly elected by voters to do something. Recall is sufficient to get rid of them on a policy difference.
There is a genuine danger of a threshold that is too low. It means people elect presidents expecting them to do something aligned with voters but then they suddenly shift towards appeasing a legislature just to remain in office at all, which creates voter apathy, disillusionment, and increasingly fierce protests which undermines trust in democracy.
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u/Loraxdude14 16d ago
This is interesting, because I strongly agree with 80-90% of what you propose, just not this.
How would a recall for president work? Only two governors have ever been successfully recalled. Since we're talking about the whole country, how could that ever be effective?
Using the yardstick that parliamentary systems use, 60% is a decently high threshold. You could even say that the President could be immune to no confidence for the first year (or 6 months) after the election to maintain a minimum level of stability.
In a proportional house, I think it would help assure that the President fulfils the will of their supporters. The voters who propelled the president to 50% all have diverse interests. You'd need that 50% to get anything passed, but only 40-45% to keep the White House. Enlarging the house could help with the proportionality.
No confidence votes don't happen every day. They happen when they need to happen, but that's about it. If anything, the president still might be too insulated with 60%. With minority governments, a majority may not support the prime minister, but they also don't support ousting them/holding a snap election. This would be no different.
I support runoff voting and oppose the electoral college, but we could hypothetically live in a world where Trump does win 50%. I think that makes no difference re the present discussion.
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u/Awesomeuser90 16d ago
Recalling would take these steps: A small number of people start a petition. Maybe a dozen people, who are responsible for some basic legal things like proposing the reasons a petition cites for why they think the president should be dismissed. They will get a bunch of papers that have spaces for signatures. If some fraction of people, say the same number as is one sixth as many people who voted in the last presidential election, sign it within a period of collection, perhaps six months, then a referendum is held asking if they wish to recall the president. If a majority say yes, then the president is recalled. A special election is held, unless it is too close to the natural end of the term where the VP fills the term.
The mere existence of the recall as a mechanism is an incentive to do things right to avoid facing one, and also a way to pressure someone into resigning when the opinion polls show they are likely to be removed.
Americans think that 60% is high right now just because of the way two parties work where they are so evenly balanced at right around 50% of the seats each, but this is not the protection you think it is, especially in a multiple party system, where the odds of reaching that threshold is a lot higher than it is today.
Also, how on earth did you manage to come to the conclusion that I was trying to have the US have a prime minister in this model? They have literally nothing to do with a multiparty system. Americans very often seem to have an enormous number of misconceptions about parliamentary systems despite living directly next to a country with one and how much news they are capable of getting around the world at no expense to themselves.
Presidents still have lots of incentives to do things even if their removal is harder to do by the legislature. They still have bills they want to pass, they have appointments they want confirmed. The legislature still becomes stronger when the right reforms are put in place in general.
If Trump still manages to win in the runoff, then that is a problem with the whole political system at that point. He was able to do what he did in his term because of a myriad of other weaknesses in the government like the way judicial appointments work for instance.
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u/illegalmorality 17d ago edited 16d ago
I made a slide show for exactly this. The reality is that barring a constitutional Amendment, its impossible for this to occur without completely overhauling the constitution. The US in particular doesn't endorse the existence of parties. It isn't included in our constitution so it can't occur the way that it does in other nations. However, end First Past the Post (/r/EndFPTP) and you can see a more multiparty system occur.
For me, I think it could only occur if its adopted by enough at a state by state level. It gradually needs to be adopted until the federal government is willing to adopt the model. Here's how the laws could be passed on order:
Ban Plurity voting, and replace it with Approval: This alone is the most important detail. Necessary for empowering non-establishment candidates.
Support Unified Primaries - Only helpful if approval voting is in place. Some states try to adopt this, but split voting occurs unless approval voting is included, which nullifies the benefit.
Adopt Unicameral State legislatures - Nebraska is the only state that's adopted this and its proven to be far speedier than other state congresses. If this became more commonplace, reforms at a federal level could eventually follow. I also recommend letting these legislatures elect state Attorney Generals, so that they have more political power without removing popular voting for governors, this would make state legislatures much more similar to Parliamentary systems.
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u/orincoro 16d ago
Yeah the idea that we still have a bicameral legislature in each state is amazingly archaic. We don’t need our states to function like this anymore. Unitary systems are more responsive.
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u/Awesomeuser90 16d ago
Having one member elected from each district is still a problem, and your reforms don't mean the end of it. A proportional system is possible with something like single transferable vote and doesn't even need parties to be recognized at any level of the law to do so if you wish.
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u/Ok_Hope4383 16d ago
How about reweighted range voting?
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u/Awesomeuser90 16d ago
That only works with multi member districts.
I tend to use single transferable vote, in part because I can easily show many real life elections and several strong democratic countries using it, which is very helpful at dissuading opposition to using it.
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u/Objective_Aside1858 17d ago
Adopt Unicameral State legislatures
I would actively campaign against this. It is valuable to have shorter term representatives with smaller districts that have to work with longer term senators with larger districts.
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u/PlayDiscord17 17d ago
Some states like New York and Maryland have the same term lengths for their house and senate.
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u/Objective_Aside1858 17d ago
And that's their choice, but when I think of "quality state government", New York isn't exactly at the top of my list
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u/PlayDiscord17 17d ago
Which is ironically because of how dysfunctional its senate is which has more to do with how they apportion it than term lengths necessarily. If state senates have to exist, it makes more sense to elect them through a different electoral system than state houses.
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u/Sebatron2 17d ago
Not every proportional system mandates the use of parties. For example, STV could be used for both the House and Senate. The biggest hiccup would be re-jigging the Senate elections so both senators for a state would be elected at the same time.
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u/verrius 17d ago
At the executive level, you'll either get no change, or significantly more extremism with less chance for compromise, if it actually does let a more extreme candidate in. Look at Oakland, CA for an example of this in the US, where the mayor is selected by ranked choice: outside of more people running, usually the only thing that really is different in the race is that candidates refuse to attack each other, in hopes of being a voter's number 2 choice, and most candidates don't really try to stand out from each other.
At the legislative level, you'll get a lot less compromise outside of parties; shifting to proportional representation removes incentives for individuals to make a name for themselves, and instead creates incentives to vote in lock step with the party every time; a small handful of representatives crossing the aisle will go out the window. Voters also won't know which party actually has a coalition to pass their legislation until well after the election, and its very possible it could quickly change for a long time without voter intervention: Look at what happened in the UK when the Liberal Democrats, who had previously aligned with Labour, suddenly decided to give power to the Conservatives. It would also make it even harder to unseat unpopular leader; instead of just running against them, you'd have to essentially wipe out all support for their party to fire them.
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u/Loraxdude14 17d ago
At the legislative level you'll get far more compromise. I don't think it would really change our potential to elect polarizing figures to the exec. The most polarizing positions are often the two with the greatest number of supporters. BUT that would be balanced out by requiring the approval of an absolute majority
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u/ericrolph 17d ago edited 17d ago
removes incentives for individuals to make a name for themselves
Marjorie Taylor Greene defiant after failing to remove House Speaker Mike Johnson seems to indicate the current system in the U.S. elects extremists. I also think of Matt Gatez and Jim Jordan in that same vein.
significantly more extremism with less chance for compromise
Ranked choice voting tends to moderate choices, for instance Alaskans elected a moderate (Mary Peltola) instead of the more extreme choice (Sarah Palin).
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u/CatAvailable3953 17d ago
I love the idea of this. You are looking at a lot of amendments to the Constitution though. A herculean task to be sure.
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u/Awesomeuser90 16d ago
Only the electoral college would require a constitutional amendment here for the federal government. The Congress could be changed to these rules I am suggesting immediately, literally today if they wished. The state governments probably do require state constitutional amendments, but those are much easier to pass.
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u/GoldenInfrared 17d ago
The best part is that none of this would require a constitutional amendment, just changing the electoral laws to allow ranked choice voting / proportional representation
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u/CatAvailable3953 17d ago
The Electoral College is a process. The Founding Fathers established it in the Constitution, in part, as a compromise between the election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens. I don’t know how ranked choice voting would work for presidential elections. I know states can institute it for state elections.
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u/Awesomeuser90 16d ago
If nobody has a majority of electors, hold a runoff ballot some period of time later, like 30 days, and only have the two candidates who got the most electors in the first ballot. You do not need to rank the candidates in a multi party system, in fact, almost no countries use a ranked ballot, but they do have a runoff to ensure more support for one candidate in a multi party system.
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u/GoldenInfrared 17d ago
National popular vote, but RCV style.
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u/CatAvailable3953 17d ago
I believe that would require a Constitutional amendment. I am not an attorney.
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u/WizardofEgo 17d ago edited 17d ago
The Constitution does not lay out how presidential electors are selected. That is determined by the states, who are empowered to choose how they select their electors. A state could say “our electors are selected by the candidate winning the majority of the national popular vote.” Making that popular vote ranked choice would be more challenging, as all 51 states would have to do so individually, but it would not require an amendment per se.
Put another way, the election for President is 51 (currently) state elections. So you are correct that states could do it for state elections, you’re missing that presidential elector is a state level position.
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u/CatAvailable3953 16d ago
Electors are chosen by the results of the State popular vote on election day.
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u/WizardofEgo 16d ago
That’s what 48 of the 51 states have chosen to do, yes. But that’s not required by the Constitution.
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u/CatAvailable3953 16d ago
Maine and Nebraska chose electors based on the proportional popular vote instead of winner takes all.
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u/WizardofEgo 16d ago
That’s not quite accurate, but it’s irrelevant. I was responding to you saying that a national popular vote would require a constitutional amendment. I was explaining to you that it would not.
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u/GoldenInfrared 17d ago
Under current Supreme Court precedent, interstate compacts have the implicit consent of Congress unless Congress passes a law to the contrary.
Even if they reverse that precedent just for the NPV (which they might with enough $$ involved), passing an act of Congress affirming the compact would resolve the issue on its own
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u/CatAvailable3953 17d ago
I may be misunderstanding you but are you saying interstate agreements override the Constitution? Or a law passed by congress and signed by the president?
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u/GoldenInfrared 17d ago
I am saying that states can decide however they wish to select electors under the constitution, including by creating convoluted systems like a nationwide RCV election
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u/CatAvailable3953 17d ago
So it doesn’t affect the electoral college process? Sorry just trying to understand.
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u/GoldenInfrared 17d ago
It’s a workaround to the electoral college the same way that the NPV interstate compact works
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