Our systems need to be MORE democratic!

First Pass The Post is democratic, but the worst way of it. In most districts, 40-49% of voters are disenfranchised by gerrymandering.

Mixed Member Proportional is far more representative. If you assume certain minority groups vote as a bloc, then you can't gerrymander them away like our current system does. The proportion of people not getting representation is capped by 1/number_of_reps.

The whole "republicans in Senate stop the government from doing anything" needs to end. Parliamentary systems means the legislative body and head of state agree to work together. Our system means deadlock most of the time.

Finally, "senior members" of the parties in both houses are the only ones who decide what bills can be voted on. That's not democratic. Every member should be able to bring at least some bills up for an up-or-down vote. Make them vote down "healthcare for veterans" instead of killing it in committee or amending it to add "only if you strip women of bodily autonomy".

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dh2022 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Actually a much better and easier solution to gerrymandering would be to increase the number of House representatives to be the same proportion of population it was in 1776. There will be roughly 15,000 representatives in the House. Gerrymander that!!!

	▲	coryrc an hour ago \| parent [-]
		1. That doesn't solve the Senate problem. The Supreme Court has failed to uphold the 10th amendment and we should stop pretending we're actually 55 mini countries. 2. They're probably up for the challenge. But also, that still doesn't solve the disenfranchisement much. My idiot neighbor with the Trump banner (in our 100% Democratic city and county -- Western Washington) will never have his vote make a difference. But if he could combine his vote with some fellow idiots out east, then they could pick the person that most represents them. And either that person will learn to compromise or they can just sit out while others do advance legislation. Just like in better republics.

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busterarm 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

We're (at least) 10 years into this mess now and still everyone is focused on restructuring our systems and prosecutions instead of putting forward a platform that broadly appeals to enough Americans to decisively win elections.

What I said applies to both parties. We're not really all that different but all the incentives align towards pleasing extremists. Do you really need any more evidence of this than people getting shot and people/press generally being okay with it?

Anything you build can be exploited against you when you're on the other side of the power balance. The solution is truly moving politics to the center.

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magicalist 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Anything you build can be exploited against you when you're on the other side of the power balance.

You're responding to someone who's explaining to you that this is exactly the problem.

If an extremist can do whatever they want if they happen to excite people with a "platform that broadly appeals to enough Americans", then the problem is structural, and has to be addressed there, or literally everything you do and have can be undone by the next moron that riles people up again.

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busterarm 2 hours ago | parent [-]

You raced over the key word in that sentence.

Anything.

Your patches will be the sources of your next exploits.

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coryrc an hour ago | parent [-]

No. A language with checked arrays can never have a buffer overrun like C arrays can.

Some things are better. Game theory demonstrates this.

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HDThoreaun 22 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

C is not in any way objectively bad because buffer overflows are possible. Any method you use to check for them comes with costs

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busterarm an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Some things are better but in the case of political systems, you typically can't prove that ahead of time.

Especially when the suggestion is to talk about changing a bunch of variables at once.

That's akin to a revolution, which historically work out badly for the people clamoring for it.

	▲	coryrc 22 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		There's already a revolution going on and we're losing. They stacked the courts. The blood of innocents in the streets and ICE prisons. Either we overhaul the system that got us to this point or we concede. I'm tired of dumbasses in Montana having 50x the vote in the Senate and 4x vote on the POTUS as a Californian. That's not democratic.

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coryrc an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Our systems are highly undemocratic. A vote in Wyoming is at least an order-of-magnitude more impactful than one in California.

> all the incentives align towards pleasing extremists

Systems create the incentive! Changing the system changes the incentives and is the only way we can reduce extremism.

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CamperBob2 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Do you really need any more evidence of this than people getting shot and people/press generally being okay with it?

Democrats who push gun control at the cost of everything else -- such as the possibility of turning Texas blue -- are a big reason why the party lacks power to influence anything else.