How about doing this for the Electoral College?

mijopaalmc said:
With the current system, a votes a candidate receives that exceed plurality in the a given state are essentially "wasted". With a popular-vote-only system, candidates have the ability to offset deficits in one locality worth surpluses in another locality.
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If the worry is that swing states have too much influence in the result than one possible solution would be for each state to return college voters in proportion to the vote they received in that state instead of "winner takes all" in the state.

I wouldn't go down the Maine/Nebraska path since districts can be gerrymandered.
 
psionl0 said:
If the objective is to have fewer congress people then set the quota at double the population of the smallest state. Any state that has half a quota or more after dividing their population by the quota will get an extra representative.

So states with 0.5 to 1.5 quotas get one rep.
States with 1.5 to 2.5 quotas get 2 reps.
and so on.
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My goal is to make sure every vote has the same weight and every American has equal representation. That most likely means increasing the number of members of the HoR
 
I have a different idea - the campaign season should be limited to 2 months max. I think having 18 months+ of extreme partisan campaigning out of every 4 year period is harmful to the USA. Of course its probably impossible to achieve this but I really think the long campaign season is a very bad thing.
 
mifune said:
I have a different idea - the campaign season should be limited to 2 months max. I think having 18 months+ of extreme partisan campaigning out of every 4 year period is harmful to the USA. Of course its probably impossible to achieve this but I really think the long campaign season is a very bad thing.
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How would that even work? What is campaigning?
 
BobTheCoward said:
How would that even work? What is campaigning?
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Yeah, thats just one of the problems. For sure implementing it would be very difficult. Yet other countries manage not to stretch out the campaign season so long, so it is at least technically possible.

But it would require changing the way primaries work I think, they would have to happen much later and presumably there would be a date you could not officially announce before... I dunno. There must be a better way though, as it is its just unhealthy.
 
mifune said:
Yeah, thats just one of the problems. For sure implementing it would be very difficult. Yet other countries manage not to stretch out the campaign season so long, so it is at least technically possible.

But it would require changing the way primaries work I think, they would have to happen much later and presumably there would be a date you could not officially announce before... I dunno. There must be a better way though, as it is its just unhealthy.
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In every country people begin campaigning years in advance.
 
mifune said:
I have a different idea - the campaign season should be limited to 2 months max. I think having 18 months+ of extreme partisan campaigning out of every 4 year period is harmful to the USA. Of course its probably impossible to achieve this but I really think the long campaign season is a very bad thing.
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I think the big problem is most of the countries you are thinking of use some form of a parliamentary system. And are smaller and less segmented.
 
mifune said:
I have a different idea - the campaign season should be limited to 2 months max. I think having 18 months+ of extreme partisan campaigning out of every 4 year period is harmful to the USA. Of course its probably impossible to achieve this but I really think the long campaign season is a very bad thing.
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How is it harmful?
 
Donal said:
I think the big problem is most of the countries you are thinking of use some form of a parliamentary system. And are smaller and less segmented.
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True. Although I bet there are countries with presidential systems who have shorter campaigning seasons, I just don't know which they are!
 
Dumb All Over said:
How is it harmful?
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Because during the campaign season partisanship is raised to the nth power. Positions become more polarised and entrenched and the whole political landscape is more vicious and bitter. It reduces politics to a zero sum game and distorts everything. This is true for the plebs as well as the politicians.

It would be nice if the business of politics were about governing in the best way, not about how do I win the next election everything else be dammed.

Just IMO of course.
 
mifune said:
I don't think even in the US you start years in advance. But where I am (the UK) for sure the GE campaign does not start a year in advance.
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Even in the UK, people begin campaigning years in advance. David Cameron's campaign to become prime minister probably started in 2001 as he began making those inroads with important figures.
 
BobTheCoward said:
Even in the UK, people begin campaigning years in advance. David Cameron's campaign to become prime minister probably started in 2001 as he began making those inroads with important figures.
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But if you extend the meaning of campaigning to include the personal journeys of politicians and the back deals etc they do along the way to rise to a position where they can challenge - then its meaningless. I am talking about the public part of campaigning, and that does not start so early in the UK.
 
mifune said:
But if you extend the meaning of campaigning to include the personal journeys of politicians and the back deals etc they do along the way to rise to a position where they can challenge - then its meaningless. I am talking about the public part of campaigning, and that does not start so early in the UK.
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What is materially different between the two?
 
BobTheCoward said:
What is materially different between the two?
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How can you possibly not see the difference?? I feel like you are funning me but I will explain it anyway...

The part that in normal conversation you would call 'the election campaign' is a public spectacle, it dominates the media and everyone is aware of it.

The back room deals and wheeling and dealing within your own party long before anyone makes an announcement is not so much in the public eye. Note how when you talk about Cameron in 2001 you have to qualify your speculation with 'probably' - precisely because we don't know, it wasn't public and that kind of stuff is not reported in the media as such.
 
mifune said:
How can you possibly not see the difference?? I feel like you are funning me but I will explain it anyway...

The part that in normal conversation you would call 'the election campaign' is a public spectacle, it dominates the media and everyone is aware of it.

The back room deals and wheeling and dealing within your own party long before anyone makes an announcement is not so much in the public eye. Note how when you talk about Cameron in 2001 you have to qualify your speculation with 'probably' - precisely because we don't know, it wasn't public and that kind of stuff is not reported in the media as such.
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What is and is not in the public eye doesn't make a whiff of difference. By definition a campaign is "work in an organized and active way toward a particular goal, typically a political or social one."
 
what a strange position to take.

Is this just a semantic argument about what the definition of a political campaign is? - or are you trying to argue that there is no negative effect by the extended public campaign season?

I will discount the crazy third alternative that you really really think that there is no actual measurable difference in any way between the public campaign season and whatever happens before that. That would be insane because the parties in the US spend many millions, there is what seems like total media saturation, and lots of actual physical material stuff happens during the campaign season that doesn't happen out of it. Whether or not it has a particular effect it would be perverse to claim that nothing is happening.
 
mifune said:
what a strange position to take.

Is this just a semantic argument about what the definition of a political campaign is? - or are you trying to argue that there is no negative effect by the extended public campaign season?

I will discount the crazy third alternative that you really really think that there is no actual measurable difference in any way between the public campaign season and whatever happens before that. That would be insane because the parties in the US spend many millions, there is what seems like total media saturation, and lots of actual physical material stuff happens during the campaign season that doesn't happen out of it. Whether or not it has a particular effect it would be perverse to claim that nothing is happening.
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My claim isn't that nothing is happening. My claim is that important things happen during the whole campaign.
 
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