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Two big ones, that no one ever seems to talk about. First-Past-the-Post (or "Plurality Voting") and single-seat districting.
First-Past-the-Post is, essentially, a voting system where you vote for a single candidate out of a group of candidates and the candidate with the most votes wins. It's one of the most straightforward voting systems there is, and one that seems fairly legitimate until you understand the implications of such a system. In this system, 51% of the vote gets 100% of the representation, and that's at the very best of times, the more viable candidates you get in a race, the worse it gets. With three candidates, 34% of the vote could get all the representation, with four it only takes 26%, and so on. Thus, any viable candidates beyond two becomes a "spoiler" that screws up the whole election, and you get a situation where only two candidates are ever viable in any given election, hence the "two party system" within the United States.
Then you have single-seat districting, in which large legislative bodies based on population, like the House of Representatives and state legislatures, have the area that they represent divided up into multiple voting districts, each district representing a single seat within the legislative body. The borders of these voting districts are not set in stone and frequently moved around, usually based on political ideology in a particular area to get a desired result. Combined with plurality voting mentioned above, this has created a situation where, for instance, most people in the 2012 House elections voted Democrat... and the Republicans won the most seats, and, in the state of Massachusetts, the roughly 40% of the electorate that's Republican got a whopping ZERO representatives sent to the House. It also fosters a situation where most elections don't even matter, and an election cycle where "only" 9 out of 10 incumbents are re-elected is considered "clearing out the house". Things are even worse in the states, like my home state of North Carolina, where despite roughly half of the state leaning Democrat and the other half leaning Republican, if you looked at our legislature and recent legislation, you'd think we were the most staunchly Republican state in the Union.
Now, most people recognize that gerrymandering is bad, but it is only infrequently a "major issue". Even then, what we call "gerrymandering" is really a problem single-seat districting at all times, "gerrymandering" just being the most extreme expression of it.
What we need to do is replace First-Past-the-Post with Instant-Runoff elections (or "Ranked Voting") for naturally single seat elections (like President or Governor) and single-seat districting with a proportional system.
Ranked voting works like this: instead of voting for a single candidate, you "rank" all of the candidates in order of preference. The candidate you really want to win you'd rank as "1", your second favorite you'd rank as "2", then the next as "3", so on and so forth until you had all the candidates listed in order of preference. When the votes are counted, the candidate with the least "1" votes, would have his or her votes distributed to the other candidates, based on who their "2" votes were for, then the next lowest candidate would have his or her votes distributed based on his or her voters' next preference, on down the line until one of the candidates wins a majority, ensuring that the candidate that's elected is the most preferred by the majority of voters, thus ending the "spoiler" effect that additional candidates can have on an election, and allows the voter to vote with their conscience without feeling that they "wasted" their vote.
With proportional elections, you would vote for parties instead of individual candidates, districting would be done away with and seats would be determined by the proportion of the votes they receive. If a party gets 51% of the vote, they get 51% of the seats, 1% of the votes means 1% of the seats. This encourages multiple parties, instead of only two parties having a complete monopoly on politics and means, to a greater degree, that every vote really does matter.
An added benefit is that, while there might always be money in politics, money is ESPECIALLY effective in our current electoral system, and simply changing the system would reduce the effect that money has on politics, though some tougher campaign finance reform could coincide. The electoral college should also be done away with, with the President voted in by popular vote and the Instant-Runoff voting system.
I see no reason why this shouldn't be one of people's "major issues". When "democracy" is this broken, it should be your PRIMARY ISSUE, not any of the bread and circuses the two major parties want you to distract yourself with.
The electoral college this there because we are a representative republic not a democracy. Who wants the two or three most populous states deciding every election? What stupid idea. You do know we are union of sovereign states don't you?
The electoral college this there because we are a representative republic not a democracy. Who wants the two or three most populous states deciding every election? What stupid idea. You do know we are union of sovereign states don't you?
Try reading the post, buddy. I didn't even mention the electoral college.
Also, the senate represents the individual states, the house is supposed to be representative of the entire population.
And why does this pertain specifically to NC? Shouldn't this be in the general politics forum?
NC is one of states where gerrymandering are particularly bad. At the moment, it encapsulates everything wrong with the American electoral system. Even if the US in general doesn't get electoral reform, NC needs electoral reform, perhaps more so than other states
Try reading the post, buddy. I didn't even mention the electoral college.
Also, the senate represents the individual states, the house is supposed to be representative of the entire population.
If you are going to cut and paste, at least read it all.......
An added benefit is that, while there might always be money in politics, money is ESPECIALLY effective in our current electoral system, and simply changing the system would reduce the effect that money has on politics, though some tougher campaign finance reform could coincide. The electoral college should also be done away with, with the President voted in by popular vote and the Instant-Runoff voting system.
NC is one of states where gerrymandering are particularly bad. At the moment, it encapsulates everything wrong with the American electoral system. Even if the US in general doesn't get electoral reform, NC needs electoral reform, perhaps more so than other states
I guess gerrymandering is only bad when your party is not in power. How long were the Democrats in charge of the state??????
If you are going to cut and paste, at least read it all.......
An added benefit is that, while there might always be money in politics, money is ESPECIALLY effective in our current electoral system, and simply changing the system would reduce the effect that money has on politics, though some tougher campaign finance reform could coincide. The electoral college should also be done away with, with the President voted in by popular vote and the Instant-Runoff voting system.
It's such a tiny part of the post, though. It was just what I included as a part of the full electoral reform we need. Most of the post was about FPTP and single-seat districting.
I guess gerrymandering is only bad when your party is not in power. How long were the Democrats in charge of the state??????
No, states like Massachusetts are equally bad. NC is simply one of the worst, but not the only one.
Also, screw both parties. Barely any differences between them (there's enough "bipartisan agreement" between them that they'd constitute the left and right sides of a single party in any other country) and neither of them include electoral reform as one of their BS "issues".
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How long were the Democrats in charge of the state??????
