Different political systems

[frigidweirdo]

I think the Electoral college system for voting for president is outdated. [Other election systems/formulas, particularly the French and German approaches, for choosing the chief executive of the government] are better.

I do not think the French or German system is better than the U.S. system for choosing the head of government (head of state). Electoral systems translate the votes cast in a general election into seats won by parties and candidates, in this case, the seat of the head of state, thereby facilitating the smooth transition of formal power. The systems for doing so in the U.S., France and Germany achieve that objective. Accordingly, in terms of achieving what an electoral system is supposed to achieve, the three are equal.

What then might motivate one to construe one electoral model is better than another?

• Either political actors lack basic knowledge and information so that the choices and consequences of different electoral systems are not fully recognized; or
• Conversely, political actors use their knowledge of electoral systems to promote designs which they think will work to their own partisan advantage.

In the aftermath of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, it seems such rumblings derive from hindsight observations that if "something" were different about way the seats were chosen, a given party may have fared better or worse re: the election's outcome. One observes, for example, that were the election decided by simple majority votes, a different candidate (thus party) would have won the presidential election. Why? Because the U.S. has an electoral college model whereby individuals indirectly and states directly choose the president. Be that as it may, one might also observe that had more individuals who favored the losing candidate to have, in their states, voted for that candidate, the election outcome would also have been different.

Is the problem the alleged electoral system's inadequacy, by you declared to be the electoral college, or is it the candidate's? I think more the latter than the former. But then I'm an "own your sh*t" guy who ascribes principally to the notion that overwhelming the source of most dissatisfaction can be found by looking in the mirror, so to speak. I think that of U.S. election outcomes.

The fact of the matter is that both candidates and their parties knew damn well they had to win the election by winning the majority of votes in some assortment of states. Plain and simple, the way to the White House is by state not national majority, and both campaigns knew so. When the "rules of the game" are known and fixed at the start of a contest, short of it being shown the rules foster cheating, the game and its rules aren't the problem.

Did the Hillary team do what was necessary to catalyze voters, voters who should/would have voted for her, to show up and vote for her? Did Mitt Romney do what was necessary to catalyze voters, voters who should/would have voted for her, to show up and vote for him? Regardless of what constitutes "what be necessary" to have garnered the needed quantities of votes, the answer resoundingly is "no." That is not the fault of the electoral college model.

Maybe you don't.

However here's the thing. If I want a system to elect a head of state I'm going to choose what is the most important thing.

Is it:

A) I want the people to choose
B) I want the states to choose

Now, the US doesn't have either. The US has:

C) States with 20% of the population choose.

Now, that's bizarre.

Why not just pull 12 states out of the hat every 4 years and they decide who wins? Wouldn't that be just as fair and just as ridiculous.

If you want the smaller states to have equal say with the larger states, then give each state 2 votes and see who wins. If you want the people to decide then one person, one vote, proportional representation.

The US has a system which leads to a smooth transition. But how long will that last for? Trump said he was going to cause massive problems if he didn't win. Wow. So how soon will it be before some dickhead like Trump comes along and LOSES and then starts making the transition a little more African?

Is the system working now? I think in 2016 it only worked because Trump won, had Hillary won, it wouldn't be working any more. The legitimacy of the system is being called into question because every time a new President has been elected, the Democrats have gained to popular vote in the last THREE DECADES. And yet, only had half the presidents in this time.

How long before someone comes along and uses that as their platform?

The biggest problem is that the rumbling aren't really based on what they should be, because the system has led to such partisan bullshit, that hardly anyone thinks for themselves any more. They follow the party line and that's about it. That doesn't happen so much in other countries where the elections are fairer.

 

[usmbguest5318]

C) States with 20% of the population choose.

I'm not sure I know what you mean by that statement. Can you clarify, please.

As I understand it, 38-40 states are so partisan one way or the other that the remaining states end up being the "deciding" states/electorates. Is that what you're referring to?

 

[frigidweirdo]

C) States with 20% of the population choose.

I'm not sure I know what you mean by that statement. Can you clarify, please.

As I understand it, 38-40 states are so partisan one way or the other that the remaining states end up being the "deciding" states/electorates. Is that what you're referring to?

Yes, more or less.
Basically the politicians target these 12 states with massive amounts of money and ignore the other states.

Wyoming, as the smallest, is supposed to get more power than its size, but the reality is Wyoming gets ignores. The issues Wyoming has are not the issues the politicians care to deal with, unless they happen to coincide with another state.

The biggest problem is that the system makes partisan politics with just two parties, two sides, which is a massive problem that doesn't happen in most other countries unless someone's fiddling things.

 

[usmbguest5318]

C) States with 20% of the population choose.

I'm not sure I know what you mean by that statement. Can you clarify, please.

As I understand it, 38-40 states are so partisan one way or the other that the remaining states end up being the "deciding" states/electorates. Is that what you're referring to?

Yes, more or less.
Basically the politicians target these 12 states with massive amounts of money and ignore the other states.

Wyoming, as the smallest, is supposed to get more power than its size, but the reality is Wyoming gets ignores. The issues Wyoming has are not the issues the politicians care to deal with, unless they happen to coincide with another state.

The biggest problem is that the system makes partisan politics with just two parties, two sides, which is a massive problem that doesn't happen in most other countries unless someone's fiddling things.

• German Political Parties
  
• The main political parties in France - About-France.com

I have to be honest. I thought it strange that you compared the electoral systems of Germany and France to that in the U.S. given the very different stature of parties in the three nations. That the U.S. does have other parties besides Democratic and Republican is little other than window dressing. That just isn't the case in France or Germany.

• U.S. Congress Parties represented: Dem., Rep, and Independent (i.e., no party affiliation.)
• French National Assembly (after 2012 election)
  
  
  
  
• French National Assembly 2017
  
  
  
• German Election Results 2009 and 2013
  
  
  

Were the U.S. to have parties as do Germany or France, neither the Democratic nor Republican party would have the size or power they currently do.

Be that as it may, as soon as one takes into account the role and influence of parties, it becomes clear that the electoral college is not the problem. The problem is ostensibly the two-party system, and that is not codified in the Constitution as is the electoral college, but laying the blame there leads to the question of why do we have a two-party system. The answer to that really has nothing to do with the electoral college; it has everything to do with how states select their election winners and the existential nature of extant parties within a polity. [1]



Note:

1. I've stopped there rather than explain further because rationally the next part of my discussion is precisely the body of ideas and political science content to which I alluded earlier and nobody jumped on it. As I remarked then, I really didn't want to head down the road of discussing (let alone debating) this matter with someone/folks who's not prepared for it.
   
   Consequently, I find myself in the undesired by me and, given the feedback I sometimes receive from members here, by some members here, of having to choose among (1) undertaking the seemingly but evidently necessary didactic act of typing/dictating what some refer to as a "wall of text" to explain why and how the U.S. came to be a two-party country, (2) doing what apparently irks you, merely posting links to the content that would as well explain what I might have typed, and (3) writing something so brief that the matter is oversimplified to the point of being vulnerable to various manners of "potshots" from "peanut gallery" members who, for whatever reason, (a) have no idea of what they're talking about nor what I'm talking about, (b) don't read the linked content, (c) remark anyway, and (d) thus "bore the sh*t out of me" (not annoy me, just bore me) with their inapt nitpicks.
   
   Being once again at the "damned if I do, and damned if I don't" point in the discussion, I withdraw from it. I've written all I care to on the matter. Y'all have fun.

 

[dblack]

Feel free to move to either of those countries.

Oh, wow, this argument again.

Here's the analogy.

A man works for a company. He says to his boss "hey boss, if we do this, we can make more money" the boss says "well you're free to go to those companies".....

Heh. Well, it's not an argument. Just a weak attempt to dismiss criticism.

The worst impediment to improving our elections is the short sighted views of most voters. They are so steeped in the two-party system that they will always look at any changes from the perspective of how it impacts their "team", without really considering the broader improvements.

Okay, let's try this. Your "criticism" was bullshit. It's not an argument at all, it's a way of dismissing what I said. So, I'm being criticized for doing what the person I replied to did. Oh, wow.

??? I guess I wasn't clear. I was agreeing with you. I find the "love it or leave it" argument one of the worst bugs of patriotism. Not patriotism at all, actually. A true patriot is eager for ways to improve the society.

 

[frigidweirdo]

C) States with 20% of the population choose.

I'm not sure I know what you mean by that statement. Can you clarify, please.

As I understand it, 38-40 states are so partisan one way or the other that the remaining states end up being the "deciding" states/electorates. Is that what you're referring to?

Yes, more or less.
Basically the politicians target these 12 states with massive amounts of money and ignore the other states.

Wyoming, as the smallest, is supposed to get more power than its size, but the reality is Wyoming gets ignores. The issues Wyoming has are not the issues the politicians care to deal with, unless they happen to coincide with another state.

The biggest problem is that the system makes partisan politics with just two parties, two sides, which is a massive problem that doesn't happen in most other countries unless someone's fiddling things.

• German Political Parties
  
• The main political parties in France - About-France.com

I have to be honest. I thought it strange that you compared the electoral systems of Germany and France to that in the U.S. given the very different stature of parties in the three nations. That the U.S. does have other parties besides Democratic and Republican is little other than window dressing. That just isn't the case in France or Germany.

• U.S. Congress Parties represented: Dem., Rep, and Independent (i.e., no party affiliation.)
• French National Assembly (after 2012 election)
  
  
  
  
• French National Assembly 2017
  
  
  
• German Election Results 2009 and 2013
  
  
  

Were the U.S. to have parties as do Germany or France, neither the Democratic nor Republican party would have the size or power they currently do.

Be that as it may, as soon as one takes into account the role and influence of parties, it becomes clear that the electoral college is not the problem. The problem is ostensibly the two-party system, and that is not codified in the Constitution as is the electoral college, but laying the blame there leads to the question of why do we have a two-party system. The answer to that really has nothing to do with the electoral college; it has everything to do with how states select their election winners and the existential nature of extant parties within a polity. [1]



Note:

1. I've stopped there rather than explain further because rationally the next part of my discussion is precisely the body of ideas and political science content to which I alluded earlier and nobody jumped on it. As I remarked then, I really didn't want to head down the road of discussing (let alone debating) this matter with someone/folks who's not prepared for it.
   
   Consequently, I find myself in the undesired by me and, given the feedback I sometimes receive from members here, by some members here, of having to choose among (1) undertaking the seemingly but evidently necessary didactic act of typing/dictating what some refer to as a "wall of text" to explain why and how the U.S. came to be a two-party country, (2) doing what apparently irks you, merely posting links to the content that would as well explain what I might have typed, and (3) writing something so brief that the matter is oversimplified to the point of being vulnerable to various manners of "potshots" from "peanut gallery" members who, for whatever reason, (a) have no idea of what they're talking about nor what I'm talking about, (b) don't read the linked content, (c) remark anyway, and (d) thus "bore the sh*t out of me" (not annoy me, just bore me) with their inapt nitpicks.
   
   Being once again at the "damned if I do, and damned if I don't" point in the discussion, I withdraw from it. I've written all I care to on the matter. Y'all have fun.

The two party system is the problem that is created by the EC.

Why? Well FPTP is NEGATIVE voting, if you look at the German system you'll see that 10% of people switch their vote, on the same day at the same time, from that large parties with negative FPTP constituency voting, to smaller parties in the positive PR voting. That's 10%.

But the reality is the main parties would lose about 1/3 of their vote to smaller parties. But this won't happen with negative voting.

Germany has positive voting to determine the outcome of the election as a whole. France doesn't, but the Presidential election does in the first round, and then doesn't in the second round, but still, it's far, FAR better than the US system which is just like "which asshole do you want to choose".

Here's an example. I read an English language Chinese newspaper and they were talking about Hong Kong and how it's supposed to have democracy. Some guy was basically saying they had democracy, they get to vote between two guys Beijing picked. For me it's laughable that it's democracy, but the US trumpets such kind of thing.

 

[frigidweirdo]

Feel free to move to either of those countries.

Oh, wow, this argument again.

Here's the analogy.

A man works for a company. He says to his boss "hey boss, if we do this, we can make more money" the boss says "well you're free to go to those companies".....

Heh. Well, it's not an argument. Just a weak attempt to dismiss criticism.

The worst impediment to improving our elections is the short sighted views of most voters. They are so steeped in the two-party system that they will always look at any changes from the perspective of how it impacts their "team", without really considering the broader improvements.

Okay, let's try this. Your "criticism" was bullshit. It's not an argument at all, it's a way of dismissing what I said. So, I'm being criticized for doing what the person I replied to did. Oh, wow.

??? I guess I wasn't clear. I was agreeing with you. I find the "love it or leave it" argument one of the worst bugs of patriotism. Not patriotism at all, actually. A true patriot is eager for ways to improve the society.

Oh, I thought you were saying that about what I was saying. Right, gotcha.

 

[Pogo]

I think the Electoral college system for voting for president is outdated. [Other election systems/formulas, particularly the French and German approaches, for choosing the chief executive of the government] are better.

I do not think the French or German system is better than the U.S. system for choosing the head of government (head of state). Electoral systems translate the votes cast in a general election into seats won by parties and candidates, in this case, the seat of the head of state, thereby facilitating the smooth transition of formal power. The systems for doing so in the U.S., France and Germany achieve that objective. Accordingly, in terms of achieving what an electoral system is supposed to achieve, the three are equal.

What then might motivate one to construe one electoral model is better than another?

• Either political actors lack basic knowledge and information so that the choices and consequences of different electoral systems are not fully recognized; or
• Conversely, political actors use their knowledge of electoral systems to promote designs which they think will work to their own partisan advantage.

In the aftermath of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, it seems such rumblings derive from hindsight observations that if "something" were different about way the seats were chosen, a given party may have fared better or worse re: the election's outcome. One observes, for example, that were the election decided by simple majority votes, a different candidate (thus party) would have won the presidential election. Why? Because the U.S. has an electoral college model whereby individuals indirectly and states directly choose the president. Be that as it may, one might also observe that had more individuals who favored the losing candidate to have, in their states, voted for that candidate, the election outcome would also have been different.

Is the problem the alleged electoral system's inadequacy, by you declared to be the electoral college, or is it the candidate's? I think more the latter than the former. But then I'm an "own your sh*t" guy who ascribes principally to the notion that overwhelming the source of most dissatisfaction can be found by looking in the mirror, so to speak. I think that of U.S. election outcomes.

The fact of the matter is that both candidates and their parties knew damn well they had to win the election by winning the majority of votes in some assortment of states. Plain and simple, the way to the White House is by state not national majority, and both campaigns knew so. When the "rules of the game" are known and fixed at the start of a contest, short of it being shown the rules foster cheating, the game and its rules aren't the problem.

Did the Hillary team do what was necessary to catalyze voters, voters who should/would have voted for her, to show up and vote for her? Did Mitt Romney do what was necessary to catalyze voters, voters who should/would have voted for her, to show up and vote for him? Regardless of what constitutes "what be necessary" to have garnered the needed quantities of votes, the answer resoundingly is "no." That is not the fault of the electoral college model.

The examination of the EC as currently run has zero to do with 2016, 2012 or any other particular year. It's about how the system works, and all the votes it negates, and how it perpetuates a Duopoly and blocks any challenge TO that Duopoly, and how it shuts out the majority of states from discourse and discussions by the only two candidates that Duopoly deigns to dangle for their amusement. That's true regardless what the year is and regardless who the candidates are. That's why we've been picking apart exactly those dynamics.

Examples culled from 2016, or 2012, or any other year, serve simply as illustrations of some facet of that dynamic -- for example we might note that Clinton had no reason to campaign in Utah and Rump had no reason to campaign in Massachusetts. But we can substitute the names Romney/O'bama, McCain/O'bama, Bush/Gore, Bush/Kerry, Dole/Clinton etc etc etc and make the exact same point. The candies' names vary -- the system is the common thread.

Stop veering off to shiny object tangents and face the actual point. The actual point is a severely flawed system --- not "what went down in some particular year because of that system". What goes down because of that system happens EVERY election. Veering off to who didn't properly game a flawed system in some particular year is the equivalent of complaining that football Team X didn't win their game because the game had corrupt referees and Team X failed to properly bribe them.

 

[Pogo]

I think it's hilarious that the OP uses Germany as an example of an electoral system we should follow.

Germany is the country that elected Adolph Hitler.

I think it's hilarious that the person I am replying to doesn't understand the German political system and yet feels the need to criticize the OP for something which, if you knew what you were talking about, you'd realize just how ridiculous what you've said is.

The German system comes from 1949. The Nazis had been defeated 4 years before. The Weimar system was flawed, and this was exacerbated by the US withdrawing loans from Germany just as it was getting back on its feet from WW1.

The only reason the EC is an issue is because the Dems got the popular voter. Had the results been reversed, Hillary winning the EC and Trump the popular vote you not be hearing one peep from the Dems.

The EC is *always* an issue and as long as it wobbles around on its glaring flaws it will continue to be. This normally comes up every four years simply because ---- hold on to your seat, this is gonna be really deep --- that's when the Electoral College is in fucking play. Unless you have some evidence of its activities in, say, 2015.

Back in 2012 Donald Rump was wetting his pants over it, calling for revolution in the streets. By other people of course, while he watches from the sidelines as if it were a teenage girls' dressing room.