How to break up the two party system?

[Belsnickel]

(10-28-2016, 08:28 AM)hollodero Wrote:  Pretty similar to what I suggest in too many posts, therefore: excellent suggestion.

Just in addition to point 2 - you might want to find a solution for odd votes. That's where a "national list" would come into play - excessive votes (for examle one party gets 35% in your Maine example - therefore a direct vote for the state candidate at 25% + some excessive votes) from all the states would count for this national list, from which some additional Congressmen are selected, proportional to the incoming votes. The party's candidate for president would (probably) sit on top of this list.
That way, you encourage some kind of party affiliation (which is good for practical reasons - a Congress full of independends might turn chaotic and hard to negotiate with) and ensure that your vote always counts for the party you intended to vote for.

This is where the ranked voting can come into play. Obviously, were this to become law, there would have to be a method written into it. So, say that 10% is required to take the seat. Once a candidate reaches 10%, those remaining voters that have chosen that candidate could have their votes shifted to their second choice, and so on.

Now, I didn't include this in my post because this is just a mind blowing change for a lot of people, but I'd like to see a reform to political parties. I'd like to see them focusing on public policy, have their candidates hold to the platform so that you know when you vote for a party candidate, you know what they stand for. I'd like to see common people be members of political parties instead of only the political elite as it is now (because political parties here actually have no formal membership other than those that work for them). I want political parties to become more of a thing, more substantial than they are today. But, that is not what people here (not just this board) want to hear. They don't want more substantial parties even though the true problem with our parties here is that they aren't substantial enough. Hell, if the parties were more substantial it would help reduce that lobbyist influence everyone complains about.

(10-28-2016, 08:28 AM)hollodero Wrote: As for point 4 - why vote for the president directly. That comes with a lot of disadvantages. The election is focused on single persons, which opens the door for all kind of dirty attacks, possible corruption, fundraising etc. - and the risk of a "lame duck" blocked by a different Congress majority. I'd say it makes more sense to vote for Congress and let Congress determine the next president.

As I said, I waffle on this. I see pros and cons to the parliamentary system, just like our own. I think that we either need to step back and divorce the Executive more, in the manner it was intended from the beginning, or we need to incorporate it more and move to parliamentary. But right now it is this weird hybrid situation.

The reason we have a presidential system like we do is because the framers saw the role of executive as tiny. They were not envisioning the size of the federal government that we have today. They weren't envisioning a standing army, a navy with ships all around the globe on a constant basis, a diplomatic force the size of a small country, a dozen federal law enforcement agency, a network of interstate highways, etc., etc. I'm not saying it is a bad thing we have them, but our system was created without this stuff in mind. We've been trying to shove more and more authority into a role that was not intended to have it and it's created something entirely different which is inefficient and extremely problematic. Anyway, that is what I often think about when I think that we ought to move to a parliamentary system.