Alternatives to congress
Alternatives to congress
What alternative ways can you think of to handle making legislation and passing laws that would negate the increasingly polarized political climate that is happening in more and more countries?
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A bicameral legislature, one house elected by mixed member proportional system and the other selected at random from the voting age population. Legislation must pass both houses, if it passed one house but not the other it can go to referendum at the same time as the next general election.
You can also have things like citizen initiated referenda. Campaign finance laws similar to those in the UK are also desirable.
Hm, interesting take on the random group. The US has citizen initiated referendum. Just takes signatures. But the money spent on advertising for or against has a massive impact. I had to look up the uk campaign finance laws. They limit 3rd party spending, but I don’t see that as stopping someone from spinning off hundreds of organizations that each buy like one Comercial or something.
I can't say that I'm very familiar with the UK laws in depth other than that they have been in operation for many years and are generally considered effective.
For referenda there's no reason you can't have a publicly funded campaign for yes and no and limit private advertising, we have something like that here in Australia.
Sortition, random selection, when combined with an elected body has a lot of benefits. It has the advantage of having professional politicians with institutional knowledge and relationships while also having a body the that is actually representative of the larger population.
Not sure the US can limit private advertising unless the Supreme Court changes it's interpretation of the 1st ammendment (free speech). I am guessing that in the UK and Australia that free speech doesn't cover advertising. Maybe that is the lynchpin.
Legislators have been ignoring the vote, too.
Mixed member proportional is nice, but it suffers from overhang seats.
I have a different proposal, but that one is pretty extensive.
It goes as following:
1. Replace the presidential system with a parliamentary one. Separation of powers is still as strict as it is. But it goes further. Veto power of the president, judges, anyone, it's gone.
2. The head of government is chosen by both popular vote and consensus. The candidate with the most votes and approval from most members in parliament wins. They can be removed from position by parliament or by referendum at any time.
3. Change FPTP to proportional representation. Specifically, it should be party-agnostic, and have a 4% threshold, below which a seat holder still can vote and speak, but has less speaking time. Seat apportion will be according to the Hamilton method, and there will be an additional spare vote, so that main votes to parties falling below the threshold, will go to the voter's spare vote, which is one likely to gain a seat. Party members can recall parlementarians, and people can do so too through referenda.
4. Abolish electoral districts. Furthermore, no person earning more than 3* the median US income (stocks and other earnings overseas and tax evasions included) may contribute to or participate in the elections in any way.
5. Split up the Democratic and Republican Parties into their ideological caucuses. Caucuses may merge, but no caucus may be bigger than 16% of the total US House of Representatives amount of seats.
6. Abolish the Senate. It's a slog that slows down and only helps bureaucracy. The work it does can also be done by having a strong constitution (that actually does guarantee people's rights to civility, safety, and liberty), and parlementary comi
7. Increase the House's size to 700 seats. This way, the work pressure is smaller and the parliament can be more representative, and lobbying becomes harder. States' seats will be degressively proportional in a similae way to the EU's seats.
8. Faithless electors are forbidden, age limit. No officeholder shall serve a term beyond 5/6th of the median life expectancy in their residential region at their birth date - rounded down to the nearest year. In the US, median life expectancy is 76 years, so that'd mean 63 years.
9. More voting booths. One voting booth per area of 1000 voters, distributed such that as many people as possible have one within 1 km of their home. Remote areas with fewer people than this, will have a mail-in as default.
10. The US. Supreme Court of Justice is not appointed by any leader. This also goes for lower level courts. The court shall be appointed apolitically through multiple random ballots, out of a pool of all federal judges, whereas the latter shall be appointed by the same method, through a pool of all in their area, who have passed juridicial examination, whose passing requirements are determined by a commission of judges without any economical and/or political ties to non-judge figures.
The court's size is determined as C•0.075 3sqrt(US current populace + 2), where C is the court size in seats. This would mean that there'd be 54 judges in 2020.