[Vision2020] yet another political compass

[Kenneth Marcy]

On 11/7/2014 12:09 PM, Paul Rumelhart wrote:
>
> Polls like this really make me wish that third parties were larger in 
> this country.
>

In the contemporary environment of dark money and the corporatization of 
political activities within the traditional winner-take-all election 
structure, forming additional parties with miniscule chances of 
electoral success is an only semi-rational strategy for exercising 
political power.

More substantive change is needed.  The long and short of it is that the 
system needs to be used against itself by way of forming political 
action committees to fund electoral processes to approve structural 
changes in the election system and its processes.  The federal electoral 
college needs to be replaced with a single transferable vote system that 
operates nationally rather than through state-selected electors.  
Analogous systems within states would allow representation to be 
selected that better matches the preferences of the electorate.

Since implementation of these suggestions would require amendment of the 
federal constitution, and, analogously, of state constitutions, I do not 
expect they will be done soon, if at all.  Suffice it to say better 
alternatives to our current system are imaginable and implementable, but 
the needed fixes likely are neither quick nor easy.


Ken