Moderate Majority
Jun. 14th, 2004 12:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenite0"If the two presidential candidates this year were John McCain and Joe Lieberman..." Oh, don't tease me like that. Gosh, struggling over who to vote for, what a concept. This NY Times article actually makes me feel a lot better. Reading various extremists on both sides makes me worry about whether there's a civil war in our future. Articles like that remind me there's a lot of consensus in this country, and a small fringe that gets more money the worse they make things sound.
I kick around the idea of making one house of the state legislature proportional representation because that would expose how small some of the fringe groups are. Right now somebody can claim to be spokesman for his religion/ethnic group/cause and there's no way to refute him. Give him the chance to run statewide with every supporter casting a vote and he'd have to put up or shut up. Then the next he makes an angry speech the response can be "Oh, that's the guy who got 1.6%, never mind him." Implementing it would be pretty straightforward in California, I haven't dug into the Texas constitution yet to see what it'd take here.
I kick around the idea of making one house of the state legislature proportional representation because that would expose how small some of the fringe groups are. Right now somebody can claim to be spokesman for his religion/ethnic group/cause and there's no way to refute him. Give him the chance to run statewide with every supporter casting a vote and he'd have to put up or shut up. Then the next he makes an angry speech the response can be "Oh, that's the guy who got 1.6%, never mind him." Implementing it would be pretty straightforward in California, I haven't dug into the Texas constitution yet to see what it'd take here.
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Re: Constitutions
Date: 2004-06-15 09:11 am (UTC)I'm less sure that's a bug than a feature. Given those oddball 3-7% fringe groups -- maybe all they really need is a auditorium and lectern from which to posture and orate.
Same sort of "feature" grows from the body in which a sufficiently wealthy individual can bid for memebership. The Ross Perot/George Soros/Steve Forbes sort of ego could divert itself safely without contaminating the actual process of crafting workable law ...
"Arguably the US Congress is halfway there "
Oh agreed. Too many senators inherit positions from spouses or fathers.
Clinton, Dole, Gore, Kennedy -- These seats are too subject to purchase as well. However, I'm less inclined to experiment with national institutions.
On the other hand, what is a federal system for if you can't run experiments at the state and local level? The campaign to get all the nations' libertarians to move to New Hampshire and take over amuses me greatly. Similar efforts to get all the non-Liberal Canadians to move to Alberta and take over THAT province are similarly worthy, in my view.