The United States is imploding. The reign of Donald Trump is not only challenging and threatening the very foundations of its constitutional democracy, it
In three weeks, Donald Trump has imploded whatever positive image the United States might have had internationally.
I agree that the media landscape is a huge problem that won’t be directly solved by a different voting system, but I think that a changed voting system is a reasonable step towards solving the wider constellation of problems. A fairer voting system is a far more straightforward thing to solve than the media problem, which is probably better understood as a web of lots of different, but tightly linked problems.
If we imagined a world where the media/propaganda problem were solved, then that wouldn’t make First Past The Post (FPTP) voting fair i.e. it would still be something we’d need to solve.
Of course, this isn’t an either/or thing. I agree that we shouldn’t expect Cardinal voting (or any other alternative voting system) to magically solve this fucked up situation, because problems like media will still exist. However, I do think that FPTP is reinforcing the problem of media monopolies and nationalistic popularism. Even if implementing Cardinal voting (or similar) doesn’t directly improve the media problem, it would change the shape of the problem, such that we could tackle it on new fronts.
I think that a changed voting system is a reasonable step towards solving the wider constellation of problems.
If we’re forming a governing body from scratch, I agree. No reason to start the democratic process suboptimally.
But we’ve experimented with alternative voting schemes in the US before. Eric Adams was elected under Cardinal Voting, ffs. The rationalist theory of voting doesn’t work in districts or elections where one candidate has an outsized war chest or media presence.
However, I do think that FPTP is reinforcing the problem of media monopolies and nationalistic popularism.
I would argue it’s a symptom more than a problem. Systems that favor incumbents and reinforce entrenched interests are going to be championed by incumbents.
Past that, I don’t really need ten mid candidates. I need one good one, with a coalition ready to rally behind them. Raising the intensity of competition and the number of competing factions makes for better TV drama than an election system.
I think the biggest problem I can cook up is that it’s sort of hard to campaign on cardinal voting, especially at the federal level, because it’s sort of an apolitical and nerdy topic that people don’t know about and don’t give a shit about. You’d probably have to campaign on giving people healthcare, or, responding to the economy, or any number of other issues that might come up in that particular cycle. You’d have to pass it as a total footnote to something else, which, at the federal level, probably wouldn’t happen, precisely because it would threaten the power monopoly that both parties have as different sides of the same cardboard cutout. You’d get no votes congressionally to get that passed. You’d probably have to do a bunch of legislation before that, leading up to that, probably you’d have to get rid of citizen’s united, yadda yadda. If you were the president theoretically you could add a lot of rhetorical pressure to specific members of congress, but that’s more useful if you have like, a narrow margin, if you’re outweighed by most then you’d probably ironically end up doing a lot of what trump is doing right now even though he has a majority.
I agree that the media landscape is a huge problem that won’t be directly solved by a different voting system, but I think that a changed voting system is a reasonable step towards solving the wider constellation of problems. A fairer voting system is a far more straightforward thing to solve than the media problem, which is probably better understood as a web of lots of different, but tightly linked problems.
If we imagined a world where the media/propaganda problem were solved, then that wouldn’t make First Past The Post (FPTP) voting fair i.e. it would still be something we’d need to solve.
Of course, this isn’t an either/or thing. I agree that we shouldn’t expect Cardinal voting (or any other alternative voting system) to magically solve this fucked up situation, because problems like media will still exist. However, I do think that FPTP is reinforcing the problem of media monopolies and nationalistic popularism. Even if implementing Cardinal voting (or similar) doesn’t directly improve the media problem, it would change the shape of the problem, such that we could tackle it on new fronts.
If we’re forming a governing body from scratch, I agree. No reason to start the democratic process suboptimally.
But we’ve experimented with alternative voting schemes in the US before. Eric Adams was elected under Cardinal Voting, ffs. The rationalist theory of voting doesn’t work in districts or elections where one candidate has an outsized war chest or media presence.
I would argue it’s a symptom more than a problem. Systems that favor incumbents and reinforce entrenched interests are going to be championed by incumbents.
Past that, I don’t really need ten mid candidates. I need one good one, with a coalition ready to rally behind them. Raising the intensity of competition and the number of competing factions makes for better TV drama than an election system.
I think the biggest problem I can cook up is that it’s sort of hard to campaign on cardinal voting, especially at the federal level, because it’s sort of an apolitical and nerdy topic that people don’t know about and don’t give a shit about. You’d probably have to campaign on giving people healthcare, or, responding to the economy, or any number of other issues that might come up in that particular cycle. You’d have to pass it as a total footnote to something else, which, at the federal level, probably wouldn’t happen, precisely because it would threaten the power monopoly that both parties have as different sides of the same cardboard cutout. You’d get no votes congressionally to get that passed. You’d probably have to do a bunch of legislation before that, leading up to that, probably you’d have to get rid of citizen’s united, yadda yadda. If you were the president theoretically you could add a lot of rhetorical pressure to specific members of congress, but that’s more useful if you have like, a narrow margin, if you’re outweighed by most then you’d probably ironically end up doing a lot of what trump is doing right now even though he has a majority.