The way our system was designed, voters are supposed to elect representatives that they want. Once those elected representatives reach Congress, the representatives are supposed to argue and compromise, freeing the people from that tiring and complicated responsibility.
Something is badly broken if the people have to compromise in order to elect representatives who are themselves ideologues incapable of agreeing to any statement outside of their narrow special interest. That's where we're at, I agree.
Instant Runoff Voting is the only easily available cure that I see for this problem. Since it is equivalent to a series of different elections (but all held at the same time without intervening political review and commentary), it becomes impossible(?) for pundits to manufacture sentiment against any particular interest.
Psychology students learn how to devise surveys that measure and guard against intentional misrepresentation of self on a survey. Our voting system should be at least as robust as that. Instant Runoff Voting seems the best self-correcting change that we can make to the system to get it back to its original intent: voting for candidates.
Meanwhile, though, I don't want to participate in the flawed version of the American election system. I'll continue to vote for who I want, rather than defensively in some morose game of Political Chess. I accept the consequences of my actions. The sooner the fault in the system becomes obvious to everyone, the sooner we can collectively repair it.
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Date: 2010-Nov-02, Tuesday 05:15 am (UTC)Something is badly broken if the people have to compromise in order to elect representatives who are themselves ideologues incapable of agreeing to any statement outside of their narrow special interest. That's where we're at, I agree.
Instant Runoff Voting is the only easily available cure that I see for this problem. Since it is equivalent to a series of different elections (but all held at the same time without intervening political review and commentary), it becomes impossible(?) for pundits to manufacture sentiment against any particular interest.
Psychology students learn how to devise surveys that measure and guard against intentional misrepresentation of self on a survey. Our voting system should be at least as robust as that. Instant Runoff Voting seems the best self-correcting change that we can make to the system to get it back to its original intent: voting for candidates.
Meanwhile, though, I don't want to participate in the flawed version of the American election system. I'll continue to vote for who I want, rather than defensively in some morose game of Political Chess. I accept the consequences of my actions. The sooner the fault in the system becomes obvious to everyone, the sooner we can collectively repair it.