Why don't we have a no-confidence vote?

[KamP]

We do have no confidence votes lucifer, but we prefer to call them assassinations.

Nah, not the same. That's a no-confidence vote (singular)
If you could get the sigs off a majority of the people in the nation then fine by me, assassinate away, i guess.
I'm waiting for a democracy, still. Communications tech is getting to the point where a democracy is easily possible, even in such a large nation as the US.

[Fonkay]

One of the main differences between Canada and the USA. Canadian leaders talk about banning handguns with hopes to gain votes.

[Lucifer]

I'm waiting for a democracy, still. Communications tech is getting to the point where a democracy is easily possible, even in such a large nation as the US.

I beg to differ. Respectfully, of course. In a large nation, there are more administrative details. I once had an argument with a business partner (former) about how we were undercharging for our services because the administration overhead was so much that we were actually losing money on the work we were doing, and that given a few more months, we'd be broke and covered up with more work than we had enough people to handle. As the volume of business increases, so does the amount of overhead required.

This translates easily to government work. How much work does Congress do that isn't directly making laws? A lot! That's why we have the Department of State, Department of Defense, EPA, OSHA, etc. They're administrations.

In a true democracy, we'd each have a say in what happens there. In a republic, we elect people to handle those details.

Now, I think we can have more democratic structures than we do. I think we could easily expand the size of Congress (and we need to, population has increased much more than representation). I think that Congress can and should use technology to directly poll their constituents. Using the internet, there are numerous ways to create forums for discourse between elected officials and the people they represent. And it is achievable in many local jurisdictions to convert things like city councils, possibly even state councils in some of the smaller states, to pure democratic structures with no elected officials. So people would directly make the laws.

Personally, I think that a couple of simple tweaks to the existing system would straighten out most of the problems with it. First, a more flexible voting system. Something modular, where you don't get just one vote. Instead, you should have lots of votes. I won't get into alternate voting methods, suffice it to say our current voting method is very primitive and breaks down after a certain number of voters and candidates. Second, I think it should be encoded in the Constitution that for some number of laws passed, some other number of laws must be repealed. Set it at 2:1. For every 2 laws passed, 1 must be repealed. This would force Congress to constantly refactor the lawbooks, keeping them fairly streamlined and straightforward, and helping to eliminate loopholes before they even start.

Law = programming. The next constitution needs to be written by programmers.

[Phytotron]

Yah, Congress—The House of Representatives—being expanded. Well, the Constitution says that each member of the House should represent about 30,000 citizens. The first session of the House began with only 59 seats. The country and its population has greatly increased since then, obviously. So, in 1929, worried that if that population continued to rise, the House would be too crowded to do its work (and the walls might explode), Congress voted to freeze the size of the House at 435 members. Now, most Representatives represent far more than 30,000 citizens (I forget what the average is). I agree that that freeze should be lifted, and the number of Representatives should be increased, but it's doubtful it'll happen for the same reasons it was originally put in place.

Heh, I send emails to my Senators and Representative all the time. I just get back form letters telling me why I'm wrong.

Simple definition for Republic: representative democracy.

I definitely believe there need to be alterations in our electoral system, on all levels. The very best, first thing that could be done would be to institute instant-runoff voting. I won't detail it for those who aren't familiar with it. Just Google. It's a fantastic system.

I also support binding none-of-the-above and experimenting with proportional representation. And I think that "third party" access needs to be greatly opened up. The duopoly isn't working.

And I think that the Electoral College should be mended, if not ended. I think states ought to be mandated to split their electoral votes according to percentage, rather than the winner-take-all system now in place. Maine and (uh, either New Mexico or Nevada?) have already put this option in place.

I also think that the power of the Executive Branch, especially the power of the President, needs to be greatly reduced. He isn't supposed to have as much power as he does. The Executive Order should probably be the first thing to go, I think.

Um, yeah, so there are some of my thoughts on the matter.

[Lucifer]

I'm in favor of a royal family, to tell you the truth. Not an absolute power kinda of thing, mind you. Just a group of people whose whole purpose in life is to watch the government and keep it from screwing up. Say we have a king, we give him the power to veto the president, or to censure the president. He gets to appoint a council that oversees congress, that sort of thing. His exact powers would be extremely limited.

But he would be raised essentially from birth like the old monarchs, given a wonderful education, some sort of rounded experience, that sort of thing. Required to fulfill certain ranges of duties before ascending to his position.

The idea is that he'd be an expert, and a lifelong position. That way he's not focused on short-term interests, or the next election, or anything like that. It's to counter the problem with the presidency as it stands, where being president favors making short term decisions and blowing off long term consequences and leads to doing things like ignoring the Kyoto treaty, starting stupid wars in various places (Vietnam, Iraq, etc). That sort of thing.

ANd his powers would be constructed to give him enough to keep the administration in check, and no more. Something like Japan's emperor, I guess, with a few minor modifications.

Anyway, there has to be a way to balance the short-sightedness that the system has built into it right now.

Um, instant runoff voting doesn't work right? Something like that, yes, let's do it. Instant run-off voting actually punishes candidates in certain positions and still leads to tactical voting, and the idea is that people shouldn't vote tactically, they should vote their priorities, straight up and simple.

[Walking Tree]

I definately agree that the US legal system is far from perfect. neither is the german system. I agree on that a republic is probably more effective than a pure democracy. however, a pure republic is very "closed", and this is where the internet comes in: some areas where the parliamant is responsible now could be turned into public votes/petitions.

As Oscilloscope said, the US president has too much power. on the other hand, the german legal system is too byrocratic. Too based around checks and balances. And having 16 states in a country as small as this is lunacy.
I think thepresident has a lot of power because the US constitution was written in the age of absolutism. Absolutism was in peoples' heads, and it involuntarily got into the US constitution.

I don't agree with germany's traditioon federal approach. It has never helped in history. When France and Russia were strong, unified, absolutist nations, germany was a lose coorporation between over 30 seperate states. Napoléon was easily able to conquer southern geramany - he never met a big, strong, unified nation.

Now, back to the present. The federalist and checks-and-balances approach made germany ungovernable (before the election). the conservatives where strong enough in the states to block everything the social democratic government tried. In the end, the chancelor (~ equivalent to a french or british prime minister) wanted a no-confidence vote. There actually was a long constitutional debate about whether this is possible. It all started in early 2005, the vote was in june and the election was in september, and the government wasn't settled until sometime in novembre ! that makes over 4 months to kick out an incompetent government !

[KamP]

The way I see it, republics or representative democracies were useful and good forms of government at a time where communications technology was not powerful or quick enough to set ideas over a large area, or tally votes or anything like that. At this point, what with Internet tech being present all over the US, or even touch tone phones, the use of representation just isn't necessary.

Now Lucifer, you said that most people just can't bother themselves with details of government and the nuances involved in the numerous acts that Congress gets. Well neither can most Congressmen, which is a lot of the reason so many nuances and details exist. The three branches of the government are basically extremely bureaucratic, which any regular businessperson could tell you sucks, slows progress, inefficient, so on and so on.

What's more, judging by the last couple elections, voter apathy is at an all time high, and we can be confident that if someone doesn't know much about a certain bill that's trying to get passed, then they won't vote .

Now i'm not saying that every last bit of decision making ought to be done by referendum. There are some institutions that make sense to have. Departments of Education, Transportation, Justice, these depts. make sense and handle all sorts of decisions that really are nuanced.

All the same, legislation and executive power ought not be given to a group of people who's prime quality is having the monetary funds needed to run a succesful election campaign.

Ideally, having a hands on approach to government would also spur people to debate amongst themselves without coming to the inevitable conclusion that it's their congressman who votes, not them. Instead, arguments would be held, people would think more, SAT scores would rise and everything would be beautiful.

I really don't feel like writing anymore, i'm dead tired, i might pick up this train of thought later.

P.S.: Constitution made by programmers would actually be made more static by an attempt to make it more flexible.

[Phytotron]

Random responses:

Instant runoff voting works quite well, actually, and does allow people to vote their priorities and consciences as their first choice. The tactical part comes in with the 2nd and 3rd and however many following candidates there may be. And the whole, trite "spoiler" argument would fly out the window.

Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution enumerates the powers of the Presidency. If you read it, you find that it is very limited, not absolutist, and much of it requires the "advice and consent" of the Senate. It is only in the last 100 years or less, mainly since FDR, that the power of the Presidency has exploded. And I don't refer here to the establishment of departments of the executive branch (e.g., EPA, HHS, Interior, etc.). Those are fine, for the most part.

Two of the most obviously significant things that increased its power were the implementation of the Executive Order, which I already mentioned; and the War Powers Act—allowing the President to wage war (even on a whim) without an official Declaration of War from the Congress, as originally required by the Constitution, and is why there hasn't been an official Declaration of War since WWII.

There are others as well, such as Fast-Track Authority, a very bad thing.

These above points alone, along with others, are a lot of the cause for the short-sightedness Lucifer describes, or rather, the ability to enact that short-sightedness.

KamP, I don't think you have any idea the amount and extent of legislation the Congress deals with daily. The press is partly to blame for this, only usually reporting the major bills. But it's a lot. Representative democracy of some sort is highly practical in this regard. Remember, you have City, County, State, and Federal levels of government. You really want to vote on every (or nearly every) piece of legislation on each of those levels? And what about Conference Committees? Remember, most legislation goes before conference before it even reaches a vote. And then there's more. It's involved to a degree I don't think you grasp. Watch C-SPAN for a week.

What you want—some sort of direct democracy where all citizens vote on most legislation via their computers—would possibly only be even conceivably workable with a very small, stripped down, limited and largely ineffectual government, and probably only at the local level.

Actually, even locally it would still be a pain in the arse. Have you ever paid attention to the kinds of things your local Board of Alderman or Supervisors deal with? Oh, and nevermind the fact that a very sizeable portion of the public, mostly poor, still don't have computers and/or internet access.

But as I already mentioned, I do believe the representation in Congress should be greater, with more Representatives answering to fewer constituents. This will give those constituents more leverage.

Which reminds me of another change that must be made, and that is in the drawing of Congressional disctricts. It is extremely wack right now, completely rigged in nearly every state, with the national parties often having a slimey hand in it. Research for greater detail (a great example would be what Delay had a hand in in Texas last time districts were redrawn).

But you did point out something I incomprehensibly forgot to mention, and that's the money in politics. It's crucial. As I see it, elections should be publically financed only, and the broadcast networks (which are supposed to belong to the public) should be mandated to provide adequate and equal time to candidates.

My train of thought has now derailed.

[Lucifer]

I think the "repeal some law for every some other laws passed" would handle a lot. Forcing Congress to constantly revise old laws would require the law books to be in a constant state of relevance. It would also reduce to some small extent the amount of daily work Congress has to do. I envision it being for every law they pass, they dig out all the relevant laws, rewrite them into one law, and pass that. Then they give attention to the historical reasons for the laws, to the contemporary reasons for revising the law, and then enact the revision without creating complexity. They could certainly build in complexity to the laws, but this would at least reduce a lot of complexity that gets built in because of the nature of the system.

Instant run-off voting has a few problems.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-ru ... ria_failed

There are similar voting methods that don't suffer from these problems.

I'd like to restructure the political districts anyway. I'd like to see, in place of federal government, a series of districts that include all the states. So there'd be the Northwest Congress, the Southern Congress, and so forth. Each would be sized to have comparable population levels, and then given equal weight nationally. So they'd meet and make regional laws, and periodically meet to make national laws which would resemble treaties more than they would laws. We'd still have the administration setup we have, with all the different departments, but for a department to have jurisdiction in a region, the regional congress would have to approve it. Funding for the national administration would be given by the regions, so approving an administration also means you have to fund that administration.

Anyway, then the states would have congresses whose sole power is to approve the laws made by the regional congresses. And they'd be required to approve something like 2/3 of the laws. If a state doesn't approve 2/3 of the laws, then a new regional congress must be elected. Also, states would have the power to remove their representatives in the regional congress.

Hm. Money in politics. I'm not entirely sure that restricting it to public money is the best thing to do. The problem with that is that politicians would have power, and with power comes the means to get money. Taking bribes is one way, but not the only way. I'd like to see elections paid for solely with public money, too, but how do you divvy it out? How are you going to determine who gets the money to run and who doesn't?

[KamP]

Yea, quite frankly, i thought most of this idea up at 6 in the morning in the shower. Not the best place to think deeply. I don't get cspan. I'll try and get further informed though.