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originally posted by: spiritualzombie
This sounds great for people who prefer their news steeped in racism and devoid of truth.
originally posted by: spiritualzombie
a reply to: yuppa
Yeah, well, Trump is not strong on defense or immigration. He's racist and his policies are racist and that's exactly why he attracts support from hateful racist groups.
He's being called out on it, and frankly, his supporters love him for his racist tendencies.
Possible reforms include establishing an independent redistricting commission, judicial intervention using the Voting Rights Act, and finding ways to introduce transparency and get citizens more involved. Open primaries are another way to repair our polarized party system. Specifically top-two vote getter (TTVG) primaries might ameliorate hyperpartisanship.
Relatedly, we could find alternatives to our winner-take-all system which leads to large areas dominated by one party (see Duverger’s Law). Such alternatives might include instant runoff voting (IRV) or even proportional representation (PR), especially suited for us is the single transferrable vote (STV) with multi-member districts.
On a cautionary note PR can wind up favoring extremist parties “because they can get a foothold and seats in the legislature and force unnatural conditions in which extreme groups hold the balance of power.” The authors note that in Israel the minority interest ultrareligious parties have been able to hold the majority hostage.
In a parliamentary system there are stridently adversarial voices but the majority is not inhibited from enacting its agenda. But in a constitutional system such as ours, with its separation of powers, the majority is limited. This implies that effective government rests on negotiation and compromise. But parliamentary-style polarization has meant that majority power is now limited in a manner exceeding that envsioned by our founders thanks to uncompromising partisans willing to play politics. There is a serious mismatch between our constitutional form and its present parliamentary-style content.