Gabriel Bodeen @gabe@qoto.org

In general, I strongly support following the existing Constitution.

But suppose the President abrogated elections. Then the US Constitution would not be being followed by the federal government, and attempting to follow the Constitution at the federal level would offer no achievable remedy to that situation. The only path forward to a Constitutional order would be via the states.

The staid option is an Article V convention, because it's an established idea. But this is for proposing amendments to a Constitution that is already being ignored (in the hypothetical). So it seems mis-aimed.

What we'd need, I suspect, is for a collection of large, powerful states to ratify a new Constitution. It would be ratified on its own terms, just like the current Constitution was ratified on its own terms, not by previous rules.

I think daily about ways to make a better constitution. It's always been just an idealistic thought experiment for me. But this year I'm less sure it's irrelevant.

If the President creates a Constitutional crisis that has no viable remedy solely following Constitutional procedures, would that justify dissident states ratifying an updated Constitution?

Nifty quote!

Nifty quote!

Always good advice in coming months.

Pick your priorities & focus your efforts where they count. Don't get swept up in impotent outrage. Acknowledge there will be terrible new stuff every day and you don't have energy or power to fight it all. Just tune in for occasional summaries from level headed people with solid analysis, & adjust your priorities as needed.

3-way polarization is not a risk. All the incentives are against it.

What about excessive depolarization? Would voters start to see "not a dime's worth of difference" among all three parties? Political theorists in the mid-20th century thought we needed more polarization to give voters a more meaningful choice. (How short-sighted those theorists look now!)

The answer is No, we wouldn't have excessive depolarization -- because we have primary elections. They didn't have those in the mid-20th century. They only had the general election, which is dominated by moderates. Primary elections are dominated by ideologues. We'd keep the benefits of primaries in generating meaningfully different ideas, and yet not suffer polarization over it.

How might "Vote for 1, Top 2 Win" fail? That's always important to consider.

It might fail if regions are so politically divided that they can't unite around just 3 parties. With 4+ parties, the advantages largely disappear. (This risk is greatly reduced by making the Presidency a 3-way race.)

It might fail if a large region is so united that it elects a single party. (This risk is greatly reduced by laws ensuring competitive elections.)

It might fail if a coalition between two parties becomes so habitual or even formalized that voters treat it as a single party. (This risk is greatly reduced by regulating the parties to forbid excessive entanglements.)

Those are the main predictable failure modes, and none seem especially risky or severe. So I say let's go for it!

The opposition party has no hope of stopping the majority through gridlock, nor of winning an outright majority. Instead, their only strategic route forward is to work on compromise bills with one side or another of the majority, in hopes of later winning them over to a coalition.

With a governing coalition of about 2/3rds of the seats, the coalition can lose nearly 1 in 4 of its members and still move forward. Consequently, it becomes very safe for individual members of Congress to stick to their principles. So we would expect to see representatives show much more backbone, express much more individuality, and more closely follow the local culture & interests they represent rather than a party line.

The output of the coalition needn't be bland compromise either! With lower pressure on every members to conform, they can afford to put political capital into unconventional ideas that they know won't win over every member of the coalition -- as long as it's an idea that has at least some appeal across party lines.

A governing coalition in a three-party system is just 2 of the 3 parties. So nearly 2/3 of voters are represented in the governing coalition.

If you increase the number of the parties, the number of people represented by the governing coalition goes down! e.g. With any even number of roughly equal parties, you only need a bare majority of members. With odd numbers of roughly equal parties, you need 3/5, 4/7, 5/9, ... trending closer and closer to a bare majority as the number increases.

So given roughly equal parties, a 3-party system maximizes the proportion of people represented by the governing coalition.

"Vote for 1, Top 2 Win"

In the short term (0-1 years), we'd see districts elect either two standard Republicans, two standard Democrats, or one of each.

In the medium term (2-7 years), I think we'd see districts get a choice between a conservative, a moderate, & a progressive, and elect 2 of the three.

In a longer term (8+ years), I think we'd get a real third party that stands for different things than either of the Republicans or Democrats. The political spectrum would change into a political triangle, each party having a base in one corner & competing to win over the voters in the center and on the sides between each other.

This is not an idealistic reform. I'm sure few people will like it, because they prefer something more idealistic.

Its chief advantages are:
• No Constitutional amendment is required.
• It only requires extremely minimal changes.
• We know from our country's history that it would create both effective government and depolarization.
• It maximizes the proportion of people who are represented in the governing coalition (two thirds of voters, rather than half, will get their way).
8/8

The US Constitution has a quirk that would come into play at this point. If no candidate gets a majority of the electoral votes, then the state congressional delegations choose the winner from among the top 3 candidates.

This strengthens Congress relative to the President, and further eliminates gridlock: Whichever two parties form a coalition, they will always choose one of their own, giving them a President they can work with.
7/

The other big wrinkle in the US is of course the Presidency. Only one Presidential candidate can win under the constitution, so that strongly pushes national politics to a two-party system regardless of the voting method. Even with rankings, it's necessary to win the majority, and it's fighting for a bare majority that motivates a two-party system.

What would work? We could require states to award half their electoral votes to each of the top two Presidential candidates in the state. That would make it a true 3-way contest.
6/

The two-party system is created by our voting methods. Rather than ranking or rating or approving candidates, we are only allowed to vote for one, and only one candidate wins in each district. Strategically this forces voters to collect into two parties and fight over the median voter. You've probably heard about voting reform proposals to rank or rate or approve multiple candidates.

I propose instead: Vote For One, Top Two Win. Strategically, this forces voters to collect into *three* parties that all fight to pull voters from each other.
5/

So it's worth thinking about what further reforms can mitigate the harms of polarization -- but without anything like the terrible injustice that 20th century depolarization was built on.

Fortunately, I think there's a simple answer: Bring back a three-party system with three roughly equal parties. That will bring back the requirement for compromise plus the huge, uncomplicated coalitions that make governing possible and effective under our Constitution.
4/

But of course it was all built on terrible injustice. The civil rights movement fought for & won a great moral victory, for which we as a country can remain proud, & we can honor their struggle.

We can simultaneously recognize that in restoring relatively free elections to the South, the reforms set the stage for re-polarization. There are always side effects. Unfortunately, polarization in our political system makes the system work terribly. I think we can lay part of the blame of our current political disaster on the political consequences of polarization.
3/

No one of the three factions could pass anything by itself nor hope to gain a majority, so coalition or compromise were the only strategically valid options for party leaders to pursue. But with a coalition of nearly two-thirds, they could very easily pass laws on matters that the coalition agreed about. Furthermore, the coalition was formed of only two factions, so coordinating the factions was relatively simple, much more so than for the many-party coalitions that sometimes occur in countries with proportional representation.

So this period was characterized by high levels of compromise, and political depolarization between the parties.
2/

US politics has been highly polarized at both ends of its history except the early-mid 20th century when the Dixiecrats ran one party states in the South. The rest of the country was contested in relatively free elections, so the GOP and liberal Democrats split the seats between them. Then the Dixiecrats & liberal Democrats formed a Congressional bloc consistently controlling about two thirds of the seats.
1/

Ever since reading the #TerraIgnota books, the only political reform I'm excited by is joining the Utopian Hive. The only problem is to create it first...