Gabriel Bodeen @gabe@qoto.org

"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/

@chriswood
(2) Also that article is nearly a year old. Extremely out of date with today's capabilities! It's a fast changing field. There are many new techniques in common use in today's models that didn't exist a year ago. It seems reasonable to assume there will continue to be new techniques in coming months.

@chriswood -
It can't yet improve itself, but engineers can improve it and are improving it rapidly. And of course software in particular is easy to invent self-play reinforcement learning tasks so that the machines can invent their own good quality training data.

So as a software engineer I fully expect most current software jobs to be automated within a couple years!

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...

All the "It's a coup!!!" chatter is so obviously, blatantly wrong that I kinda wonder if it's a psy-op to undermine opposition. It's damn hard to unite opposition around such utter bollocks. Surely no one who actually opposed Trump & Musk's wanton criminality would choose "coup" as the central idea, right? When words like "saboteur", "highjacker", "embezzler", "burglar", "infiltrator", "mole", "usurper", etc are accurate and all there for the taking?

@androiddreams - I hope this involves lucid dreaming after careful meditative preparation

@dnc - I briefly thought it was a brain 😁

@fatsam - Interesting, thanks for the link!

I just learned today about the Vito Russo test for LGBTQ representation in film. It's similar to the Bechdel test for representation of women. Both are really low bars to step over, and very simple to apply. So they miss lots of nuance, but they're a reasonable start. Neat!
https://glaad.org/sri/2014/vitorusso/

@AnnaAnthro
I haven't read it - But who's the "we" in "we are not captains of our ships"? Speaking as an ex-neuroscientist, I've come to expect low quality arguments about free will from neuroscientists as they too often seem to feel no need to get acquainted with the relevant philosophy!

@dx
Yeah, something like that seems a good idea, though I'd make it more gentle. It can easily get too trigger happy with expulsions. Maybe the bad actor started out OK then changed. Or maybe the person who brought them in trusted them for "good enough" reason, but was wrong.

A gentler approach, after expelling the bad actor, might put the whole chain (the one who brought in the bad actor, the one who brought that one in, etc) on a warning list. Then leave it to human judgment. 🤷‍♂️

Hot hot 2024! It was the hottest year on record, as I'm sure you heard. These graphs stuck out to me.
https://berkeleyearth.org/global-temperature-report-for-2024/