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Mostly good stuff. I don’t think I’d merge house and Senate. Some of them need more constraint, like I’d legalize prostitution, but only if it’s regulated like restaurants (health inspectors, workers rights, etc.).
What is your solution the massively disproportionate representation in the senate then? There are currently around 66.7 Californians for every Wyomingite. Do you think Wyomingites deserve 66.7 times the representation in the Senate? And yes, legalization would occur with reasonable regulations which would make sure the industry is safer for all those involved. I tried to keep the list as concise as possible for each issue reformed.
Do you think wyoming deserves to be a state? Every state gets the same representation in the Senate and I think that’s fair. I don’t think it’s fair that the proportional side of the legislature isn’t proportional anymore, though, and fixing that goes a very long way.
States don’t deserve equal representation. American citizens deserve equal representation, they are the ones who create value.
Then what you’re really saying is abolish the concept of states and have a single federal state.
No, states still would elect a number of representatives based on their population. Just no 2 senators per state.
Why even have states? Good way to get rid of jerrymandering would be to get rid of imaginary borders. No states, no senate necessary.
Something something…. Redraw state lines every 10 years…
Because state legislatures should continue to exist. If less populated conservative states want to go down a rabbit hole of far right shit then let them. Just don’t give them 2 senators per state to gridlock the states that continue to produce and provide for their population.
There’s no solution needed, since there isn’t a problem to begin with. Individuals (should) have proportional representation in the House, and states have proportional representation in the Senate, which is how it should be.
Do you think Wyomingites deserve 66.7 times the representation in the Senate?
Yes.
There’s no solution needed, since there isn’t a problem to begin with.
This is funny, it’s like an self soothing mantra. I’ll try to repeat this to myself as things get worse.
Beyond what you’ve stated about the disproportionate nature of the Senate, what exact legislative problems are you attributing to the existence of the Senate, and its disproportionate nature? And why do you think a purely proportional body will solve said issues? I’m also curious what you believe the purpose of the Senate, or a bicameral legislature in general, is.
I’m not trying to be accusatory in my probing, I’m simply curious what your exact rationale is ☺️.
The senate exists to maintain an artificial balance and make sure that only the approved things are actually voted on. That is why popular things like marijuana legalization are never voted on.
The senate exists to maintain an artificial balance
What do you mean by “artifical balance”?
and make sure that only the approved things are actually voted on
What do you mean, exactly? Bills are debated as they are presented [See 7.6 and 8.1 of the Senate Manual].
That is why popular things like marijuana legalization are never voted on.
I don’t understand this point. If you want a senator to introduce a bill regarding the legalization of marijuana, then vote in a senator that will present such a bill.
I don’t understand this point.
Yup, you don’t.
then vote in a senator that will present such a bill.
🤡
To be fair, Congress wouldn’t be so inept if it weren’t for the filibuster, which was never intended to be abused the way it is now. I’d be somewhat ok with the Senate if filibusters only required a simple majority to break again.
The Senate isn’t intended to be a representative body, it’s just two per state. They aren’t doing things like setting funding/budgets. Congress (the house of representatives) is designed to do that, though that needs some tweaking.
The Senate isn’t intended to be a representative body
Both the house and senate vote to pass bills. The disproportionate population increases have led to less representation of citizens in more populated states.
But the original states didn’t have balanced populations, the founders knew that, but they still set it to be two senators per state. The house is scaled by population.
They did that for as part of a negotiation though. The less populous states refused to join the union without something like the Senate.
To me it’s an outdated concept because states are much less independent now than they were back then. And we have a national identity that didn’t exist during the revolution.
There are other proposals to solve the Senate’s disproportionate nature, such as apportioning Senate seats by state population. Most proposals I’ve seen for that would leave the Senate with a little more than a hundred seats (with a minimum of 1 seat per state), which would (mostly) solve the problem and make it closer to the house in terms of proportionality. Of course, it all depends on the exact implementation.
What’s the purpose of the senate at that point? Seems redundant, like having two house of representatives.
That is in fact the point. It’s about checks and balances to stop bad actors from completely changing all of the rules the moment their party is in power. Of course, that’s completely pointless in a 2 Party system anyways and we should really reform campaign finance and election laws surrounding how to get on the ballot.
The point of the Senate is that it’s a more deliberative body, representing larger numbers of people, which serves to moderate the power of the House. Mind you, Congress as a whole was more powerful when the nation was founded; they’ve handed off power to the executive over the years, for better or worse (really, a bit of both). The House was also intended to grow with the population, and if we’d followed the general guidelines for growth the Founders suggested, we’d have a House with more than 600 members. The number of seats was capped ~90 years ago, because Congress didn’t want to fund another renovation of the capitol building to fit more people. Also keep in mind that the States had a more uniform population distribution when the country was founded. You didn’t have California and Nebraska sitting with orders of magnitude of difference between them, so the difference in representation in the Senate was not nearly as significant as it is today.
Wether we need a secondary deliberative body in the legislature or not is a matter of debate and opinion. I can see why you’d want one, but I can also understand why people would think it’s not useful anymore.
It is federally legal to prostitution. Just every single state outlaws except nevada.
Interesting, I never really thought about it, but of course that must be true for it to be legal anywhere.
The last one could just be “free education”
Could? I think it should be.
There is a case for having some cost otherwise people go to university for absolutely worthless degrees just to do something.
I would perhaps reword it to something along the lines of “add economic literacy to the public school curriculum”.
Mandatory voting just adds semi-random votes, skewing the proportion of people who are really voting for their own interests, but rather out of vibes due to obligation. Holiday on voting days and repealing of disenfranchisement measures work much better.
I’m 90-95% on board, which is astounding considering the current options. Now fleshing out the legislation to make this transition possible…
Exactly my thought. This may as well be a list that has one bullet point “* fix America” without a lot more detail on most of these
Would you have commented on a post that just had an image of “* fix America”?
If it had an opossum and a bright background, it’d fit perfectly in 196.
Free education.
No private/charter schools.
Religions are businesses and pay taxes.
Ban religious-justified discrimination.
Religion is private between you and God.
Absolute separation between church and state.
Repeal all religion based laws.
All the points are nice but the plan does not “make sense” in the sense that it will probably never happen (at least within our lifetimes).
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I don’t really see “new countries” being a thing in that way ever again. The USA was new because a “new” piece of land was literally found (well obviously it was already found by other people but you get what I mean).
There is no new land to find today. You can’t just set off and create a new country - all of the land is already taken. You’ll need to work within the confines of the current countries and try your best to improve them gradually.
At least, any other approach would probably be very bloody…
Don’t worry, World War 3 will leave vast swaths of uninhabited land.
Uninhabitable*
I mean, the US was just a colonial state that broke ties to the british monarchy, and that shit happens all the time, so I think through that method, there’s still a pretty good chance. If you’re talking more about like, the establishment of the US as a state through the genocide of the native peoples, intentional or otherwise, I’d say, sure, yeah, that’s hopefully never gonna happen again, but general independence movements happen all the time.
If you arent dying, dont overestimate capitalism’s remaining lifetime
I dont understand why Americans are horny for mandatory voting. Voting is mandatory in Greece, it makes no difference. It is theoretically illegal to not vote but are you going to imprison people for not voting? So it isnt enforced, at all.
No one is voting because it is mandatory. Greece has 60% participation.
I believe Australia has mandatory voting and achieves a ~95% participation of registered voters basically every election, though they do enforce it with either a day in court or a fine.
I do wonder if you fined people, or wasted a day of theirs with court, whether it would have an impact in Greece after a couple of elections?
We swing between 93-95% participation
We alao make voting as easy as possible with voting opening 2-4 weeks in advance of election day, election day is always a weekend and as long as you vote before or on election day it’s counted.
Also democracy sausages
I think such a high turn out makes our politicians a bit more honest with less empty promises since they can’t dissuade anyone from voting.
Right. And for people who try to argue that they shouldn’t be forced to choose between people they like like, or whatever, it’s important to understand that it is only mandatory to get your name ticked off the list. You don’t actually have to submit a valid vote. You can choose to just turn in a blank ballot paper, or write “fuck you” or whatever you like. There are no laws against that.
So the ‘mandatory voting’ just makes it mandatory to put in the small amount of effort required to show up; but doesn’t force you to express an opinion. (Of course, I’d say that you should submit a valid vote. But you don’t have to.)
You can not enforce new social norms like that. People, including voting ones, will revolt. They will call it undemocratic and a cash grab. You are just asking for trouble.
I agree many wouldn’t bother, but I still believe it should be every citizen’s duty to vote. It’s literally the bare minimum political involvement people can have.
Does your legal system work on imprisonment or nothing at all? Sounds very extreme.
Here it’s a small fine, but it’s also a day off and takes like 20 mins to go do plus you can get a delicious sausage. So it’s a no brainer that people go vote.
Greece is a pretty failed state from what I’ve seen, wouldn’t read too much into what they don’t do.
As for why compulsory voting, it helps moderate extremism and represents most of society as a whole.
it helps moderate extremism and represents most of society as a whole.
thoughts on Selb and Lachat, 2009?:
In particular, the analyses suggest that CV compels a substantial share of uninterested and less knowledgeable voters to the polls. These voters, in turn, cast votes that are clearly less consistent with their own political preferences than those of the more informed and motivated voluntary voters. Claims that CV promotes equal representation of political interests are therefore questionable.
Here it’s a small fine
People will call it a cashgrab, that will mostly affect poor people(since the rich people both vote and also dont care about small fines).
it’s also a day off
Greek elections are always on Sunday and people can be given a day off if their voting location is far away(especially back in the day, when moving your voting location was hard).
Greece is a pretty failed state from what I’ve seen
I have been shitting on Greece for my entire life, but it aint cool when non greeks do it. Yes, Greece is fucked but i wouldnt really call it a failed state. It is a shithole but only greeks get to call it a shithole. It also relatively shitholey, in comparison to western european countries.
It just happens to be the worst “western” country. And yes, it is in the East, but the West/East thing was a Cold War thing and Greece was with the “West”. Nowadays, many “eastern european” countries have reached and surpassed Greece.
In any case, take a look at the wikipedia map, which countries have compulsory voting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_voting
If you exclude Australia, all other countries are shitholes. And i am sure australians will be the first to tell you that Australia is also a shithole and politically fucked.
As for why compulsory voting, it helps moderate extremism and represents most of society as a whole.
It doesnt. If anything, it might do exactly the opposite. When a greek neonazi party was popular, a lot of “apolitic” greeks supported it not because they supported neonazism but because “fuck the system, at least they will go in and smash some heads”. When clueless people are forced to vote, they might be clueless about what they are voting.
America’s issue is the first past the post, winner takes all system. If the US had a more representative system, that allowed third parties and coalitions(like almost all other democratic countries have), things would have been better.
I wouldnt want idiots having to vote then voting because some friend said some madeup thing or it was the last thing they seen on ticktok. If people don’t care and refuse to do the most minimum of looking into politics why should they decide my future
Make it tied to your UBI check. Now it’s incentivized so enforcement not needed.
Yea I think I’ll add this to the v4. Incentivize rather than punish. Just give people an extra $100 a month in their UBI for voting.
Why only $100 and not the whole UBI allowance?
Why only $100 and not the whole UBI allowance?
Incentivize rather than punish
Then it’s a punishment of $100 if you don’t vote. UBI as a reward for participating in our democracy would be a great step. A punishment would be a fine or jailtime.
because you could do literally anything else, and it would be more useful. Mandatory voting is the equivalent to asking everyone in the room what they think about every interaction that ever happens. It’s fully redundant.
Ok so…
Mandatory voting
I think this can get messy. It would require a system to prosecute those who don’t vote. That kind of registry can be very easily used for nefarious purposes by politicians or just anyone with access to that information. Also, it would really depend on what degree of mandatory this is. If you get thrown in jail then we are going to see a lot of poor people in prison for no reason. If you get just a fine then we are essentially introducing the inverse of a poll tax. Not voting is a protected form of free speech for a reason and can be interpreted as protest.
Merge house into senate
Last time something like this was posted I got flamed for asking what the point of this one is. The Senate is a representation of the states rights we have in our constitution. It serves as a safeguard against heavily populated areas dictating the laws for much less populated states. I’m all for reform but eliminating the Senate all together seems like a step backwards.
Ban tipping
I think this is another one where the spirit of the idea is right but the execution is wrong. What we need to ban is allowing restaurants to pay tipped positions far below minimum wage, and stop allowing restaurants to take a cut of the tip at all.
The act of tipping itself is a cultural thing that needs to be addressed culturally. If you can’t tip someone for something, complications in the law arise that may disallow giving money to people in general. For example how do you distinguish between tipping a server for a meal and giving the server a dollar as a gift?
You forgot “embrace the metric system”.
As someone who hates this God forsaken measuring system, I genuinely don’t know if the costs of this would ever be worth it. There’d be thousands and thousands of miles marker signs that’d have to be replaced, not to mention having to redo thousands of textbooks.
Plus, when it comes to some things, imperial is just better. Mostly this is carpentry. 12 is way more divisible than 10 and fractions are way easier for cutting than decimal
It would very much be worth it. Imperial invites mistakes by using weird conversions and factional sizes. I often have to stop and think which factions of an inch are bigger or smaller than each other. When Australia switched from imperial to metric, it’s estimated they save about 10% annually from having a lower error rate. Fewer things need to get fixed or replaced from measurement mistakes.
A kitchen-scale example: I once mixed up tablespoons and teaspoons when adding baking soda to my pancake mix. They turned out disgusting and we had to re-make breakfast because version 1 was inedible. Such mistakes are less likely to happen under metric.
Eeeh… We have tablespoon (15ml) and teaspoon (5ml) here too…
There are also tons of machines and tools made to work in inches. As more things are becoming computer controlled, it’s easier to convert between inch and mm on the fly, but every drill bit, end mill, and tool holder for the manual mill in my company’s shop is in inch.
I’m also gonna disagree with you on the 12 better than 10 front. Just use a calculator if you can’t do it in your head and round to the nearest mm. I bet you’ll learn what 10/6 and 10/3 are faster than 12/5 too.
I can actually do all of those in my head, so that wouldn’t be an issue for me.
But yeah, all of my tools and bits and holders are imperial, and someone else better be paying to get the damn things replaced or they are staying imperial even if we go metric. I think the only things I have in metric are allans (allens? I’ve never had to spell it out), like 2 hole saws from an old project, and a set of calipers I was gifted and have used maybe twice
Everyone thinks the the switch would somehow be overnight and everyone would be required to throw away their old stuff. In reality, you just replace the things when they wear out and all the new equipment is metric. Tada!
The UK did this.
It’s absolutely worth it. If you are worried about textbooks staying in circulation for a long time especially in 2024 then you got bigger issues to be honest.
Can’t we just have both, and teach both? But like, in a more committed fashion than we currently do. Probably swapping out road signs and textbooks as they naturally need to be swapped out, to include both sets of measurements and the conversions between them.
This will be considered for v4 as “Transition to metric system”. It would take several years for the transition to completely take place for the average American. I’m also probably going to add “end daylight savings”, which is close to being passed anyway.
Legally, we adopted the metric system in the 70s, so more than “a few years” I’d say
fuck you DST FOR THE WIN
mandatory voting
what the fuck lmao? where did this come from, genuinely asking this is so authoritarian and out of place among the rest of the stuff
Australia has had mandatory voting for eligible voters (18+) for a long time. It works like this:
Prior to elections, the Australian Electoral Commission updates the electoral roll of all eligible voters. On election day, voters have their names crossed off the roll at whichever polling place they attend.
After the election, the electoral roll is cross-checked against voter records. Anyone who didn’t vote and can’t provide a valid reason (for example - illness, living remotely, religious beliefs) is issued a $20 fine by the AEC. If not paid, this can escalate to further fines of around $180 plus court costs if convicted.
Over 180,000 penalty notices were issued after the 2022 federal election to enforce the compulsory voting laws. While controversial to some, the system has maintained over 90% voter turnout in Australia for nearly a century.
A similar system would probably moderate political extremes in the US. I think any fine that is used as a means of enforcement needs to be scaled to the means of the individual being fined in order to not disproportionately target lower wealth individuals (but an elimination of the enforcement fine completely for the lower end of the wealth scale would maybe ironically result in less from that group voting and thus give them disproportionately lower representation in outcomes).
if you’re going to require voting, give me a good fucking candidate to vote for, for fucks sake. This does nothing to prevent degradation of the candidacy.
thanks for this, provided a lot of insight. for those interested, $20 AUD = $13.06 USD.
i find that this change only might be useful in the US, especially if introduced gradually and after other measures such as a voting holidy (very important!) and vote by mail rather than all-at-once, but i think is less tenable as a position than in Australia due to the following differences:
- class: the USA generally has a significantly larger wealth gap than Australia; this directly relates to the fee and i agree with your assessment that any fines should be appropriately scaled; still a concern
- staus quo: the longevity of the policy indicates that the country has the voting infrastructure to handle a 100% turnout without unintentional disenfranchisement, long travel times or long wait times
- population distribution: this is a lot different in the US and again affects infrastructure. we already know that low income areas are subject to the worst of wait times, travel times, and environmental conditions while voting so it’s super important to be concious of what CV is doing for those populations. vote by mail aids this but is still a concern.
conclusion: compulsory voting, in my opinion, should not be on this list because it is nowhere near as effective nor feasible as the other election measures already listed.
Nothing screams authoritarianism quite like having to spend 10 mins at a local school on a Saturday, once every couple of years, and drawing a big old big on the ballot paper.
my comment was a genuine question please respect that.
what is the method of enforcement? like if it’s prison, or even time in court. yeah that’s weird and it gives authoritarianism vibes.
if it’s a fine, what is the price point? what about those who cannot afford to travel to vote nor to pay? and what is stopping the wealthy from just paying the fine and skipping elections anyway?
or like what other options of enforcement are there? i just don’t think making voting mandatory is at all needed to ensure free and fair elections and it just has an icky vibe to it.
edit: also you say “every couple years.” are you aware that elections are held several times per year in most parts of the US? or are we just making federal elections mandatory?
edit 2: you say “10 minutes.” when waiting times for voting of 30 minutes or even an hour are not rare. so what is the solution there?
edit 3: what about individuals whose religious convictions forbid them from participating in polls? does this not violate their constitutional rights?
edit 4: doing my due diligence and found that…
We empirically explore the effects of a sanctioned compulsory voting law on direct-democratic decision making in Switzerland. We find that compulsory voting significantly increases electoral support for leftist policy positions in referendums by up to 20 percentage points. (Michael M. Bechtel, Dominik Hangartner, Lukas Schmid)
…which is cool and admittedly something i was unaware of. nevertheless i still find that the means of obtaining this end questionable.
I think I have a solution, hear me out: The penalty for missing a mandatory vote is you don’t get to vote.
incredible, i agree.
Proponents of mandatory voting also tend to be supportive of other voting reforms which would make it faster and easier to vote. For example, vote by mail and removing the selective service requirement for men. With some properly implemented reforms, the time it takes to vote could easily be reduced to ten minutes or less.
Mandatory voting would also push the responsibility of ensuring that people have an opportunity to vote on the government, which is really how it should be anyway, but it behooves the powers that be to keep turnout lower. At least in theory, this would obviously need to be codified.
As for religious exemption, I think most mandatory voting advocates would only want to require that every citizen turn in a ballot, but not that it be filled out in any particular way. An objector could turn in a blank ballot or write in a fictitious candidate by that standard. They would have no real sway on the political state, so unless they have a religious objection to filing paperwork they don’t have much to complain about. Even so, there could easily be a way to allow people to apply for an exemption.
Your right about punishments being a fraught subject here, though I think everyone’s on the same page about them being pretty light. A “realistic” (this whole thread is pretty unrealistic) implementation would probably involve some minor penalty on your tax returns, though personally I’m not happy with that solution.
The point is to push the onus of providing voting opportunities on the government, and increase overall turnout. As I can anecdotally attest, and as you seem to have found on your own, people who don’t vote often do have strong opinions. They either don’t vote out of laziness or a lack of access. Mandatory voting would fix the former and would necessarily be bundled with legislation to fix the latter.
thanks. i like your framing of putting the onus of voting opportunities on the government. and i think that any good election reform process would implement CV as the last step of a series of careful and intentional change; it doesn’t really fit as one of three “quick fixes” to voting opportunities, hence my initial reaction.
appreciate your response!
Jail time? Tell me you’re American without telling me you’re American… I happen to be one of the dozens of people who do not live in the US, so my state and local elections are at the same time, and federal is usually in between. They group them together because efficiency. Pretty sure the penalty in every developed economy is a small fine equivalent to a parking ticket. I don’t know exactly, because I’ve been postal voting for a decade due to my debilitating case of “religious reasons”, so I get my ballot in the mail a week in advance, and If I didn’t want to vote I’d just mail it back empty (free fyi). I also voted from my phone at a foreign airport one time. Pretty sure I’ve missed one too, and know several people in their 40’s and 50’s who’ve never enrolled, never voted, and never been fined. Turns out “mandatory” is pretty loose when you aren’t living in a dictatorship.
The argument FOR mandatory voting is to encourage political parties to reach out and engage all adults (e.g. “we the people”), instead of focusing their policies, campaigning, and financing on specific subsets of the population, or specific geographies (e.g. electoral college), or engage in other methods like voter disenfranchisement, etc, etc — basically to mitigate against the USA’s brand of bastardized anti-democracy, and authoritarianism, from happening.
so… mandatory voting for you isn’t actually mandatory voting, it’s in fact a much broader series of measures aimed to reduce obstacles to voting and putting the onus of the election on the government rather than the people. got it, and i like that.
heads up that other comments here swayed my opinion but yours have been truly just disrespectful and unhelpful.
#1. Truly abolish slavery. #2. Change the legal system from punishment to rehabilitation. #3. Congress gets minimum wage. #4. Minimum wage and unemployment must be a livable wage.
How tf Americans don’t have a holiday on voting day 😭
IMPROVE PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION
edit: DST for areas that need it like alaska or new york but not California and others
I don’t like a 15 year term for scotus.
A term limit does make sense, but either in the form of a forced retirement age or a 36 year term. They should also be barred from collecting a wage or benefits from any employer after the end of their term (they should get a damn good retirement package, too).
There are good reasons for SCOTUS to be a life appointment. You don’t want them being bought out with lucrative cushy job offers once they leave. 36 years ensures one appointee per presidential term.
Start with one thing, mate. Most impact and easiest to implement.
Why delude yourself with this bullshit fantasy list? Focus on reality.
While I agree with tackling one problem at a time, there’s no issues with listing all of them. Then, when you tackle one, you get to mark it off.
There’s something great about an easily comprehendible list that everyone can understand.
Pretty sure this is ranked by biggest impact to smallest
I focused on reality and all it did was make me start thinking we’re fucked, so I made a list of solutions.
Yeah, in order to have the slightest chance of doing most of these things, America would already have to be a lot better.
Yeah, in order to have the slightest chance of doing most of these things, America would already have to be a lot better.
Keep the faith, citizen. These things just take time, but change does happen.
When you propose things, you have to keep some line items you can remove easily during negotiations to show “good faith” 😬
Why delude yourself with this bullshit fantasy list? Focus on reality.
“What? Fly?!? If Man could fly, they’d have wings!” /bahhumbug
