I've read a few articles regarding this idea; in my opinion, the notion of dismantling our entire electoral system to unclear outcome seems WAY more the distraction than focusing on a politically and structurally viable option (i.e. beating back moneyed interest with stricter campaign finance laws, waiting for another SCOTUS judgement to reverse the last couple bad ones, even amending the constitution to specify the limits of free speech vis a vis political spending). Even if it were reasonable to expect the U.S. legislature to essentially amend itself out of existence, proportional representation wouldn't really be such a hot idea. Consider: while Sweden is no doubt a wonderful country, it's also geographically smaller and less diverse than the state of Alaska. Makes PR a whole lot more workable. And while the majority of representational democracies the world across have chosen PR as their way to govern, the majority of representational democracies are again smaller and less diverse than the U.S. How would you expect the U.S. to fare given its social, ethnic, religious, economic and cultural diversity? How many parties would make it to parliament? How would you expect them to work together in any sort of functional coalition? Off the top of my head, I could easily imagine a federal PR system immediately striating more or less down state lines, granting disproportionate amounts of power to the most populated states or regions to the vast detriment of smaller or less populous states/territories. Wouldn't that be frustrating. Our two party system isn't perfect, but in a nation as big and diverse as ours, there aren't really many workable alternatives. Given that this is the case, it makes perfect sense to chip away at the legislative mechanisms empowering moneyed interest to influence electoral outcome.These talks about campaign finance, they are a distraction, in my opinion, treating the symptoms and not looking for an actual cure. If the USA really wants to improve their government, and their country, we need Constitutional Reform.
Right, but amending the constitution is constitutional reform. I think we agree with each other, we just haven't discussed the specifics. I don't know, if a small, culturally and racially homogenous country like Sweden can benefit from having various parties, then considering the USA's cultural, ethnic, religious, socio-economic diversity it would seem it really needs and would benefit by having multiple parties. Just some thoughts, I liked your post it was definitely thought provoking :) (i.e. beating back moneyed interest with stricter campaign finance laws, waiting for another SCOTUS judgement to reverse the last couple bad ones, even amending the constitution to specify the limits of free speech vis a vis political spending).
Our two party system isn't perfect, but in a nation as big and diverse as ours, there aren't really many workable alternatives.
I mean, there's constitutonal reform and then there's constitutional reform. There's plenty of precedent when it comes to amending a particular portion of a particular article of the constitution. There's much less precedent when it comes to foundationally re-structuring an entire branch of government. Only example of that that comes to mind is the move from indirect to direct election of senators, and that's kind of small potatoes compared to this. I agree that the two party system leaves various pluralities woefully under-represented. I'm just not convinced that the proposed solution fixes more issues than it introduces.