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Notes -
Any proposed amendment will immediately draw commentary from clout-chasing partisan hacks. Any such hacks will draw countersignals from their opposite numbers. I don’t believe any level of rationalist intent can deter this.
I’m not convinced that scaling down the Senate actually helps, either. We already form subcommittees of 15-30 members. They’re fine at getting stuff to a vote; the perverse incentives come after.
Returning to some form of indirect election is more plausible. If you can’t win a direct election as a moderate, maybe you can win it by getting along with your entire legislature. But isn’t this just as vulnerable to partisanship? If the Speaker of the House elections are any benchmark, asking a bunch of partisans to give you a leader doesn’t get a moderate.
It’s the change to voting rules that does all the work. As I understand it, that doesn’t require an amendment. The Senate can just adopt a different voting schema. I think that’s much more plausible than trying to get national support for a permanent structural change.
But then, I’m rather biased towards Literally Anything But FPTP. So if this gets more states to do STV, approval, anything, I’m in.
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