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zataomm  1yr ago (text post)   6454 thread views

Colorado Supreme Court Thread

Link to the decision

I don't know to what extent there are established precedents for when a topic is worthy of a mega-thread, but this decision seems like a big deal to me with a lot to discuss, so I'm putting this thread here as a place for discussion. If nobody agrees then I guess they just won't comment.

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This whole subject reminds me that I’ve long thought it would be a good change for the president to be appointed by state legislatures on a weighted majority-of-majorities basis, with a weighting system based on census data. So much of the issues with American politics are because congress has zero accountability to the states’ governments themselves, only to individual voters to some extent.

In general, direct elections to the federal level could be done away with as much as possible. It’s inefficient and confusing for people not only to elect 3+ levels of representative but then to do so in multiple forms (eg bicameral states, and congress itself for both senators and reps).

Recentering more politics around the states makes state politics more important and means that any president with a more radical plan is likely to be supported by a large ground-up movement in state houses across the country, instead of Trump being a one man band whose movement largely begins and ends with him.

Congratulations you've accidentally reinvented the electoral college.

It is truly one of the silliest parts of American constitutional history that one of the core mechanisms of its executive has been so subverted that the original intent has been rendered illegal and basically nobody cares.

The real question is how do you make something like it resist parties.

The fact that the electors had no other purpose than that ultimate decision probably fated them to servility regardless. Maybe they should have made them senators. Or a high court of sorts. So as to maintain a functional requirement that they be discerning and virtuous men, as intended.

The real question is how do you make something like it resist parties.

With approval voting, or at least a Condorcet method. Duverger's Law isn't the only force leading to partisan politics but it's a pretty overwhelming one.

I know right?

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