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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Notes -
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.
Sure, and I think that was a better system. But even the originalists don’t seem to want to restore core aspects of American democracy like limiting the vote to property owners. $500,000 would be a good starting point.
Most counties already have records of owner occupiers of houses based on the tax system. It’s not that hard to restrict the franchise to people with provable residence and property, and it in general shows a degree of future orientation, good decision making, maturity, etc.
In many parts of the country it mostly shows that they had the good sense to be born at a time conducive to buying, or they have extreme FOMO, or that their parents had the good sense to shuffle off the mortal coil and pass down the house.
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