Alright, let us say that anything but a legislature is impossible, either because people like having corrupt and inept politicians run their lives, or are simply too lazy to think of anything else. What reforms can we make to these functionally useless bodies that might make them slightly less worthy of the rubbish bin?
Section 2 talks about the 'people's' house (since really the Senate is the lower, more baser and disgusting, so we can hardly call it an 'upper house') but the idea of a legislative body more closely connected to the people seems like a reasonable idea. What are some of the problems with this disgusting congregation of baboons (my apologies to the baboons).
Gerrymandering - The so called 'sanctity' of states allows psychopathic conservatives to tilt the machinery of democracy in an unnatural direction. Yes, it is true that their whines to the contrary about both sides doing it historically are accurate, but in this hour, in this day in age, at the federal level, it's conservatives. That's one problem. Another problem, as I've mentioned before is the fact that because they are such a small number, they are easy to bribe and hard to replace. People are lazy...they like the guy who is currently supporting them, but because of radicalization of the primaries (mostly among conservatives but occasionally among progressives) these people don't actually represent their districts so much as the most crazy frothing members of their own district who will loyally supplement the billionares that have bought their representatives.
Another problem of course, with territorial representation is the fact the minority party in these conservative infested districts (er...or of course the frothing conservatives kept well cage in Reality Reality majority districts....they have rights, after all, even if they seek to take everyone else's but their own, howling protestations to the contrary). If one person is supposed to get one vote and an equal say in a representative in the House of Corruption, why should they get silenced just because they live in the wrong zip code?
Here are three possible models.
1) All representatives are elected nationally at the party level. To say that parties will not happen is to not understand human nature. Check out a local high school. No one makes them form gangs of jocks, nerds, cheerleaders etc,....they just do it on their own. Same with parties. Now sometimes one gang gets a sufficient power block to crush all other gangs, but people are going to form gangs. So on a national level, you have a proportional representation. Everyone can form their own gang...and a gang that tries to stop other gangs from forming or sets up artificial barriers to forming a gang is declared illegal. This includes 'voter security' arrangements that are secretly designed to keep the gang in power, like unreasonable or irrational requirements on voting etc.
Strengths: Well, tiny parties would finally have a national voice where they could speak and be counted. Of course, in any system that isn't a parliament, the gangs would not have a requirement to form coalitions which is the mechanisms that allow small parties to have real power. You could, of course, pass some arbitary rule which says no one gang can have more than 10% of the vote, but then you'd just end up with Conservatives-South and Conservatives-West etc. Still, gangs would get their say, and we could finally dispense with all this nonsense about the Gutter house representing people and in fact representing their gangs.
Weaknesses: It is actually a good idea to represent a region. I mean, in theory, the south could become sane again. Imagine a future where most conservatives join some crazy cult or get beamed up by aliens or something, then you'd have the non conservatives in the south wanting to participate in reality again, except that the rest of the country hates them so much they refuse to spend any federal money on them. They could, of course, conceivably create a specifically regional party but would still be in the minority. Also, from a moral stand point, regional parties don't do well because they look like utterly selfish bastards....saying, 'we deserve our region to benefit over other regions.' It is one thing for the representative of a region to do that; pork might be dire, but it is apparently a lesser form of corruption for deal making than holistically amoral ideology that 'purifies against pork' but will kill the entire nation as a result.
Verdict: Meh.
2) We take the entire stupid system we have now but just make two minor reforms; eliminate party barriers and increase the size a whole lot of the legislature. Basically, we have 1 rep for every 10000 instead of 1 rep for every half million.
Strengths: You know who your rep is if you're not a lazy fool. If they want to, 10000 can educate themselves a lot more. Moreover, by keeping out the crazier conservatives because you know that your rep needs to get power in Washington and that will take time, you can begin to get actual statesmen instead of maniacs that want to kill us all. So the gutter house would actually be closer to the people, and with any party ACTUALLY able to play in the game, you could have tiny parties either succeed or get with the program and join coalition parties once they finally ran out of excuses as to why people had no interest in voting for them.
Weaknesses: This model does nothing to fix gerrymandering. Also, who are we kidding? The Somalia Party that wants no government at all, will never gain any actual power unless they lie to people...oh wait...they have. Nevertheless, the lesser Somalia party has in fact gained zero seats in congress except for that many of their worst ideas have been stolen. Crazy small parties will always keep going....forever...because they believe.
Verdict: At least you'd have more stability.
3) What if we had parties themselves do the gerrymandering? So you could basically vote at large nationally for a party but it was by district? That is to say, you get one vote....you choose a party...but the party has already chosen who represents you in that district based on a national level. This is not restricted to national lines, so that regional parties like the Greater Somalia party can put the bulk of its representatives in the south and rural west, whereas the Cowardly Party could put most of its representatives in districts. These districts would tend to flow based on the population of who was voting for them. As long as you had essentially no barriers to any kind of party existing or being formed or getting on the ballot, you could have both regionalism and partyism.
Strength: It will more reflect what people are actually going to do. People will have regional interests and they will have party interests. It also means no one EVER has their vote totally gerrymandered because they are voting for the party of their choice...if they want to vote for a party that has put half of the country under one representative, that is up to them.
Weaknesses: It...kind of makes sense. I mean, I think it solves a lot of the problems with the craptastic legislative system....and since people are stupid, I think they are unlikely to do something that might actually work. Plus, it might be rather easy for them to confuse themselves about understanding that if they vote for the Greater Somalia party, their vote is being thrown in with Cleveland, whereas if they vote for the Cowardly Party, they're in the same district as New York, whereas the Lesser Somalia Party knows no one will vote for them so they just put all in one district for the entire country at large. You would have to make people put at least 435 (or whatever number of losers that are in the gutter house) and make them divide things out geographically.
Verdict: I like it. Therefore it is unlikely to ever go anywhere.
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