Ask Lemmy

American democracy could be significantly improved just by adding term limits Senators and Representatives, plus an age cap for Congress and the President. Taking steps to break the two party system would be even better.

I personally like Germany's approach to parliamentary representation, where you vote for both a district representative and a party. Once the district seats are filled, more seats are added until each party is proportionally represented. This goes a long way to reducing the spoiler effect and helping third parties get a voice.

I know this is a controversial take, but I actually like the electoral college in principle. The goal of the electoral college is to balance the interests of urban and rural voters so that whoever wins the election will hopefully be good for both. Currently, electoral votes are distributed based on the results of simple majority votes at the state level, with some states including a 'winner takes all' rule. If it were up to me, I'd instead use state level alternative votes or something similar, and ban the 'winner takes all's rule.

However, I don't think we will see any of these in a very long time, if ever. The current system benefits the people currently in it, why would they change it? IIRC, the UK had a referendum to switch voting systems years ago, and their two biggest parties banded together to pressure voters to keep the existing system.

How I'd like to upgrade the system of Czechlands:
Bicameral parliament. The lower chamber is currently elected in a country-wide proportional ellections with electoral threshold of 5%, in name of easy established government. Let's get rid of the threshold.
But how would we get the government (currently must be approved by the lower chamber)? The lower chamber shall elect each member of government separately (and at will they shall elect a new one). This proces would allways result in an existing government. Some fancy condorcet voting method could be used, as I like fancy condorvet voting methods.
Upper chamber is currently elected in one-mandate districts by a two round system, I'd change it to approval system, as it has quite good qualities and is reasonably understandable (and trust is important in politics).

Unitary Representative Parliament.

Ultimately, Democracy is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. And as we can see in the United States, people do not tend to vote wholly in their own collective interest but according to media (and even educational) influence and voter manipulation (making voting easier for certain people and harder or impossible for others).

Ultimately I believe in the inverse-heirarchical system: where people elect local representatives (for their town, or a neighborhood of a large city), who elect state representatives, who elect national representatives, who appoint a dual head of State and Government along with an executive committee to carry out the mandates of the national body.

I believe that parties whose purpose is counter to the public good should be banned. My main concern here is not for "anti-democratic" parties, however, but fascists and other right-wing groups.

Skynet. (Hey, it is democratic; everyone has a say — usually in the form of a scream or a gurgle — and Skynet listens to all of them; it still does whatever it wants, of course, but that's good, as humans have shown time and time again that we can't be trusted with any decisions more important than what colour socks we're going to wear today.)

Or, failing that, Ankh-Morpork's patricianship (as long as the patrician is Havelock Vetinari): one man, one vote: the patrician is the man, and he has the vote. And mimes get the snake pit.

Honestly, not a democracy.

Either a meritocratic oligarchy, where the best and brightest rule by council; or (my personal favorite because humans can’t handle having power for too long) an absolutist, benevolent artificial intelligence tasked with fixing our shit.

Both are a bit utopian though because we can’t stop mixing merit with money, and artificial intelligence with corporate greed.

I think a direct-ish democracy, I had this idea for awhile what if each person would have a personal AI trained to them. The AI will vote for them if the person is too busy or trust the AI enough. Passed proposed law would run through an AI trained to the constitution it can be vetoed from there. There would still be human president, ministers, directors or so to apply those laws. Anyway probably just a crazy idea of mine 🤣

Honestly…it isn't. Democracy is just tyranny minus time. For an example of this in America, it gave us Jim Crow.

Thanks to the elections of 2020 and 2022, I have legitimately become a monarchist. As long as there's some way to receive redress when it is needed and something like the Bill of Rights, give me a king or some sort of witan-like council.

I suffer from many and profound mental illnesses and maladies of mental health. My judgment is compromised (I was in a cult for a few years). People like me can vote. That's a problem.