An Idea to encourage compromise in the U.S. House of Representatives

[LetMyPeopleVote]

7. Are you kidding? The premise of your plan is to destroy the two party system

I got the high grades in my section in constitutional law and the local government classes in law school. The US Constitution does not mention political parties, but political parties have become an important part of our system of government in the real world. I am an old fart and was a high school and college debater. My senior year in high school, the non-Cross EX debate topic for that year was reforming the political process and some teams ran a case based on abolishing political parties. These teams did not do well in that political parties serve an important function in the real world. In the debate world, one could use a debate concept called "fiat" to magically adopt a proposed plan. That concept does not work in the real world and even if your plan made any sense, such plan would not have a chance of being adopted in the real world.

The premise of your proposal is based on the destruction of the two-party system with unworkable and poorly conceived concept of having non-party members make up a third of the government. Again, I live in the real world and your plan could never be implemented in the real world even if this plan made sense. Your plan is totally unworkable in the real world. There is no way to monitor or provide for unaffiliated candidates in the real world. You do realize that congress is based on a committee system and unaffiliated candidates who won their "non-partisan" races would have to affiliate with a party to be able to work in the committee structure in the real world.

Texas county and municipal races used to be non-partisan, but the parties have taken over these races. The same thing would happen under your system. In the real world, truly non-affiliated candidates would have to appeal to partisan groups to raise money. It takes money to run for office and your plan ignores this simple fact. While still technically non-partisan, all county and municipal races in Texas now days are partisan. Now each party gets someone who is part of the party structure as a nominee and these races are now totally partisan. In Harris County. Texas, the democrats have Lina Hidalgo running against a MAGA nut cases who is running on a Trumpian platform. The TFG clone running against Lina Hidalgo sounds a great deal like a female TFG and is being supported by the local republicans.

The closest thing that could work in the real world is ranked choice voting like the Alaskan system. Like California, candidates run in a jungle primary, and the four top candidates advance to the general election where votes of the losing candidates are reallocated to the top candidates. The rank choice voting system in effect doomed Sarah Palin in the recent special election to replace Don Young because she was too extreme for the non-hard core GOP voters. I was pleased to see this system work in Alaska this cycle for the special election. Palin is asking the other GOP candidate to drop out for the general election because she fears that this system would work again in the general. It will be interesting to see what happens in the regular election in Alaska. The lady who beat Palin is very moderate which is a good thing.

In the alternative, the Californian system is far better than your proposal where all candidates run in a jungle primary and the top two advance to the general election. This system works in the real world even if the result is that two Democrats end up running against each other in the general.

One of the key portions of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act is to outlaw partisan gerrymandering. The GOP has gone so far to the right because of extreme partisan gerrymandering where right wing candidates do not have to worry about general elections. In heavily gerrymandered districts, GOP candidates only have to worry about the GOP primary which results in extreme candidates. Elimination of partisan gerrymanders will encourage less hardline candidates on both sides of the aisle. The banning of partisan gerrymandering would allow more mainstream candidates to run. There are interesting formulas for getting rid of partisan gerrymanders that were discussed before the SCOTUS ruled that partisan gerrymanders were okay. We had a couple of interesting CLE courses on the various ways to eliminate partisan gerrymandering. I like math and these systems to eliminate partisan gerrymandering are really interesting. If the Democrats pick up two or more senate seats and old the House, the John Lewis Act should be adopted, and partisan gerrymandering will be outlawed.

Again, I live in the real world and your plan makes no sense to me and could never worked in the real world. High School and college debate was fun but the real world works differently. There is also no way to adopt your plan in the real world.