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by jasonlfunk 3316 days ago
The constitution we have now isn't the first version. It was created with the ability to be changed with the process of amendments. We have 27 of them so far. More could be added to change the voting system or whatever else, if there was political will to do so; but currently there isn't.

(And this is ignoring the idea of the judiciary reading into the constitution new rights that weren't there to begin with.)

1 comments

My initial instinct were to agree that while changing the voting system is obviously theoretically possible, it would never happen. Why would the parties vote for solutions that would destroy the duopoly they currently enjoy?

Then I actually researched it a bit, and it turns out that quite a few countries have actually moved away from FPTP. [1] That's interesting, and something to be hopeful about.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting#Lis...

> it turns out that quite a few countries have actually moved away from FPTP

Yeah, to bring alternative ranked voting to the US, it needs to happen at the local level first, as done in Maine.

> Why would the parties vote for solutions that would destroy the duopoly they currently enjoy?

One can a imagine a situation where Democrats think the change will be safe for them and Republicans will be cast into chaos and in that same situation Republicans think they will be safe and Democrats will be cast into chaos.