[runningdogx]

One aspect I've never thought about before is the selection of representatives for parliament/legislature. In the U.S., they're pre-selected in primary elections per party, but the national elections are single-winner per seat, so the candidates are out pandering to the voters constantly. I don't know percentages, but many other countries use multi-winner to select their national multi-seat bodies, and my understanding is that those would-be candidates aren't out campaigning, or at least not anywhere close to as visible as they are in the U.S. or the U.K. where there are direct single-winner elections for seats. As ideologically-driven as political parties are, maybe the parties still tend to select more rational, scientific-minded representatives when the would-be reps do not have a requirement to pander directly to the population prior to the election.

India (from wikipedia) also appears to have direct election of its parliament. India is fairly well known for its stifling bureaucracy. Is that coincidence, or the start of a pattern?

Maybe it's also in part due to other countries (those which aren't degenerate and corrupt enough that the government can fraudulently influence elections) knowing they're not the world's largest superpower, and knowing they can't afford to screw around as much.

I'd love to see the voting system changed to Range Voting (best overall?) or Condorcet (best ordering-based voting system?). For its discrimination against third parties, plurality voting is simply horrible, and IRV is nearly as bad[1]. I'll note that I don't think a voting system change alone will fix the American political system.

http://rangevoting.org, despite its nominal bias, is the best voting system resource anywhere.

[1] for instance: http://bolson.org/voting/irv/ IRV fails monotonicity, which IMO is a huge deal. http://rangevoting.org/Monotone.html

[aidenn0]

Ultimately it's hard to beat approval voting, since it's the best simple system. There are many systems that are better overall, but they are too complex for people to understand.

A voting system needs to be so simple that everyone understands and trusts it. Approval voting is a really simple replacement under the single-winner system that everyone can understand.

[whatusername]

What do you see as the problem with IRV?

[moultano]

The most extreme minority gets their second choice votes counted first. This leads to some absurd non-monotonicities. http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/

[vidarh]

It's still single seat. It has most of the same problems as straight plurality single seat elections.

[eftpotrm]

Exactly; so many of the problems of under-representation are due to minority groups having disparate, rather than concentrated, power bases and so failing to achieve the threshold for election in any single seat in spite of having more than enough supporters more widely.

STV (IRV with multi-member constituencies) or regional top-up lists can both mitigate this. Neither is perfect, but they certainly help.