[BrenBarn]

Those are interesting ideas. I still tend to think though that such fiddling is only necessary if we insist on single-member districts with first-past-the-post systems. A proportional system essentially forces each party to pay attention everywhere because every vote everywhere counts. Having districts where the overall result is an aggregate of mini-elections in each district encourages various forms of gaming the system (like gerrymandering). The states themselves are another case of such districts.

I'm increasingly skeptical of the idea that the composition of government organs whose authority extends over a large jurisdiction should be determined by mini-elections in sub-jurisdictions. It makes sense to have sub-jurisdictions insofar as they can set local policy, but if a legislative body is going to make laws for the whole US it should, as a whole, be accountable to the whole US. Especially in the modern age, the relevant constituencies are defined as much by beliefs as by geographical location.

[AnthonyMouse]

> I still tend to think though that such fiddling is only necessary if we insist on single-member districts with first-past-the-post systems.

You can solve this using a cardinal voting system (e.g. STAR voting) even with single member districts, because FPTP is what produces a two-party system and if there are multiple parties then there are no safe seats because e.g. a left-leaning district would still have a race between the Democrats and the Green Party.

Which also thwarts gerrymandering because if an extremist party draws the lines to try to give themselves more seats, they dilute their base and lose them all to a moderate party, but if they try to concentrate their base they don't get many seats.

And you can also implement that in the US without major constitutional changes.

> It makes sense to have sub-jurisdictions insofar as they can set local policy, but if a legislative body is going to make laws for the whole US it should, as a whole, be accountable to the whole US.

The premise of this stuff is supposed to be checks and balances. Single member districts in the House would be fine if we used STAR/score/approval voting instead of FPTP.

The original purpose of the Senate was to represent the states in the federal government; Senators were originally elected by state legislatures. The idea being that the state legislators would send people inclined to temper populist federal overreach. And it worked pretty well until the people who wanted to do a big round of populist federal overreach changed it to cause Senators to be directly elected.

And that's what messed up the US Presidency. The original design was to have an extremely limited federal government and have the states do most everything, and then if the federal government doesn't do much, having only a single elected position in the executive branch makes sense. Meanwhile states have elected positions for everything from sheriffs to comptrollers to dogcatchers. There wasn't supposed to be a federal-level SEC or FDA -- that's state stuff -- so the US Constitution doesn't establish any elected position to be the head of it even though there ought to be if it's going to exist.

[BrenBarn]

> And you can also implement that in the US without major constitutional changes.

In theory yes, but in practice I think we cannot. That is, the system you describe is allowable under the current constitution, but the path to realize it is not achievable under the current constitution, because the current constitution has led us into a dead-end which I don't think can be unblocked without wholesale reform.

> The original purpose of the Senate was to represent the states in the federal government

That was a bad idea. There is no reason for organs of government to be represented in other organs of government. That is the dead-end we've gotten into now, because the constitution does not actually give anyone any full-fledged rights (only restrictions on government action) and instead sets up a procedural game which has now reached a stable stalemate end-state characterized by gerrymandering, corporate money, etc. There is no way out because the constitution, in all its checks and balances, provides no direct mechanism for the citizenry to check or balance the legislature. This has enabled the creation of a nonrepresentative government with no way out.

[AnthonyMouse]

> That is, the system you describe is allowable under the current constitution, but the path to realize it is not achievable under the current constitution, because the current constitution has led us into a dead-end which I don't think can be unblocked without wholesale reform.

The change to STAR is something the states can do themselves and some states -- notably California with its large population -- have referendums. Put it on the ballot until it passes.

> There is no reason for organs of government to be represented in other organs of government.

Well sure there is. Elected officials are subject to the principal-agent problem, but different agents have different sets of misaligned incentives. Notably each one will try to usurp the intended powers of the others. And if you don't want the federal legislature to usurp the role of the state legislatures then you give the state legislatures representation in the federal one.

> There is no way out because the constitution, in all its checks and balances, provides no direct mechanism for the citizenry to check or balance the legislature.

I mean, you're supposed to vote the bums out.

The real enemy here is partisanship. Forget about the parties, vote against the incumbents until someone runs a candidate willing to actually fix it.

[BrenBarn]

> The change to STAR is something the states can do themselves and some states -- notably California with its large population -- have referendums. Put it on the ballot until it passes.

And then what? California already passed the citizen's redistricting thing to combat gerrymandering, and now it's being undone because it doesn't work (and in fact can be harmful) unless everyone does it. That's basically my point. Such reforms are ineffective unless they reach a tipping point, but the current system is designed mostly to preserve the status quo and prevent any such tipping point from being reached.