[s_dev]

If cool means interesting then yes, it is cool because it's archaic and different but it's not effective. It's the equivalent of a verbal contract. It's simply not as clear or coherent as a written one.

Irish democracy in contrast uses STV voting and a written constitution and is modeled between the best of what the UK, the US and France had to offer when it was drafted and is a very representative democracy with many political parties compared to the duopolies in the US and the UK. It's also why Ireland is largely immune to hard shifts to the left or right relative to the UK and US.

[kimos]

I love this about Ireland because they are such a young republic. And democratic systems are a technology. Something that we understand better over time, and somewhere new can pick and choose from what is best, where it is _extremely_ hard to change existing systems in established countries.

[xp84]

Yes, it's in my opinion one of the great tragedies of our time that some of our established countries are so hard to change. I don't mean this as the policy needs change, everyone will differ on those. I just mean the technology of government like you're saying. Efficient and more fair ways of voting on laws and electing representatives do exist.

For example my own (US) has a political system basically frozen in amber from a time before many of the political and policy challenges of our day were not even thought of yet. And they did their best to create a change mechanism, but I think anyone being truly fair of any political persuasion has to admit that while it has prevented nearly every harmful extremist constitutional amendment (I'd say Prohibition is the main one that sneaked in), it has proven to, within the lifetimes of most living Americans, be so hard to attain as to set the status quo in stone.

The framers didn't realize that most changes would be blocked by at least one party, out of fear that it would advantage the other guys. Same reason we stopped admitting states before letting Puerto Rico in, an absolutely absurd situation.

[trimethylpurine]

> "The framers didn't realize that most changes would be blocked by at least one party, out of fear that it would advantage the other guys."

Check out some of the founders' essays. This is no accident, or oversight. It's absolutely intentional and for good reason.

The Constitution grants power to all three branches of government, which is the same as granting power to none of them. The more they disagree, the less power they have. In this way power can only be wielded through cooperation (selflessness).

It's a honey pot for the power hungry.

[Affric]

Working very well as we can see currently.

[kelnos]

It's worked well as a honeypot, but I don't think it's working well as a device for paralysis. The executive has seized an alarming amount of power (with the tacit approval of the party in control of the legislature), and the constitution isn't doing much of anything to stop it.

[trimethylpurine]

Sure. But it's amazing that we have a system where he needed the legislature. That's pretty new in the grand scheme.

[hunterpayne]

Do you not understand why PR isn't a state? Seems like you don't. Support for PR statehood is only about 50% (on the island). That largely has to do with the fact that their taxes would increase if they became a state. Additionally, they would have to switch to English (along with Spanish) which makes things a lot more complicated. They are already US citizens and can move to anywhere in the US if they want to vote in federal elections (and half of them do but mainly for work). They don't want independence either. So the current limbo state is actually desirable to them.

Even if the citizens of PR wanted statehood, you have to get both parties to agree. This means probably 2 states at the same time (one red, one blue). Since there isn't another potentially red state (Alberta but that's probably never going to happen) to join, that's hard to do. Look at US history, statehood has always worked this way. It has nothing to do with whatever you are implying.

PS The 27th amendment was 1992, probably during your lifetime. You would expect the rate of new amendments to slow overtime so the average of a new amendment about every 15-20 years seems about right.

[xp84]

You just explained in your second paragraph how one party would block PR statehood for no valid reason, not because it shouldn't be one, but because it would presumably advantage Dems. That is literally what I said: any change gets blocked for fear it would advantage the other guys. And whether it's "always worked that way" doesn't make it right. A fair system would have said that an existing territory with enough people that can organize a government and vote to join the union must be admitted, to avoid those shenanigans. Leaving them unrepresented is embarrassing.

And your first paragraph sounds like it's quoted from an anti-statehood propaganda flyer. PR has high taxes today -- an 11.5% sales tax, and a high local income tax, because PR has to pay for everything itself, and because Congress screws them over, such as refusing bailouts when natural disasters devastate the island. Many states receive significant money from the Federal government that PR doesn't get. If it were a state, some people would have to pay some federal income tax, but it would not be automatically a worse tax burden.

Same for language, there's nothing in the constitution that mandates that. PR already has two official languages. And nothing lawmakers decide will stop people from choosing to speak Spanish all day long if they want. If you don't agree with me, walk around any city in California, Arizona, or Texas.

[TheCoelacanth]

27th amendment was about congressional salaries and had basically no effect on governance.

26th amendment lowered the voting age to 18 for state and local elections and had no effect on national elections (statute already set the national voting age as 18, but courts prevented it from applying to state and local elections).

25th clarified presidential succession to work exactly how everyone had already assumed it to work for over a century, so for practical purposes did nothing.

24th in 1964, which outlawed poll taxes as a criteria for voting, was the last amendment with any effect on national governance.

[queuebert]

New and shiny is not always better. Science has spoiled us in the last century, but it has little to say about how a good government should operate.

Many of us have a popular set of ideals that we think are superior and have attempted to overlay those on every aspect of modern life, but they have little to no data behind them and are ultimately just beliefs that make us feel good. As such, there is no reason to expect they are optimal for governing either.

[xp84]

Look, just let us get rid of first-past-the-post as the only voting method, and I'll be happy. I'm not asking for voting via Neuralink, holographic VR Presidential debates, or flying car taxis to the polling places.

[justonceokay]

It’s true. In the long arc of history I have no doubt that our current government systems will be considered childish

[troad]

>> For example my own (US) has a political system basically frozen in amber from a time before many of the political and policy challenges of our day were not even thought of yet.

Please, please, please go read the Federalist papers. The Founders thought of a lot more than you realise.

The design of a constitution is the design of the distribution of power. The nature of power hasn't changed.

[xp84]

Things they appear to have not thought of:

1. Any voting system other than the disastrous FPTP which forces a two-party system and punishes any attempt to break this duopoly.

2. What if Congress is composed entirely of weasels and just, though formal law-passing or by sheer inaction, cedes nearly all their power to the executive branch?

3. What if the Supreme Court has at least 5 partisans who will say just about anything to keep in power the party (or even the individual) who put them there? What if they say stupid things like "A President has absolute criminal immunity for any act that falls within his 'conclusive and preclusive' constitutional authority, and presumptive immunity for all other official acts."

4. Even if SCOTUS is basically working as intended, what if the President just...ignores them?

5. What if a President is mentally incompetent due to age, and his whole party refuses to acknowledge it? (This one is Biden, arguably - I'm disgusted with both parties)

I do get checks and balances, I know that a big part of the whole "they can't pass anything" is a feature and not a bug. But come on, it's got out of hand when every single term we have multiple debt limit hostage negotiations -- and now BOTH parties are doing it!

[troad]

That's a lot of what ifs, some more fanciful than others. There is no political system that could withstand a such a barrage of bad intentions and corruption. But I'd note that despite how bad things seem, the things you describe for the most part haven't actually happened? The executive is generally complying with SCOTUS decisions, e.g. tariffs. The US remains a robust if fractious democracy, unlike much of the rest of the world.

More broadly, go look at other countries' politics. The facade of stability is being held up in a lot of places by restrictions on speech, on assembly, on political organisation of a kind that would be unthinkable in the US. It's borderline illegal to assemble for Palestine in Britain. Is that society less divided than the US, or just more controlled? And that's a democratic peer country. Things get much worse - Hungary, Russia, Iran, etc

[Anthony-G]

Also, one of the reasons for choosing proportional representation with a single transferable vote (PR-STV) was to ensure that the substantial unionist minority (who wanted to maintain the link with the UK/Britain) would still have have their views represented in the new parliament. This system works for other minority views and provides new political parties with a chance to grow in a way that wouldn’t be possible in a first-past-the-post system.

[roryirvine]

The parliament of Northern Ireland also used STV for the same (er, well, inverted) reasons from 1921 until the Unionist majority forced a change to FPTP for most seats in 1929.

More generally, STV was the default choice for assemblies throughout the British Empire (and became known as 'the British system' as a result) from the late 19th century onwards.

It was even agreed on for use in Westminster in 1919 - though only the university seats ever actually used it - making it "more traditional" than the current single-member FPTP system which dates only from 1949. The failure to actually implement it was part of a more general reactionary movement in the aftermath of the war, when Lloyd George's promise of a "land fit for heroes" was thoroughly betrayed.

The Irish system seems to work well, and can be used as a comparator for considering what the UK might look like if that betrayal hadn't happened.

[Anthony-G]

Huh! I didn’t know any of that. I presumed that Stormont elections had always been FPTP and that gerrymandering – particularly in Derry – was the worst abuse of the democratic process in Northern Ireland.

That’s really interesting that the British promoted STV within their sphere of influence and had intended to use it for elections to Westminster. Thanks for the informative comment and useful historical context.

[tshaddox]

Note that even though the U.S. has a Constitution, the entire U.S. government is still, like the UK, highly reliant on inexplicit norms many of which go back hundreds of years before the U.S. was founded. They’re both still English common law systems.

[tialaramex]

> It's simply not as clear or coherent as a written one.

No. As you have surely seen, the US written constitution just gets contorted to "clearly" mean whatever it is the partisan Justices decided suits their current purpose. The effect is extremely corrosive - they even decided it means their guy is above the law.

I agree that using a better voting system (STV) is a meaningful benefit and worth replicating elsewhere, but I don't agree that having a written constitution is better. I think Ireland would be in roughly the same place if it had the same arrangement as in Westminster in that respect.

For example when Ireland wrote a constitutional amendment saying abortion is illegal under basically any circumstances, the people the Irish were electing would also have voted against legislation allowing abortion, but by the time the poll was held to amend to say abortion must be legal, the legislators elected were also mostly pro-choice. So if there was no written constitution my guess is that roughly the outcome is the same, in 1975 an Irish woman who needs an abortion has to "go on holiday" abroad and come back not pregnant or order pills and hope they're not traced to her, and in 2025 it's just an ordinary medical practice. Maybe the changes happen a few years earlier, or a few years later.

Edited: Clarify that the abortion prohibition was itself an amendment, as was the removal of that prohibition.

[JCattheATM]

The power of a constitution is in it being the highest law in the land, that legislation can't just override. It's only recently in the US that there is a blatantly corrupt kakistocracy who feels free to ignore it.

[hunterpayne]

Counterpoint, the recent ruling on the Tariffs.

[JCattheATM]

Too late and too weak a response.

[t43562]

Documents are meaningless. In rotten countries they simply get rewritten or ignored. Nothing beats an electorate who value honesty over being told what they want to hear and who punish corruption.

[williamdclt]

> duopolies in the US and the UK

for better or worse, the duopoly is disappearing in the UK. Both Tories and Labour are getting passed by Reform and the Greens

[laughing_man]

But it's not that the duopoly is disappearing. It's just that the previous two parties are being eclipsed by two different parities. That's occurred previously in both the UK and US.

[hunterpayne]

The last time it happened in the US was 1856 and its only happened 2x in US history. The US democratic party is the oldest existing political party in the world. For reference, the UK is actually only about 90 years older than the Democratic party.

[t43562]

with first past the post there will only ever be a duopoly. It forces you into voting AGAINST your least favorite choice.

[foldr]

I’m not sure if you can talk about a duopoly of parties in the UK at present.