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Ha, ha -- Hillary's hurting!

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/02/07/clinto...

Actually, this wd be a very good thing.

The post-primary leaders we've produced: LBJ, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush.

The Backroom Buddhas: JFK, Ike, Truman, FDR, Wilson, TR, Lincoln. Yes, they picked some clunkers, but the primaries have been 100% clunkers, and more disasters than not. And not a single great Prez remotely.

Wisdom of the masses. <chuckle>

Lots of good things came out of the Post-primary crowd:
Civil Rights, Voting Rights, Medicare, EPA, Endangered Species act, Clean water and air Acts, Arms control, Roe vs Wade, The bloodless defeat of Communism, and at one point a balanced budget.

I tend to have faith in the collective wisdom of a free and informed citizenry.

Paul: Not anytting you mention is in any way dependent upon the primary system. Picking good leaders is.

PIck the worst of the second set I mention, and see if there's a single one from the first set that's as good as that one. History says no, in a big way.

I also prefer that we pick the best leaders. But that is not a responsibility I want to casually delegate to people who are themselves relatively unaccountable to voters.

My personal preference is direct popular vote, with an automatic run-off mechanism, tied to Public Finance of Campaigns, open primaries, redistricting reform, etc.

In other words, in a perfect world ;-)

Yes, but, your preference produces chattel, whereas the old system, while imperfect, occasionally produced greatness. In short, I want quality, and don't care how it gets there.

Instant run-off is inferior to the best method, approval voting.

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http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/approval-vot...

http://alum.mit.edu/ne/whatmatters/200211/index...

http://www.ctl.ua.edu/math103/voting/approval.htm

http://bcn.boulder.co.us/government/approvalvot...

http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/web...

http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/politics/faculty/b...

and it could even be weighted

http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/politics/faculty/b...

http://dimacs.rutgers.edu/Workshops/DecisionThe...

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Fracturing the two major political parties and then having proportional representation and awarding of seats on an at-large basis where at least fiveseats can be subject to this would be superior to what we have now,

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http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/polit/damy/prlib.htm

http://www.fairvote.org/reports/monopoly/richie...

http://bostonreview.net/BR23.1/richie.html

http://ed.labonte.com/pr.html

http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/globalright...

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or to the next best alternative, basing districts on contiguous ZIP code areas or Census tracts. Insofar as the State suffrage in the Senate is concerned (and number of electoral votes, and delegates to conventions, when selecting our next President), a system of weighted voting power (requiring a Constitutional amendment) could be sought (and the same thing instead done for the number of seats in the US House, which in practice could well give each state a minimum that would make proportional representation viable even in states like Wyoming). This truly would give members in each district more equitable "voting power." The districts could then simply correspond to counties (or parishes in Louisiana). This is not only an interesting academic subject but is a serious matter in the EU.

(The subject remains formative and is in some ways controversial. This has an indirect relation to the subject here, elections, because changes based on voting power would affect the number of offices or seats available and presumably the frequent subject and object of elections.)

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http://www.ceps.be/Article.php?article_id=360

[Critique: Equally likely votes by all people? In our red, blue, and varyingly purple states? Only in theory removed from how it is here. But consider how things may change were we to go to approval voting, which would favor moderate candidates.]

"they count all possible coalitions (arrangements of N voters) equally, which corresponds to the implicit assumption that all coalitions are equally likely, which in turn is equivalent to voters flipping coins to decide how to vote"

http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/...

...

http://userpages.umbc.edu/~nmiller/RESEARCH/ECV...

http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/400/01/mmmss.pdf

http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgi/viewcontent.c...

http://www.math.uab.edu/~mayer/Weighted%20Votin...

http://cdg.columbia.edu/uploads/papers/gelman20...

http://arxiv.org/ftp/cond-mat/papers/0405/04053...

http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/3885/1/MPRA_pape...

http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~tz506/SlomczynskiZ...

http://www.cft.edu.pl/edu/karol/014.pdf

http://hei.unige.ch/~baldwin/PapersBooks/Politi...

"I ran my implementation on the current (1990) U.S. census distribution of the Electoral College. ... With the current distribution and latest population, a voter in Montana is the least likely to change outcome of the election, and thus the Power Ratio for Montana is 1.000. A voter in California is 3.344 times more likely to change the outcome of the election. "

http://www.cs.unc.edu/~livingst/Banzhaf/

"... while the combination of size and a tendency to be competitive marks those
states which have had the most power within the Electoral College, the more important aspect appears to have been this tendency to be competitive ..."

http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/cgi/viewco...

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We also need term limits, or if not, a prohibition on re-election to the same office (including representing a different location in the same representative governing body).

Having the fifty governors elect the President would be better than what we have now. The President could simply appoint a Vice President and save us the trouble of the selection mainly being a marketing ploy at election time. Cheney has done very well as a strong VP but normally the VP is a graveyard position.

Direct election is something we're likely to see one day, though it has a populist and potentially dumbed-down threat to it, exploited in major metro areas by the Democratic Party (megastates outvoting everyone else often or routinely).

Even random selection (as with jury duty) of people to serve in the House would be better than what we have now.

There is no need for introduction of mechanistic changes to our current arrangement (going to a single longer term for the President; lengthening the terms in the House; imposing a limit for Supreme Court justices) as elections are the issue here.

Also, there is no need for public financing of campaigns. Why should anyone have a right to taxpayer funds to run for office? (And no, it shouldn't be done indirectly by giving tax money to political parties and having the parties finance campaigns.)

"In short, I want quality, and don't care how it gets there."

Assuming you do want things changed legitimately, through legislative change --

Qualify and weigh the suffrage (according ideally not only to reasonable standards of qualification such as knowledge or experience -- a basic immigrants' citizenship test and knowing your current representatives' names as well as, say, the President and Vice President* should do) and taxes paid, particularly if they are progress or otherwise dissociated with 100% correspondence with true benefits truly received from the officials being selected (basic living expense levels being accounted for, naturally).

"Also, there is no need for public financing of campaigns. Why should anyone have a right to taxpayer funds to run for office? (And no, it shouldn't be done indirectly by giving tax money to political parties and having the parties finance campaigns.)"

I don't want my privacy invaded because att gave sufficient funds to candidates.
I don't want my families exposed to defective medical devices because Pfizer gave sufficient funds to candidates.
I don't want my air and water contaminated because Coal Plant operators gave sufficient funds to candidates.
etc.

If we don't pay to protect and defend the impartiality of elected representatives then we pay for their incremental corruption and botched decisions

"I don't [unpleasant event] because [corporation X, object of liberal wrath] gave sufficient funds to candidates."

Fair enough, but a) that doesn't justify giving tax dollars to anyone who wants them just because that person wants to try to get into that office (whether or not he or she is really qualified and whether or not he or she has any realistic chance of being elected); and b) what about after the elections, when corporations (or any non-liberal alternative in place of what you, a liberal, gave as an example) no longer need to hedge their bets because they know who has been elected?

Point A is the main one. Why does anybody have a legitimate, positive claim to public funds?

DLS: Unfortunately, while on paper, a test of knowledge for voter eligibility, is not immanently biased, the application of it by party, racial group, ethnic group, social strata, income, religious group, profession, etc., inevitably clouds things up.

After all, many believe that a doctor or lawyer will know more than a plumber. Ideally, small r republicanism is better than small d democracy because it acts as a filter that weeds out some of the worst, but it's still frustrating.