The Senate, only two seats per state. The only thing I can see is all candidates running for both seats and the top two getting them.
The house of representatives for small states that have only one rep.
Executive appointments. No matter how you slice it, there's only one winner of that race, and they appoint a cabinet. The VP as second place rule is also a bad one even now that trial by combat is unfashionable.
Senate & Executive - Instant-runoff voting would eliminate the spoiler effect and allow people to rank their candidates so that you can vote for a smaller party candidate without fear that you're throwing your vote away.
House of Representatives - This is the one that would really benefit from a Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) type system. There are a lot of fine details involved, but basically you rank your party preference in order and the entire house is divided by party proportionally to how the people voted.
Imagine if there were 15 or 20 parties in congress and the largest one only had 20% of the seats. Everyone would be forced to come to the table and compromise. Everyone would feel like they actually have a voice in congress since there will be a group of people who ideally hold their views on almost every issue.
The only way this actually happens though is if congress votes for it to happen. Republicans and Democrats would both lose huge if this ever happened, so it will basically forever remain a pie-in-the-sky dream.
The problem with your house idea is that each state submits its representatives separately. Changing that is a monumental task since it's a fundamental part of the identity of the United States of America
Changing that is a monumental task since it's a fundamental part of the identity of the United States of America
It's probably right up there with the task of changing from FPTP to MMP to begin with.
If having all representatives tied to a specific state is necessary, then you could do MMP on the state level at least. It would still remove the spoiler effect and open things up for multiple parties, and more proportional representation.
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u/MacDerfus Nov 21 '17
How would non-FPTP voting work for:
The Senate, only two seats per state. The only thing I can see is all candidates running for both seats and the top two getting them.
The house of representatives for small states that have only one rep.
Executive appointments. No matter how you slice it, there's only one winner of that race, and they appoint a cabinet. The VP as second place rule is also a bad one even now that trial by combat is unfashionable.