Fix the two-party system with proportional representation

I would be in favor of anything that improves the current political system, including a shot at this policy. On a meta-level, I would even be in favor of new political processes that are WORSE, simply because the adoption of such a policy could prove to people that we CAN change our processes, and then we could (try) to continue to amend our process until we find one that works.

My personal favorite approach at the national level would be Ranked Choice [1], as that would preserve the (IMO important) single decision maker in the executive branch, while removing the incentive to vote for someone you hate just because they aren't as bad as the Other Guy. Interested to hear if HN knows of other/better ways to accomplish the same

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_Un...

Will this result in more polarizing candidates since the party is determining who is elected instead of electing a specific person?

Interesting, I wonder how many invisible third parties exist at the state or regional level that would be represented in a better system.

That being said, this state government seems rather large for Minnesota, a state with a population of six million people. 67 senators and 134 representatives, and that's within the clunky three-branch system of government copied from the US Federal Government. Those numbers are bigger than California's which has a population that is five times larger.

Ranked Choice Voting has a much better chance of happening at a wide scale than this proposal, and even then it will be an uphill road.

This post is an interesting mathematical exercise, but RCV actually has the potential to succeed.

The problem has never been a lack of solutions; we already know what to do. Ideas are cheap, easy, plentiful. Ideas for ‘better’ political systems are just bike shedding.

We don’t need more ideas, we need the political will to try one. And that is the real problem.

I think the number of representatives per election district is a really interesting mathematical/social problem in democracy, and I’m interested in what this audience has to say.