Big Picture / Human Society / Politics & Government / Approval Voting

How do we insure that our political system elects a president that serves the majority of American citizens, and not just half? I believe the dysfunction we observe in politics is driven by our two-party construct. It has created a “Hatfields vs McCoys,” us vs them battleground behavior that repeats and repeats and the cycle cannot be broken, oftentimes at the expense of good ideas.

For a politician to survive and move up over time, they must “get along to go along” even when they know something is just not right by their own set of values and principles. At times they sacrifice their values-based instincts to the will of the Party. Politicians routinely flip-flop their positions in plain sight in a shameless attempt to curry favor with the Party and/or President. I suppose we all do this to some extent in our jobs, in our churches, and all social settings to protect our respective positions in our tribes.

Even so, I believe in and vote for ideas, principles and character, not a party, because our two-party system — fueled by tribalism and disinformation — has devolved into a poisoned institution that is like a badly divorced couple who demonize each other at every turn.

The Party campaigns backed by enormous capital have become killing machines that are not past doing anything to scuttle a candidate and the other party’s ship. They mirror the overall problems we have with BIG BUREAUCRACY — governmental and corporate — with too much unchecked wealth and power, and when and where that happens, waste, cronyism, corruption, and fraud fester in the shadows.

We can solve this by doing several things:

• Make the voting process free, fair, accessible, and transparent — easier said than done.
• Abolish lifetime professional politicians with Term Limits.
• Abolish the electoral college and return to
  • 1 person, 1 vote, and
  • majority rules, may the best person with the best ideas win.
• Abolish plurality voting and adopt approval voting.

Let the People Pick the President by Jesse Wegman,
on abolishing the electoral college.

Our current system of plurality voting means we vote for only one candidate: either that Party A’s candidate, or Party B’s candidate. A system of approval voting would provide open access to the political arena for all deserving parties and independent candidates. An approval voting system would allow people to vote for several candidates for an elected position, and the candidate with the highest number of votes is declared the winner. It’s simple, and we all understand it!

Approval voting can become a check-and-balance against the cumulative abuses of the two-party system which is whipsawing our democracy in a destructive, mean-spirited fashion.

That said, the reality is it’s hard to create an ideal governance system that works for everybody when humans are at the controls because humans will always game systems to optimize their selfish personal advantage.

Sometimes we’re just too clever for our own good, which should be the greater good.

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