Hi James et al,
On Aug 25, 2004, at 8:17 PM, James Green-Armytage wrote:
My personal opinion is that bicameralism is unnecessarily bulky for a
state legislature. So rather than re-conceptualizing the relationship
between the two chambers, I'd rather just condense it into a single
chamber. I think that people have enough trouble keeping track of what is
happening in state government as it is, and I think that having two
separate chambers makes this problem twice as bad.
Thanks for the thoughtful comments. I realize I need to simplify and clarify my goals, in order to establish a foundation for appropriate reforms. In thinking about, I believe that the purpose of a representative legislature is:
i) perceptively recognize issues of all the people
ii) creatively develop ideas by all the people
iii) wisely make decisions for all the people
so as to justly optimize governance across all the peopleA bit pedantic, but I think it captures the things most of us want, and highlights the problems with the current system. Given that purpose, I believe we need four fundamental reforms:
i) Open elections of legislative leaders and committees
Right now, leadership is a closed process optimized for pork-barrel politics. Open elections (using Condorcet winners for leaders and PR membership of committees) would minimize that. It might not work nationally, but it would certainly be an improvement for California, and help ensure that bills of interest to the whole population (not just special interests) are addressed.
ii) Proportional Representation of the Assembly
This would maximize diversity, which is good when trying to generate ideas. The assembly would generate legislation; amendments which didn't have majority support would be separate riders.
iii) Single-winner (Condorcet) for the Senate
This would maximize consensus, which is better when making final decisions. The Senate would collect riders into various options, then rank-order vote on them. The Condorcet winner(s) would go to the Governor for approval/veto.
This "separation of powers" is important for quality in any production process, whether it is reporters & editors, engineers & testing, or actors ^ directors. In theory, committees would create and the full body was supposed to edit, but lobbying and log-rolling have destroyed that balance, so why not use bicameralism to restore it?
This system should enable a wide range of diverse ideas to be considered, but only allow widely supported measures are passed. However, I agree that districting is still an issue, so we would also require:
iv) Non-partisan, objective districting.
My favorite is to use automated (open source) tools and public data, according to explicit constitutional criteria, to generate a list of options which are then selected by a non-partisan panel. For PR, I recommend districts of magnitude 7+-2 to optimize diversity and limit cognitive overload.
Again, this may not be perfect, but I believe it addresses the most serious concerns with both the current system, and various pure PR alternatives. As always, I welcome your comments.
Yours truly, Ernie P. ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
