this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
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One person, one vote.
In Germany we have two votes, one for a local representative and one for a party. In itself it's a pretty decent system
Yet, the local representatives in the pairlaments (Bundestag, Landtag) represent districts of approximately the same population number. Thus, in our first chamber, no vote has more value than another.
But in the Bundesrat, which comes closest to the US senate, states with higher population number do have more representatives than small states, which weakens the inequality of votes, yet still one vote from Bremen (population 700k, 3 representatives) has 13 times as much value as one from NRW (p. 18 mio, 6 rep.).
I'm not really happy with our democracy. It always feels like our say stops at the ballot box, we need more direct democracy.
Eight years ago I would have agreed. But, I think we've demonstrated the short comings of putting authority for our most important policies in the hands of your average citizen.
I don't have a better answer, mind you. Hopefully someone way further right on the "average citizen" bell curve has better ideas.
Where did we put authority for our most important policies in the hands of average citizens?
If we required an IQ test and general knowledge test equally of all parties and eliminated all those who don't know anything about what's going on and those 10% or more below average we would have a better run country save for the Republicans revolting and committing acts of terrorism.
If we divided the country all the rurals would have the option of moving to Trumpistan
The German system is what the US would have been if they would have regularly updated their constitution.
It was largely modelled after the US, with bugfixes applied. It definitely has issues but isn't remotely as fucked as a partisan 2-party system.
One bugfix, if you want so, is that in Germany, on federal level, we only have one chamber of pairlament, the Bundestag, that is directly elected by the people. The other chamber of pairlament, the Bundesrat, is a pairlament constituted of representatives of the governments of the federal states, i.e. a pairlament of the executive.
But then the poor would run the country instead of a handful of unimaginably rich individuals! What kind of democracy would THAT be?
We don't know but it was guaranteed to be different.
But look at the US popular vote. Even with different representation of the populace, this election would still have been fucked. We do need massive reform of the US voting structure, but this is not the biggest thing. Getting rid of first past the post in favor of at least ranked choice would make a much bigger difference.
That would open the door for a true left wing party to actually have a voice.
Ranked voting is a very good thing all countries should implement.