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[Naturegirl1999]

But back on topic.. I'm only observing American elections from a distance, but personally I would find it terribly depressing if I had only two parties to (reasonably) choose from on election day. It amazes me that there is never any reasonable attempt to break the stalemate. What would it take for people to create a viable alternative to this mess?

Surprisingly easy, as congress has control over almost all aspects of the election process. The first-past-the-post single-member-districting which is the main driving force behind the two party system could be ended with a normal piece of legislation declaring each state to be a multi-member district with ranked choice or party-list voting, but this would require a concerted effort by one party to give up their unshakable monopoly on half the country's votes (or rather, half the ~1/5 of the population placed in a swing district or state).

The american constitution is already not very well-suited to this whole democracy business thanks to the senate and presidency (which would be at their worst in a multi-party system), but those would need to be removed by amendment which is even more unimaginable than even an act of congress in this direction.

So am I hearing that we need delegates to do the amendment?

[Lord Shonus]

Congress does not have the power to dictate voting methods. That is a state level responsibility, and any attempt to dictate it without Contitutonal amendment would immediately be thrown out.

[WealthyRadish]

The states came up with their own systems until single member districting was made a requirement by the 1840 apportionment bill, which still stands.

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.

The number of seats is also decided by congress, fixed today at 435 only by a statute that I don't think even requires a full vote to change.

[Naturegirl1999]

Congress does not have the power to dictate voting methods. That is a state level responsibility, and any attempt to dictate it without Contitutonal amendment would immediately be thrown out.

a constitutional amendment was what I was asking about

[Iduno]

Due to Coronavirus, human rights will be temporarily cancelled.

[MrRoboto75]

Temporarily?

[Naturegirl1999]

Deleted, should have read before falling for text bait

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Not the first one! Apparently Philadelphia is no longer arresting people for a large variety of crimes, and instead is giving them..."IoU an arrest warrant" notices?

Much like the NYPD strike, we will once again see how much better things are without pigs shitting on everything.

[Iduno]

To be fair, it's not like there's been any real punishment for criminals with a badge, it's just that now that have an excuse.

[Naturegirl1999]

To be fair, it's not like there's been any real punishment for criminals with a badge, it's just that now that have an excuse.

Ah

[Lord Shonus]

Congress does not have the power to dictate voting methods. That is a state level responsibility, and any attempt to dictate it without Contitutonal amendment would immediately be thrown out.

a constitutional amendment was what I was asking about

That was in reply to WealthyRadish, who seems to think that Congress could just order the states to change how they vote. Congress does not have this power - they can set the number of districts a state has based on the census, but Congress does not even have the ability to shape those districts - that is a power reserved to the states.

The states came up with their own systems until single member districting was made a requirement by the 1840 apportionment bill, which still stands.

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.

The number of seats is also decided by congress, fixed today at 435 only by a statute that I don't think even requires a full vote to change.

From Amendment 10:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

The Constitution does not delegate the power of regulating elections to the United States, and does not prohibit the states from doing so. Thus it is a state-level power. Things like the Voting Rights Act are allowable only because they are enforcing the 14th Amendment, which it is almost impossible to argue that switching to a variant form of voting would do.

[WealthyRadish]

The Constitution does not delegate the power of regulating elections to the United States, and does not prohibit the states from doing so.

This line I quoted, art. 1 sec 4:

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.

-- is a bit ambiguous, sure, but it's obvious that congress can regulate the electoral process for federal representatives from the states, and they have already passed around a dozen laws doing so since the original 1840/42 apportionment act (most in subsequent apportionment acts), most recently the 1967 law explicitly mandating single-member districts:

In each State entitled in the Ninety-first Congress or in any subsequent Congress thereafter to more than one Representative under an apportionment made pursuant to the provisions of section 2a(a) of this title, there shall be established by law a number of districts equal to the number of Representatives to which such State is so entitled, and Representatives shall be elected only from districts so established, no district to elect more than one Representative (except that a State which is entitled to more than one Representative and which has in all previous elections elected its Representatives at Large may elect its Representatives at Large to the Ninety-first Congress).

This is also really off-base:

Things like the Voting Rights Act are allowable only because they are enforcing the 14th Amendment, which it is almost impossible to argue that switching to a variant form of voting would do.

The big motivation for the 1967 act from congress requiring that state governments use single-member districts was to prevent southern governments from switching to a different voting variant in order to circumvent the Voting Rights Act and the 14th amendment. In the courts as well, the bulk of the debate around state districting at this time and to the present has centered on the use of gerrymandering for racial disenfranchisement, and whether minority-majority gerrymandering aimed at increasing minority representation was justified.


The main point of this being that congress could just as well require a different system. It would probably get struck down by the Republican-dominated supreme court, but that would be a partisan ruling exploiting the textual and historic ambiguity.

[Lord Shonus]

No, it would be a ruling relying on the completely non-ambiguous text of the Constitution, and any judge in the country would reach that ruling, unless they were doing it for partisan advantage. If Congress had the power to mandate voting systems, then Maine's move to ranked-choice voting (which was blocked because the Maine constitution requires plurality-vote for state elections) would have been blocked for Federal elections - it was not (it was held that it was constitutional for Federal elections, but it would be unfair to voters to have different voting systems on the same ballot, thus the initiative was put on hold pending an amendment to the state Constitution).


The ONLY provisions of the Constitution that give Congress the right to interfere with how states conduct their elections in any way are the 14th and 19th amendments, and those only allow interference to protect universal male suffrage (14th) and female suffrage (19th). Any measure that does not directly address an attempt to bypass these amendments (the 1967 law you cite was specifically to prevent the states from disenfranchising blacks by assigning multiple Representatives to white districts and none to black districts) is illegal, and will be thrown out by any court.

[WealthyRadish]

Again:

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.

The federal government has laws and rulings setting the election timetable, writes rules on how the process needs to be administered, has mandated single-member districts (though evidently doesn't require a plurality vote as you mentioned), decides how the state governments need to handle vacancies in emergencies, decided how the elections are done when the states fail to redistrict after changes in representative count, and does other things independent of the 14th amendment in addition to the laws justified under it. In the absence of federal laws and rulings the states can do whatever they like, like every other enumerated or implied power.

The ONLY provisions of the Constitution that give Congress the right to interfere with how states conduct their elections in any way are the 14th and 19th amendments

-- is just not correct given the current state of the laws and rulings, never mind however you're reading the line above. There are even recent majority supreme court opinions on the record suggesting congress can redraw a state's districts itself, and apportionment acts in the past before the VRA have included powers like that without being litigated.

Again, the point is this: if congress decided to swap out the law requiring single-member districts for one requiring multi-member districts and ranked choice or a proportional vote, there's nothing that indicates that would be less legal than what's already on the books; it would also be a very high-stakes political question that would end up arbitrarily settled by the court based on its partisan composition, but that's true of practically every significant ruling.

[wierd]

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/18/politics/democratic-primary-bernie-sanders/index.html

Sanders actually has a sense of priorities, to the chagrin of reporters.  Dares to use the F bomb.