Bipolar Disorder

There is a strong temptation in life to view things in black-and-white terms; one thing is right, the rest is wrong.

The problem is, this is almost always wrong. Most of the things in life come in shades of grey.

I think this is one of the fundamental problems with the US, and it manifests itself quite nicely in the political system.

We have a two party system. Technically there are other parties but they really don’t matter. Thus, since most people identify with one party or the other, there is room for only two positions on any issue. Yes, people hold a huge variety of positions on most issues, but they won’t be represented at the national level.

You may support the 2nd Amendment as written, the upcoming UN small arms ban, or anything in between, but when you’re voting for Federal office you have basically two choices: pro-gun or anti-gun.

You may support no abortions at all, or partial birth abortions and anything else, but again you’re pro-life or pro-choice.

The divisions within these blocks are often greater than the space between them, and what someone calls themselves is often driven less by their beliefs than by the people around them. Someone who supports limited-capacity hunting weapons only is pro-gun if they live in eastern Massachusetts or Washington D.C. Someone who tries to ban private ownership of automatic weapons is anti-gun in Texas.

Then we hit the problems with combinations. Despite the huge number of major issues, the parties only allow one set of positions each. The Democrats are nominally pro-choice and anti-gun. The Republicans are nominally pro-life and pro-gun. So what does an anti-gun pro-life person do? They throw away their vote on a third party (rare), or they vote for whichever issue they care more about. Note that with just two issues and a binary belief state there are four positions. If one allows for, say, four positions on an issue and ten issues there are over ONE MILLION combinations… only two of which are represented.

Now, some combinations are unlikely. Let’s say 90% of them are. A mere 100,000 positions. Yet in almost every election you have only two choices – A or B. Most often, neither A or B will take a firm stand on most of the issues – they’ll pick a few issues to take a stand on and spend most of their time attacking their opponent’s supposed positions on a few issues.

So we’re left to grope in the dark and make bad choices most of the time.

That’s assuming you have a choice at all. The most extreme case is also the most important – voting for president. However, thanks to some historical factors most of the votes in the presidential election don’t matter. Massachusetts is going Democrat. The Democrats don’t need to vote and the Republicans might as well stay home. The result is all but pre-ordained by God, no matter what happens with get-out-the-vote campaigns. The candidates don’t matter. In twenty years it might be different (or it might not) but no matter who is running in 2016 we can be quite sure of MA’s electoral votes.

Oddly, the electoral college was set up with the exact opposite in mind – to prevent a minority from being marginalized by ensuring they would have Federal representation. The problem is that the founders figured the minority would be geographically concentrated (more or less true at the time). Of course, they also wrote the Constitution so that the person who got the 2nd most votes for president would become vice president. Can you say President Obama and Vice President Romney?

I think there’s a nugget of a good idea there, however. Suppose that any presidential candidate who got at least one percent of the popular vote but failed to secure an electoral majority got a four-year term in the US Senate, with all the privileges thereof? Tens of millions of people voted for Romney – give ‘em a consolation prize. Senator At Large Romney. Yes, that means we’d also get Senator At Large Dukakis. No system is perfect.

I think this would be highly beneficial. All those marginalized voters in solidly ‘red’ or ‘blue’ states could vote for a third-party candidate. Someone with a wide enough appeal to carry the minority in half a dozen states could then represent those people at the federal level. Note that these people must be on the ballot for, and receive votes for, president.

Would this unbalance the Senate? Probably not. The need to hit 1% of the popular vote would cap us at 99 S-a-L’s (one person, after all, gets the job he’s running for) no matter what, but that would take such a fine balancing of the popular vote that we can safely rule it out. Let’s say we retain two ‘real’ presidential candidates going for the Oval Office. How much of the vote do they suck up? Let’s say a quarter each. They are, after all, the real contenders and most people will know it. The lion’s share of the votes in the ‘swing’ states will go to one of them. Half the vote gone, and we’ve got a POTUS and a S-a-L. Then some of the vote is going to go to people who fail to reach 1%. A few percent of the vote every election goes to people who fail to get even a single electoral vote, after all. Plenty of people are going to overshoot, as well – 5% doesn’t get you five seats. Let’s say you wind up with one S-a-L for every 2% of the vote. We wind up with POTUS and 26 S.a.L (including the leader who lost). If we say 3% is the average we go down to 17 S-a-L. And, of course, these guys aren’t going to be a single voting block. Some are Republicans from Democrat states and some are Democrats from Republican states (a Republican from New England and another from the Pacific coast – no point in getting on the ballot in every state; in fact better NOT to be on the ballot in swing states). A few are third-party folks. Libertarian, Green, whatever.

Ross Perot would have gotten seats in both 1992 and 1996, though very few others (no one in 2012, for example, though Johnson came close) would have based on historical votes. Still, given that three or so candidates have made it onto most or all of the state ballots in most of the recent elections we can be fairly sure this would result in some additional senators. After all, someone who has no chance of getting anything is a less attractive use of your vote than someone who has a good chance of getting something.

Best of all, this might break things up entirely. If someone knows the ‘consolation prize’ is there, why not keep going if you don’t quite get your party’s nomination? Sure, you won’t be POTUS this time, but you’ll be a senator. Or… will you? Go to the Presidential debates and ask tough questions of the ‘leaders’. Take a hardline position – you’ll catch part of the base.

Now the leaders have a hard choice – dodge the questions from the 2nd string and look like wafflers, or answer them and actually tell the electorate how they feel. I think that’s a win-win for the voters no matter who you’re going for.

Constitutional Amendment, anyone?