Why aren't they comparable?

They are both a collection of otherwise independent regions who have chosen to have an overarching government with limited federal powers elected by a mechanism that starts with a popular vote of the citizens in each region.

I'd continue the comparison, but that's already a good start.

yeah, all systems of government are comparable. There are likely a few common metrics that can be used as well.


I get that all the time when I compare movies, "but you can't compare those movies". Of course i can, they're both MOVIES. One is subjectively better than the other. You start by saying why they are good in their genre, then you can more easily how good they are overall, even if they are completely different genres.

These systems of government aren't just generically comparable.

The EU parliament is very similar the US House of Representatives, and then it adds in the functionality of the US Electoral College.

Same concerns about how to form a government that will not cause the immediate dissolution of the union of the member states, similar legislative ability, additional powers.

I'm not comparing random movies, I'm comparing how differing systems manage basically the same core functions.

yes yes, i'm on your side. I'm saying they are comparable and saying they're not is like when I'm told movies aren't comparable.

At least in Europe, citizens aren’t faced with the choice of electing a convicted felon.

Many democracies around the world strive for electoral systems that respect the weight of less populated areas without letting them be overpowered by denser urban regions. Typically, bicameral legislatures, with a Senate or equivalent body, aim to balance this tension in representation.

However, the U.S. electoral system presents several distinct challenges. One significant issue is the timing of primaries. Unlike a single-day process, U.S. primaries span for weeks, creating a cascade effect where the outcomes in early states heavily influence later voters. This dynamic can skew democratic choice by amplifying the influence of a few states over the entire process.

Then there’s the highly partisan nature of U.S. politics. This partisanship, embedded in a two-party structure, appears to be leading to widespread political fatigue and disengagement among Americans. Another unique aspect is that the U.S. is one of the few places where the president is not elected by a simple popular vote. The Electoral College, as recent elections have shown, can result in a president winning without securing the majority of individual votes, reaffirming that certain votes are weighted more heavily than others. When a system allows for this discrepancy repeatedly, it risks eroding public trust and engagement over time.

Would anyone argue that the U.S. electoral system is perfect and beyond improvement? Hardly. There are clearly visible problems, many of which are likely recognized by U.S. citizens themselves. Issues like electoral reform, gun control, and reproductive rights enjoy majority support for change, yet meaningful reforms seem perpetually stalled. This disconnect between public opinion and political action raises concerns for the health and longevity of U.S. democracy.

In any democratic system, if citizens feel their votes don’t truly count due to systemic quirks, it’s time to consider reform. It’s especially pertinent now, given the broader crisis of confidence facing democracies across the Western world.

Gréât post Cucho

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Oh maaaaan, a new smash burger style cantina just opened up walking distance from my house.

I should go next week

How would a European country end up electing a US felon in the first place? I certainly hope you aren't suggesting that Europe never elects criminals or extremely questionably qualified people... lol. As for the people choosing Trump, I'm sure they have good reasons even if I disagree. He's not being forced on anyone, they want him, deficiencies and all.

I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but it's funny to see you act like this is some accident, mistake, or failure of the system - this was the intended result of the constitution, and I'd argue the constitution has done reasonably well at what it was intended to do: keeping the country whole and respecting the power and independence (in many ways) of the individual states (which are absolutely equivalent to countries, and I keep trying to get that point across and failing). The only time the constitution has failed was during the civil war, but I'm sure we'd all agree that that result was worth it, and hopefully we can all agree there probably wasn't some other historic compromise solution that we'd be happy with or proud of today.

The Presidency is not designed to reflect the will of the people, that's the House (where each member represents a roughly equivalent number of people). It's designed to reflect the will of the states. And fwiw, the states choose how they break up their electors, so if the states wanted to they could split some or all of their electors up by popular vote - two states do. In fact, their individual democratically elected governments can make that change any time they want (within reason, meaning not too close to an election, but otherwise without limitation).

So now I have to ask you a simple question: if what you describe is a problem, why don't the states make their electors reflect the popular vote directly? Their governments all reflect the will of the people in their states. And clearly, if the people actually want it, they can force that change.

I'm guessing many Californians want the President to be the winner of the national popular vote (that would certainly benefit California, the highest population state), while at the same time being against making their own state's electors reflect their own state's popular vote.

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Next point:

You say the people want electoral reform, gun control, and reproductive rights, and yet it is fairly evident that that is NOT the case. Confirmation bias from polls notwithstanding, the makeup of the House of Representatives - in particular the current Republican majority - would certainly tend to imply otherwise. The fact that Democrats have had opportunities to force through laws, and chose not do to so (talking about reproductive rights, because the other two would require amendments, which again would need to reflect the views of the states -> there have been national laws on gun control, btw) further reinforces my point.

________________________________

Final point:

The biggest problem with the primaries is NOT that they happen too early, or that early states have too much power. That's actually pretty irrelevant, because if a candidate wanted to, they don't need to carry (or therefore campaign in) any states other than, for example, NY, TX, and CA. That's actually a problem, because CA holds enough electors to influence the Republican candidate, and it's odd they have so much weight in the choice of a candidate that is almost certainly going to lose the state.

So winner takes all is representative?
Is it even plausible to make changes in the US? if not why vote? is that by design?
Thats not how you win a primary, run that scenario in your head and see if that would raise or lower the candidate chances to win the nomination.

Yes, winner takes all is representative. Why wouldn't it be? At least Americans have a voice in the election of the President, should they choose to use it. You aren't going to get 30% of the presidency, it's always going to be one person (so it's winner takes all one way or the other). It's far superior to parliamentary systems, in my opinion. Nobody chose Trudeau, for example. They voted for his party, and while they probably knew who they'd get, his party was not required to elect him to PM or keep him there for that matter.

Yes it is completely plausible to make changes in the US. We have a long history of making changes. They just don't happen overnight. There have been 27 amendments to the national constitution, and the state constitutions change with higher frequency.

I have no idea what you're talking about wrt primaries. You absolutely can do what I described. In this last primary season, people were trying to take advantage of that reality by trying to spoil Trump's obviously telegraphed primary win by voting in primaries for candidates they don't intend to support in the general election, like the Haley "supporters" were doing.

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Reading my above post from earlier, there's a few things I feel like I should add.

1) the closest thing in nature to the US is the EU. And whether they modeled themselves after the US, or the system is simply optimal already, their system is very similar to ours. They have a very similar breakdown of power, btw, with minimum numbers of legislators, regardless of population that are almost identical to what we do in the US, in fact they are slightly less weighted to population than ours are - meaning they are less democratic. And of course, EU citizens don't even get to vote for their President, so I'd say that's also less democratic than the US system (flaws and all).
2) the power of the EU presidency is less than that of the US - but give them another couple hundreds years to try to gather power before we assume it will never go the way ours did.
3) In fact, I'd recommend that a couple hundred years may be necessary before we can really judge the relative successes of the two different systems based on their primary goal, i.e., keep the whole thing intact (here I'd remind you that the EU has already failed to retain the UK, it does NOT really matter why, btw). Reminder, Europe was responsible for the start of both of the World Wars. Hopefully a successful EU puts an end to that, permanently. We'll see if it does.

The problem stands.. whether you are able or willing to see it or not.

Such a good point on the world wars lol

Listen, Germany, you don’t get to be a country no more on account of you continuing to go to war with the world..

The issue that we're having is that we're talking past each other.

The problem you think needs to be solved would, in my opinion, cause a whole slew of other problems when you "solve" it. The point is that I think on balance the solution we use in the US is a good, probably the best, solution. It's not perfect, I don't think there's a perfect way to govern 300+ million individuals and make them all happy. And, I'll just mention again, it's very nearly exactly the solution the EU adopted, knowing that our system is not perfect, all while having the ability to choose to do basically whatever they wanted to (their innovation, in US terms, was to force their equivalent to electors to be reflective of the popular vote of their respective states. Whether that's a good thing or not for the health of the Union, remains to be seen.).

A note on your extremely flawed beliefs regarding popular opinion in the US. It's easy for a citizen to say they want something in a response to a poll, but the true metric is how they vote in private when nobody is judging them for their decisions. And we see how they vote reflected in the House, and, to a lesser (or at least slower reacting) extent, the Senate. Every single thing you've mentioned, and more, is resolvable if the US population wants it, either by laws or by amendments to the constitution. They don't get resolved because the population has other things it wants instead or values more highly.

And the US changes slowly, and that's a good thing. You would not want the US to change (especially not its constitution) every single time popular opinion swings in one way or the other. There's a reason why, for example, amendments need 34 out of 50 states, not just 26. It's exactly to slow things down, and give the people enough time to be certain that what they want isn't just fleeting.

Again... seems you are often discovering stuff the US does like its unique... most countries have high quorum barriers to change Constitutional stuff or big reforms, the problem stands.
If the EU throws from a cliff, would you jump too? why you keep bringing that point?

As for what people don't get things resolved, is that coz people do not want it resolved or It's because there are no incentives for lawmakers or Partisan logics to address these reforms?

I'm only saying there's a risk when people realize their vote does not count for things that matter, and my point is that US democracy is in decay for their electoral system + global democracy crisis, and from my perspective seems like you are staring at a dead end because you are unwilling to even discuss the subject.

How am I unwilling to discuss these things? I've been discussing them all day.

I mention the EU only because it's new; it was developed with more information on what does and does not work well than the US was (for obvious reasons).

The American people very evidently do NOT want those issues resolved, or at least those issues are not the priority to a sufficient number of Americans. I've already said that in an earlier post when I was talking about the makeup of the US House. If it ever becomes a real priority to those people, new laws will reflect the change.

There's a real, non-zero, chance right now that all three parts of our elected government will be controlled by Republicans after this election. I'd rate it fairly low, but it's certainly possible. If that happens, we get a real clear picture of the importance of these liberal policies -> not important enough to vote for Democrats.

I can already tell you, because I'm physically here and have access, that only reproductive rights are even getting mentioned as part of current political campaigns (and they are definitely getting mentioned a lot). So the other two are probably not even important enough to garner votes, at this time, at least not in Texas where I live.

Then people will continue to think their vote does not count.

So what is your solution?

tl,dr; I prefer sixty's question, but whatevs...

I just don't know why you think that's true in the US; I'm not aware of it being a pervasive problem. People know that if they vote, their vote will be counted.

People also know that elections are won in the aggregate, and if you live in certain places you are unlikely to meaningfully sway the election. But that's just correctly understanding the math, and would be true in any system we might propose.

My issues with you is not the statement you just made, which may not even be a good reflection of the US mindset, it's that you think the electoral college causes this. And that's just at best convenient (if you're a liberal) nonsense. The same people who don't vote for President, often also don't vote for their local ballots (the votes are on the same days and on the same ballots). Their state ballots are pure popular votes, and directly impact their lives. How would making the President a popular vote fix things that already existing popular votes (for example for Governors of states) don't fix.

It's like you're saying, "we should insist this button gets pressed, because it will cause this other thing to happen..." and I'm pointing out that we are already pressing that button, and the thing you want to happen isn't happening.

lol you can accuse DJ of lots of stuff but certainly not his unwilliness to discuss things.

Of all the people I know, including friends, family, colleagues and ex-colleagues, DJ is by far the most reliable and dependable person if you want to talk something out.


I was just telling my boss that if you read a non fiction book, watch an opinion tv show or anything really, and you find yourself nodding and agreeing with everything, you’re not growing at all. You’re just reinforcing your own beliefs and views of the world. If those views are 100% correct and flawless, then no harm no foul. But if you have any leaks in your judgment or are seeing something in totally the wrong way, it’s better to have challenging discussions and read challenging books.

As a weak example, if I’m reading a poker book and I’m agreeing with everything I’m reading, I stop reading it. I’m not learning a thing. I need to discover my leaks.

In years of discussion and debate with DJ, I’ve uncovered many leaks in my thinking

And that’s saying something considering he’s from a blue city

To clarify, I'm not saying or not trying to say that DJ is not willing to discuss this.. I say the US policy makers are not willing to discuss this stuff

Ugh then I just wasted saying all that nice stuff for nothing