Not really a fan of republicanism. I don’t like the idea that the people we elect can just ignore their constituents, or that those people can then make appointments that are not something the general public want. I do however like the idea of a unicameral legislature. I think our bicameral legislature creates more problems than it solves. On top of the Senate being wildly unequal in its representation.
We need a strict representative democracy, where representatives are legally beholden to act according to the wishes of their constituents. And we need to reform or eliminate positions where unelected persons are appointed without any input from the public. For example, SCOTUS needs to be expanded, given term limits, and the justices need to stand for public election, not appointment by whichever president is in power at the time. Currently, SCOTUS can be entirely stacked and controlled by a given administration, nullifying any semblance of checks and balances, giving functional control of the government to that president long after their term has ended. Further, SCOTUS can simply act of their own will, with literally no recourse for anyone to stop them. Same reforms should apply to all court appointments (federal/circuit/district/etc.)
- Abolish the Senate
- Abolish the electoral college
- Establish ranked choice voting
- Term limits top to bottom
Of course, part of this would take constitutional amendment(s), which given our political climate, is functionally impossible, on top of legislation that no one in power would ever be willing to put forward nor support. The people in power aren’t going to willingly surrender any of that power. So I don’t really know how we fix it.
Yep, at the very least there is a reason that all the democracies the US helped establish post world war two, to my knowledge none of them were recommended to closely mirror the US system. The fundamental US government was a decent enough step in the right for a british colony in the 1700s, but there has been over two hundred years of learning and improvements since. The problem is that while nearly everyone who’s studied governmental structures recognizes the problem, it’s very hard to get someone to understand a problem when their job requires not understanding it, and the general public doesn’t have enough knowledge or passion to force the issue.