The government is broken, and we need to fix it.
It is my belief that it is time for the “Government of the people, by the people, and for the people” to fear us rather than us fear them. It is time we enact a 21st century political revolution by means of calling together a third Continental Congress to amend the Constitution to fix a broken system of government.
When the Founding Fathers were creating one of the greatest political experiments in government in the history of man, it is my belief that they did not begin to fathom the probability of our country becoming a two-party system (Republicans and Democrats) that was so ideologically and politically at odds with each other that stalemate would occur.
Sure, people can argue that while the Constitution was being constructed, you had Federalists and Anti-federalists who saw the future government extremely differently, but even they put aside their differences and came up with the “Great Compromise” of major similarities to form a government which became what we have learned since first grade: The Three Branches of Government forming a system of checks and balances.
Zak Koehler / Webmaster
But again, the system is broken and my suggestion is to fix it by calling a third Continental Congress and evolving America into a federal unicameral parliamentary government.
Some of you may be shaking your head in protest; others might be nodding in agreement; some may have already stopped reading this opinion by paragraph two. But to the ones that are unsure of what I mean, let me quickly explain. To do so, we need to look at how Canada/United Kingdom and Germany’s political system works.
This wouldn’t be easy; nor would it happen overnight. But, I think that this is something worth fighting for and will make this country much better in the long run.
Take note that after Standard and Poor – a credit rating firm that tracks countries on how reliable they are with paying their debt back – downgraded the U.S. credit rating, no country with a presidential system of government had a triple-A rating from all three major ratings agencies. Only countries with parliamentary systems had that honor.
Currently, we have the presidency and the legislature (broken up into two houses), both who claim to speak for the people resulting in contrast over basic legitimacy. Who is actually speaking and representing the people?
This is where the first fix comes in: dismantle the current Executive branch and the Senate of Congress forming a single legislative body: The House of Representatives.
By having one Legislative body where the laws are made by the legislature and written into law by the executive (which would also be held in the legislature) we have one body that speaks for the people; we also have one body, and by the transitive property one party or coalition, that we can put complete blame on effectively.
This would end confusion during elections. In my vision, the House of Representatives becomes the government body for the United States, holding both the executive and legislature – the executive being the leader of the party that holds the most seats in the House.
The US House of Representatives has 435 seats that are given out according to a state’s population. The more people, the more districts and thus more seats (New Hampshire has two, California 52) with seats given out in a “First-Past-The-Post” manner-meaning that the person with the most votes wins. However, this isn’t truly fair. Here is why. Say a country was broken up into three districts. Say, for example, in each district, three parties were running for the ‘First-Past-The-Post’ seats:
– District One had Party One with 46 percent of the vote, Party Two with 45 percent and Party Three with seven percent.
– District Two voted Party One with 50 percent, Party Two at 47 percent and Party Three with three percent.
– District Three had Party One at 48 percent; Party Two at 48 percent; Party Three at four percent.
Party One would gain all seats, but again how is this fair? When it averages out, Party One only received 48 percent of the vote, less than half the country.
Why should they be able to control 100 percent of the legislature? Why should they rule for the majority when they didn’t get a majority of the vote? Enter the second fix to our government: becoming a Mixed-Member Proportional Representation, much like Germany.
This would mean two changes, one being that the number of seats would double in the House of Representatives: 435 seats for “First-Past-The Post” winners (see brown circles in graphic) plus 435 seats for the Proportional vote (see green circles in graphic).
The second change would be that each citizen now gets two votes: one for their local representative (what the U.S. has now) and one for a party that most closely represents them.
The second vote determines which party gets the secondary seats in the legislative body by seeing the true percentage of national support for a particular party in that election cycle. So, let’s go back to our example.
Say that for the second vote, Party One received 48 percent, Party Two received 40 percent and Party Three got 12 percent. According to vote two, Party One is over-represented in the “First-Past-The-Post” seats (which they won 100 percent of), Party One will receive no Proportional vote seats.
Those seats will be allocated to the other parties to get the closest representation that was shown from the second vote.
Back to our example (bare with me, we are almost at the finish line). Because Party One won all three of the FPTP seats (one seat for each district), they are allowed to keep those seats. Add on the seats that are going to be given to the proportional vote (double the seats) and we now have six total seats for the entire government; these seats will be filled from vote two.
Party Two will be given a certain amount of seats until their percentage in the total government most closely matches the percentage from vote two; this means Party Two gets two out of three seats from the proportional seats. Party Three would get one.
Now the percentage of the actual government would be Party One having 50 percent, Party Two having 33 percent and Party Three having 16 percent. This allows a government that most closely represents the will of the people! With Party One unable to get 50 percent plus one, they do not have total control in the government, allowing for natural checks and balances to occur as it was not the will of people to allow this party to be completely in control.
Because of this, Party One must form a coalition with a second party in the government in order to allow government to work.
This could mean that Party One and Party Three form a coalition, allowing bills to be passed that would keep two parties happy.
Yes, Party One may need to drop some of their ideology before Party Three agrees to form a coalition. But that is what the government is about: compromise. This is the best part about Parliamentary government.
Unless a party has complete majority on its own, compromise must occur. If they don’t create a majority or have complete control of the government, then they are seen as incapable of governing. When this occurs, the House is thrown out and another election must occur. Until the election, the Opposition, or the party with the second largest amount of seats, runs the government until the new election has happened.
With this new system, four things become true: the system becomes free of gerrymandering (establishing a political advantage for a particular group by manipulating district boundaries to created partisan advantaged districts), it prevents minority rule, allows for more political diversity, and, in my opinion the most important – the system now works for the people.
In the end, what more could you really ask for?
Zak Koehler can be contacted at zkoehler@keene-equinox.com