since the current one was based on the premise of no political parties.
1. The electoral college, or rather the way ti works, basically in all but 2-3 states whomever has the majority of the votes gets all the electoral vote, regardless of if that majority was slim or not.
There is something wrong with this argument. There are many jurisdictions within the US that require a strict majority yet still are dominated by a two party system.2. First past the post constituency system. While multiple parties can win seats in countries where their constituencies that directly elect people rather than parties, the way the American system works, where you only have to get the plurality of votes to win, basically limits it to a two party system.
Do you have source for this? I am aware that Washington despised political party, but he had nothing to do with the writing of the Constitution. The way the Founding Fathers flocked to parties, I don't think Washington's view was the majority.
That has nothing to do with how the EC works. That has to do how states decide to appoint their electors. The Constitution leaves this to the several states. If a state decides, it can allot its elector proportionally, have the state legislature name them, hold a lottery, or just about any other way. No Constitutional change needed.
There is something wrong with this argument. There are many jurisdictions within the US that require a strict majority yet still are dominated by a two party system.
Do you have source for this? I am aware that Washington despised political party, but he had nothing to do with the writing of the Constitution. The way the Founding Fathers flocked to parties, I don't think Washington's view was the majority.
That has nothing to do with how the EC works. That has to do how states decide to appoint their electors. The Constitution leaves this to the several states. If a state decides, it can allot its elector proportionally, have the state legislature name them, hold a lottery, or just about any other way. No Constitutional change needed.
I think the two party system has more to do with the strong presidential (as opposed to parliamentary) system of government.
There is something wrong with this argument. There are many jurisdictions within the US that require a strict majority yet still are dominated by a two party system.
No FPTP (first past the post) electoral system. FPTP breeds two-party system in ethnically and culturally homogenious societies. In Canada, third parliament party (Bloc) is regional nationalistic organization and all others but Libs and now united (from Eastern and Western regional parties) Conservatives are trembling on the threshold of irrelevancy. New Democrats are getting 3% of parliament seats for 10% of popular vote and Greens aren't getting anything for 5-7% of popular vote.
Further on this note, would it be possible for the Progressive (right label?) wave of reform that resulted in the constitutional referenda/amendment system also bring in proportional representation of some kind? Assuming this is possible (not asb/etc) then if the US today had half a dozen states with some form of electoral PR then you could have regional power bases for third parties. So say there might be a Western Third Party that regularly gets signficant elected federal and state politicians one might then see national pacts with the big two.
I think the two party system has more to do with the strong presidential (as opposed to parliamentary) system of government.
Chaos. What do you do if you are Represenative Castle of Delaware, your constituents overwhelmingly voted for Obama but you belong to the party of John McCain?The EC could almost be maintained and made more easily proportional, I think, with an amendment doubling its size. That makes a 6 EV minimum; states could impose a 1/6 (or 17%) threshold to match the small states natural thresholds. Unfortunately, I did a statistical exercise with this and found out that in order to make this system fair for the plurality winner of a state, one has to drop basic mathematical rounding up for fractional EVs in favor of a plurality prize, say rounding up at the quarter-EV. Anyways, to sum up this paragraph, the Electoral College is now anachronistic and fatally flawed. And don't get me started on the total disenfranchisement of the popular majority that could occur if an election was thrown in the House these days....
Very often, a Prime-Minister has much more powers than a President, although this depends on the specific country, where you can have PM's who are like a Presidential chief-of-staff in all but name, to popularly-elected Presidents who have an overriding power (within certain limits) over a PM (who is elected by the parliament, in almost all cases) but always sharing power, to Presidents who are mostly symbolic figures (elected by the parliament in a more consensual manner than the PM, with an ampler support to serve as neutral figure), with many variants along the way.I'm not sure how other Constitutions are but I've always thought that the President always had a lot more power than say a Prime Minister.