Billionaires trying to buy our elections through the supreme court ruling, "corporations are people."

[Kantor]

makingmusic476 said:

Responding only to the thread title since the OP is banned...I do dislike the fact that individuals have different levels of leverage over election results depending on how much money they are able to and do invest in an election.  Everyone's supposed to have equal input. 1 vote, 1 person. Money in politics makes such an ideal for all intents and purposes impossible.

But I'd say our bigger problem is our voting system. To quote my post from the other thread:

A First Past the Post voting system that leads to our only viable choices for candidates coming from two parties that properly represent a tiny sliver of the actual populace isn't all that democratic.

We have the ability to vote out the guy that's fucking up assuming we like the alternative better, but that's it. Anything beyond that is made untenable by the spoiler effect.

We need to implement an alternative voting system for the presidency and senate and a proportional system in each state for selecting the house representatives they send to congress for our country to really approach true representation. I'd get rid of the electoral college (popular vote picks the President) and make all campaigning publicly funded with private contributions outlawed to further that aim.

This is a good idea in theory, but it destroys the constituency system. A large state like California has 53 representatives. Whom do you contact in that situation if you have a problem that you want to raise?

I can foresee constituencies triple the size with three representatives, but nothing so large as a state-level proportional representation system.

I agree with the Presidential popular vote, but it does mean that candidates can just stick to their power bases. Perhaps a mixture of both systems would work - you get a bonus for each state you carry, or something like that. Public funding is a good idea in theory, but how do you determine how much is given? Do Johnson and Stein get the same as Romney and Obama?