| Mr Khan said: This is a better thought, though ignores partisan realities (although knowing you, sam, you could be invoking this deliberately I was reading a book recently that advocated the elimination of primary elections, actually. Primary voters are non-representative even of the political party as a whole (Republican primary voters more conservative than Republicans, and so on for the Dems). If the decision is left up to party leaders, they pick more marketable (e.g. mainstream) candidates who are less likely to produce gridlock. Of course, again, if you yourself are outside the political mainstream, you'll see that as a terrible idea. |
), it would lead to total gridlock, for the next 25 years a permanently democratic house and a permanently Republican senate.
Well, the idea of the AV voting, forced open-primaries, removing party name from ballot, and dramatic increase in number of seats in the House (and germandering elimination), is designed around the idea of destroying the party system in the House, ultimately having systemic repercussions across all levels of Gov't.
It would slow down the legislative process a lot, yeah. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, no matter what your views are. If you support, say, the Affordable Care Act, you wouldn't want it snapped away in one election, and vice versa. Slow moving legislatures also reduces reactionary legislation, which is often bad and even unworkable, and increases transparency in the legislative process.
As for elimination of primaries, depends on what you want. In the UK, candidates are selected by party donors. Not exactly a recipe for clean Government.
