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The GOP’s Secret to Protecting Gerrymandered Electoral Maps? Claim Privilege.
(www.propublica.org)
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this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2023
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politics
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This would probably be too volatile, and also lack the ability to make deals and compromises. You really need to know that this guy brings this number of votes for at least a certain amount of time, otherwise it becomes very difficult to make deals in a political system.
It would also eliminate the secret ballot nature of the system, because you would have to keep active track of who voted for who, so that that vote could be reassigned at any time. This is an inherent protection against political persecution, so a group in power can't look up the rolls, see who voted against them and move against them. As voting information, it would necessarily be public in order to prevent fraud, at which point other people could look it up. Imagine people in...certain areas...which vote for the 'wrong' party, now their vote can be known by their neighbors.
Considering those deals are where a lot of the corruption enters the system, I can't agree that it would be a bad thing to make them unviable. If they are above board, then just put them into whatever is being voted on. But a lot of them are probably more of a "support this bill which I pinky swear won't hurt anyone and I'll give you financial support for your campaign or a nice consulting gig when you retire from politics". Those "benefits" don't help anyone they claim to represent.
As for the political violence part of it, it would be a change in the nature of it because right now the representatives themselves aren't anonymous and can be targetted with violence or threats. Just look at the death threats surrounding the speaker vote and consider how often that might happen where the representatives threatened think they should just vote the way they were told to keep their family safe. Not to say individual voters being targeted would be better, but it would certainly be harder to do that in secrecy and in the volume required to change popular votes.
I think it would mean civil wars would replace assassinations which sounds bad at first until you consider how much riskier and more difficult civil wars are and that it's already an option in the current system as much as it would be in that system. Plus it really looks like that's where this system is headed with that fanatical base that has built their own reality to live in.