Michigan Politics

From Politics[Michigan], the Kalamazoo Gazzette is running a stupid editorial about the unicameral legislature the MDP is working on. It is titled: Win Elections the Old-Fashioned Way. I like Kalamazoo, but their editorial board is full of morons. They proclaim the greatness of our system, where the supior candidate always wins and is bolstered by a superior state ticket. Their message? Don't tamper with the system.

That seems pretty reasonable right? I mean, we have a legislature that is amazingly responsive to the people, at least the people who donate thousands to underwrite their campaigns. You don't need to look much farther than the Telecom Bill that the senate just passed to realize who is running the show in Lansing. So why is it that we are represented by so much scum, these despicable people willing to sell out millions of people for a couple thousand dollars?

They've got nothing to lose, they still get elected, no problem.

I've got a scenerio for you, suppose this proposal was put foreward and it did pass. What would happen? (By the way, this was the kind of question you should have asked yourself before you wrote your editorial). Well, a board would re-draw district lines. But what proposals would the Republicans and the Democrats put foreward? Gerrymandering doesn't really work anymore does it? It's not how many seats you win, it's how many people you get to vote for you that matters in terms of the final overall makeup of a body. So how do you get people to vote in an election? I'll tell you what I'd do, I'd make 'em all real tight. Every district in the state would be 50/50. That way, like you said, the superior candidate would win, partisanship aside. Each base would turn out to support their candidate and independants would come out in force to vote for the stronger of the two. Applied historically, the overall makeup of the house would be around 50/50.

There is no clear winner in this proposal except democracy. More people would vote because more people's vote would count.

The assertion that this is just a power play by the dems to kick the GOP out of power is somewhat absurd, the dems are already poised to take back the Senate and probably the House in the next election cycle. This should not be confused with term-limiting.

I could clearly go on about this but I'll spare you.