Thread by @FreedomFriesInc

If there is only one bill for which to end the filibuster, it's the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.

I've studied the detail of both parties' current stance on VR & it's abundantly clear what Rs are trying to do, & why. It' would damage the country like the Dred Scott ruling did.

https://twitter.com/AriBerman/status/1445476814328004608

The slowness of the US system in terms of making & amending laws has been one of it's strengths. But those barriers can only work when bipartisanship is possible.

I think the US has reached a point where some of the barriers need removing. The filibuster appears the most urgent.

The reason I can say this: New Zealand has "the fastest laws in the west." The exec branch is derived from the legislature + there's a ton of other ways a government can get things done. So I see the disadvantages of that clearly.

NZ & the US both miss hitting the sweet spot.

I'm against the filibuster, for the Electoral College and openminded about small increases to the SCOTUS.

Good thing I am used to being alone, lol.

NZ is an example of what can go wrong without an electoral college...

An electoral college is one of various methods to get more emphatic & more stable election results over time. It's good for a country. Proportional representation (PR) can lead to some wildly skewed results & is often less representative than otherwise. Takes a bit to explain...

PR or "the popular vote" can give outsized power to marginal groups that can be extremist in ideology. It can also lead to the party that won a clear majority of the vote, losing the election when the other major party forms a coalition with a fringe party. NZ has this a lot.

PR was sold to NZ voters in 1993 as being "more representative" of small groups that otherwise find it hard or impossible to grow into a viable minor party. Sounds great, doesn't it? Until a fringe party allows the 2nd place winner to take office, beholden to a fringe party.

These leads to several problems, one of which is that everyone who voted for the actual winning party is very pissed off about an extremist fringe party stealing their win and installing a governing party that couldn't win enough votes on its own.

It leads to instability too.

NZ like many other countries, uses the Westminster system of government. Just a few of them, say NZ, AU, Israel, Japan, and Canada, have each modified our Westminster system over time. So it takes time to properly compare one of these systems with the very different US system.

While soundbites and tweets are a good way to start a conversation, they aren't long enough to fairly assess all the pros and cons of a question like whether to keep, change, or end the Electoral College system in the US. "End it" or "keep it" are quick things to say.