When is Lamar Smith's next election? Are there any candidates running who would say they're opposed to this nonsense? Seriously consideing putting together a PAC in New York City.
If there's a group of people that understand technology less than Smith and care less about protecting freedom of speech on the internet than him, it would have to be the people living in Texas's 21st congressional district, which he represents.
Smith's been in the House since 1987, so he won't be going away any time soon without a fight. He won his last reelection with 69% of the votes, in 2010. Even though you've got 2 more years to prepare to take him down, I'd say you're extremely unlikely to succeed, particularly when you consider how short the public's collective attention span is.
Reddit already did an analysis of this[0], and determined which Congresspeople who supported bills like the Patriot Act, NDAA, and SOPA/PIPA are most vulnerable in the 2012 elections. I think they decided upon one or two targets to focus on, which is a smart move. If they can come up with a winning strategy and get a pro-internet/freedom of speech politician who sticks to his principles into office, then they have hope of gaining support from other groups of people in future elections.
Personally, I believe that many of the current problems with the political system stem from (a) the electoral system and (b) the campaign finance system.
The electoral system allows otherwise unelectable politicians to get into Congress and hold onto their seats purely by virtue of gerrymandered Congressional districts. This[1] is Texas's 21st Congressional district. Ignore the vast swaths of land in the middle of nowhere, as those are not very densely populated. Focus on the parts of the district that approach the cities of San Antonio and Austin. See how oddly shaped they are? This is to ensure that only wealthy people in those cities are in the district. By combining the social conservatives (religious people) in the rural areas with the fiscal conservatives (wealthy people) in the suburban areas, they've created a district that is unwinnable for a non-Republican (Democrat or 3rd party).
Moreover, the lack of proportional representation in favor of a winner-takes-all situation makes it impossible for 3rd parties to get a foothold in the public consciousness, so that they can build over several elections into a formidable force. So even in districts that aren't so blatantly gerrymandered, you're left with what's essentially a political duopoly.
We've gone over the campaign finance issues with lobbying and all in other threads here, so you probaly already know the issues with that. The bottom line is that solving any of these issues requires first getting "our" people into office, using the current system.
The best hope of doing this is to identify local elections where we can first bring in an opposition candidate who supports us. This requires an election where (a) there's an incumbent who isn't really liked by his/her constituents, (b) a dearth of opposition candidates, and (c) someone living in the district who's supportive of our views and has the time, interest, and ability to run and win. This person would have to run as a Democrat or Republican (whichever the incumbent isn't) in order to get people to vote for him. If we can repeat this process in the same geographical area for several other positions, all of these candidates could then leave the parties they're a member of at the same time and form a new one. Now you would have a 3rd party with credibility and several respectable members already in political office. From there, it would be a matter of expanding to other states, and eventually to the national level.
(a) Virtually no-one ever admits their country's system is flawed. The Brits don't realise that the House of Lords is a really crappy substitute for a senate. The Americans don't realise that proportional representation, compulsory voting, and instant runoff voting is a much better system. They say stuff like "you'll just get a candidate that nobody hates, not someone who a few extremists really love, and if voting is compulsory you'll have normal people voting", and not realise that's a good thing.
I've no idea what the Australians get wrong ... though it probably involves having too many levels of government.
The Americans don't realise that proportional representation, compulsory voting, and instant runoff voting is a much better system
I can't comment on instant runoff voting, but my impression from following politics in Europe is that proportional representation creates a situation where all legislators toe the party line, as opposed to still having some degree of independence, as in Britain or the US. This gives an undue amount of influence to a small number of party bigwigs, and the inevitable mess results.
As for compulsory voting, at least in Belgium, it has been credited with fuelling the rise of more extreme parties, notably the anti-immigration Flemish nationalists, since people who feel disenfranchised by the whole system tend to cast a protest vote, without seriously considering the consequences. Also, the notion that you could get fined or jailed for not voting seems to me to be as illiberal an idea as ACTA or the Patriot act.
Coming from a country with proportional voting (Norway), I can't say I agree it makes people toe the party line - in Norway all the big parties have factions with varying level of parliamentary support.
But even if it did, it makes it sufficiently easy to establish new parties and get representation in parliament that the parties are careful about not letting too big conflicts arise these days (one of the current coalition partners in government, for example, started out as a large chunk of the youth organization of the other, which broke away as they were far more left wing than the parent party)
Norway has regularly had 10+ parties represented in parliament (with 169 seats).
If done well, this results in an environment where everyone are interested in compromises because it's the only way of getting anything done - anyone who just tries being obstructionist like the current crop of Republicns would end up with no influence, as it just makes the other parties go elsewhere to find someone to cooperate with to establish majorities.
The current government is a coalition of three parties, and coalition governments have become the rule rather than the exception in Norway over the last few decades.
I meant that members of parliament toe the party line in PR systems -- are you saying that members of parliament in Norway commonly vote against their party faction or even switch factions when they feel like it? If so, I'm impressed :-)
I fully agree about it being important that parties can be esatblished and elected easily; again in Belgium, there is a rule (initially devised to keep out the increasingly popular Flemish nationalists) that parties need to get 5% in elections to gain any seats at all.. It's good to hear not all countries have this!
I'm not so sure about the spirit of compromise being so positive; again relating to Belgium, decades of compromise agreements between Flemish and Waloon, and left- and right-leaning parties has created an institutional structure that is very complicated and obtuse (google the term "Belgian compromise"), and indeed its complexity and inflexibility have been at the heart of the recent problems.
It might be a bit unfair of me to base all my argument on the example of a single country, but I guess my main point is that it is not so much the choice of political system which determinces how messed up things get, but much more the polititians themselves. I'm not surprised that you as a Norwegian seem quite satisfied with your political system, because Scandinavians have a reputation for being prudent and reasonable, and I would bet that it wouldn't make all that much difference if the rules there were more like in the US for example.
It isn't unusual for votes to go against their party faction, though the parties do generally have rules that allow the party to demand they follow the party line in certain situations, though they can't legally enforce that. The worst they can do is exclude said person. There have been a number of situations where there have been important cases where they've tried to enforce a specific vote and members have left the party in question in order to vote as they pleased, which makes the parties careful about when they use those mechanisms.
But the ability for smaller parties to get in also mean that each of the parties are far more homogenous than the US parties, for example, so it's natural for them to toe the party line to a reasonable extent for important votes. In US terms, most of the parties in the current Norwegian parliament would've been members of the Democratic Party, but in Norway that span is considered so wide that it would be unthinkable for any of the current parties to merge.
In terms of barriers, there's a 4% limit below which you need to get in on direct votes, but no other limits (other than being able to fill a list, so you need at most a couple of dozen people willing to put their names on each regional list for parliamentary elections - a low enough number that even parties with a few hundred members have no problems fielding lists in parliamentary electins). The way the Norwegian system works is that most seats are tied to a region, so there's, say (I haven't looked up the actual number recently), 18 seats for Oslo. Each party provides an ordered list. So for the first 2 people on a party list to get in on direct votes, they need the total number of votes for Oslo / number of seats * 2, or more.
All the parties that get more than 4% nationwide then shares in a pot of additional seats that are used to even out their share to best match the actual nationwide percentages. Which regional party list is awarded the seat depends on who got closest to getting in, but the party is determined based on proportion of the vote.
The combination of this is that small parties have a chance of getting in - it takes 15.000-20.000 or so votes per region to win a seat - and larger parties proportions are further evened out so there's no tactical advantages in fighting harder for "close" seats. At the same time a regional link is maintained, which tends to be one of the thing people like to use as an argument for single seat constituencies.
In terms of compromises, I think Belgium has a big problem because it is too disparate. Belgium has two alternatives: Devolution of power (or splitting the country up), or compromises that nobody will be happy with but that are still better for either side than if the other side were to shove things down their throat. When these types of compromises are bad it is usually a sign that both sides to some extent would prefer to shove decisions down the other sides throat, or they could've agreed to devolve more power to the regions...
Norway does have enough conflict too where neither side are happy, but that's the nature of a system that represents everyone reasonably well.
I'd tend to think the "toeing the party line" would tend to be a feature rather than a bug, to the extent that most people inform themselves about politics simply by watching the national news. If parties are more homogeneous people can make meaningful votes without having to know who in particular is representing their district. I do agree about compulsory voting, though.
Proportional representation creates more diverse parties. You don't vote for a "Left Democrat", you vote for a Green. Or a Pirate. Or some Tea Party equivalent. That's where you get "extreme" parties. But if you believe in the importance of free speech, you should also believe in putting a plurality of views into parliament (even ones you disagree with), where they can have a fair debate.
The fears over compulsory voting are ... interesting. I'd say that disinterested people make the best decisions, not party fanbois. Disinterested people are less informed, though. What's needed is some way of informing them at the poll booths. In Australia, party reps will hand out "how to vote" marketing brochures. This process could definitely be improved. Candidates could be forced to answer some structured questions, which could be written by an independent commission (to try to reduce bias, though the commission might be a little corrupt or biased). Stuff like "Do you support X, yes, no, or undecided".
> I can't comment on instant runoff voting, but my impression from following politics in Europe is that proportional representation creates a situation where all legislators toe the party line, as opposed to still having some degree of independence, as in Britain or the US. This gives an undue amount of influence to a small number of party bigwigs, and the inevitable mess results.
You know, if you'd said that fifty years ago, I think you'd be right. But have you paid much attention to US politics over the last ten years? The Republicans have engaged in strong campaign against "Republicans In Name Only", and have enjoyed enormous party discipline as a result, even when it seems like they shouldn't.
I suspect the future of congressional politics in America looks like European-style parties only with no European-style party diversity.
Most people don't understand technology, but they do understand freedom. The strategy to get a pro technology representative elected is to get a small government person elected in such region, who believes federal government has very little role in every day life of a citizen.
The problem is that for these people, freedom of the speech on the internet isn't important because they don't use the internet. They don't see it as something important for America, now or in the future. They just see it as a place infested with scumbags who are hacking (not the PG definition), steal, and abuse children.
Update: Ouch, this will be expensive... http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/elections.php?cycle=2...