Would you support switching to a Unicameral legislature?

They are not the same, nor they should be. And I think having to do all that work to prevent gerrymandering and keep proportions is a convoluted process. You have to screen candidates for that too.

edited 22nd Sep '11 8:05:50 PM by abstractematics

I dunno, it's pretty simple where it's done here. They just ram up the committee with equal number of party picks and they usually just go with municipality divisions and stick with equal population in each voting district. It's usually a pretty simple process and there hasn't been any gerrymandering for a long time.

Balmung, I want to ask you about the Nebraskan Unicam: how do they handle impeachments of state officials? That's the one concern I have with a unicameral legislature which doesn't have internal checks and balances.

edited 25th Sep '11 8:25:41 PM by abstractematics

A majority of the Legislature is required to impeach and two-thirds are required to convict after a full trial in which members must find by clear and convincing evidence that an impeachable offense occurred. The use of a specific burden of proof is an interesting twist on impeachment that is not in the Federal Constitution.

To be honest, I didn't know this before, either. We don't impeach a lot of public officials around these parts.

edited 25th Sep '11 9:59:37 PM by Balmung

The big advantage in having a bicameral legislature is that it makes it harder for bad laws to pass. Members of the lower house represent fewer people and serve shorter terms between elections, so they are more susceptible to short-term political pressure and more in touch with their electorate. Senators represent more people and go longer between elections, so they can examine bills with a larger and more restrained perspective.

Granted, sometimes it does hold up genuinely good laws, but I think that's a fair price to pay to lessen the likelihood of crazy laws.

Then we should increase the ratio of representation and length of terms.

There are enough checks to overturn bad bills already. The veto is rather hard to override, and you have to make sure a state law satisfies both state and U.S. constitutions. If people really feel that they hate a law they can petition to overturn it, too.

Oddly enough we do just fine with only 49 senators and a population of 1.8 million.

I rather the filibuster rules to be dropped. If you want to filibuster? Actually filibuster.

I wonder how we could work up any state officials these days to switch over to a unicameral legislature. And one with proportional representation, too.

Still don't think it's a good idea to change our federal system, but I'm now convinced this would be a good idea for the state level.

I wouldn't support just getting rid of the lower house. Effective representation means that the legislature should be sensitive to the immediate desires of the people. But having an upper house and an executive veto are supposed to reduce the likelihood of mob mentality taking over and dictating disastrous policies.

The UK Parliament is effectively a unicameral legislature, since the Crown and House of Lords are virtually powerless. And since there is no separation of powers between legislature and executive, it means that the government is basically an elective dictatorship. Your average member of Parliament has next to no power, unlike your average member of the US Congress. While they appear to have decent government, I wouldn't want a parliamentary system for the US.

Why do we keep going off on the parliamentary system tangent? You can have a bicameral parliamentary system and you can have a unicameral federal system.

Hell, if I was designing a parliamentary government (especially a national one), I'd probably make sure it had an effective bicameral.

lol unicameral is a bad idea in my opinion.

Then it would be called an Assambley like the French one.

But just take a look at Venezuela and u begin to see why is not such a good idea.

Not all assemblies are the same.

And why would it be called the Assembley? We have a unicameral right here in Nebraska, and we call our legislature the Senate.

Furthermore, France has a bicameral, just pointing that our.

The Israeli one doesn't seem to be working too well...

There should be a balance between partisan monopoly/duopoly rule and atomized partisan rule.

I was talking baout the french revolution assambly.

I dunno, pretty much every time I see a bill get shot down that would have shafted farmers (worse) around here, I'm pretty damn grateful we've got one house skewed a bit more toward the boonies.

edited 30th Sep '11 1:08:14 PM by Pykrete