ACHIEVING AN OPTIMAL GOVERNANCE MODEL

One very common thing the human race is unlikely to perfect is government models.

Governments are made of people and people are fallible and imperfect, so no government can be perfect.

So the goal of designing a government model is not perfection. The goal is to minimise failures, while trying for optimal performance.

There are two kinds of governmental failure.

The most common governmental failure is caused by generally good elected leaders who mean well but lack the insights necessary for optimal results. This results in suboptimal to extremely bad performance.

The far less common but far worse failure of government is when a truly malevolent or insane person gains power and causes great destruction. There were several examples last century.

So how to avoid these failures?

The key to the solution is multiple representative districts and top offices.

A simple example is each voting district would have, instead of one vote in the legislature per office, it would have 100 votes.

Every candidate who gets over a certain percentage is elected with that share of votes.

So if the percentage cutoff for legislative district elections was ten percent and candidate A received 35 percent, candidate B received 25 percent , candidate C and D received 16 percent, they would all be elected and they would each get that percentage of the votes in the legislature. Since they only received 92 percent of the votes, the other 8 percent of the votes are divided between them based on the percentage of votes they received.

This prevents one out of control party lacking even a majority from gaining control — as happened in Germany last century.

It gives a voice and power to the slightly less powerful parties who can then prevent the government from going off the rails.

It also makes gerrymandering pointless.

For governmental models where the chief executive is elected, multiple-representation works as well. Using the USA as an example, in a three way race where each candidate gained a significant share of the votes, all three would be elected and no decision would be made without concurrence from office-holders representing at least half the vote.

This is critically important. In a situation where the office is not shared, a less perceptive office holder surrounded by yes men can make incredible blunders. By being forced to listen to different opinions, great failures can be avoided.

Implementation of multiple-candidate government models is a challenge. Existing parties holding an effective oligopoly on the levers of government may be unlikely to consider change. What may be needed are regularly scheduled constitutional conventions with non-political representatives chosen by the states to effect such changes.