Delegative democracy. You have your own vote that you can use to directly vote on issues or you can delegate your vote to another person so how they vote is how you vote.

With the proper tech you could even set up some sort of tagging/category system so you can delegate to X person on issues in Y category.

Wow huge question! I mean for me in the US I think our democratic republic system is great, that is democracy on a local level, and republic on a state and federal level. We’re not in Athens anymore! I would love to see our country do away with the filibuster, the electoral college, and to impose very strict laws around lobbying. I think all elections should be publicly funded, which is such an easy way to level the playing field and negate the influence of corporate cash.

Those voting methods you mentioned of course is up to the states to decide already which is how it should be I think.

No I don’t think parties should be banned and I wish we could have room for more parties. I admit I don’t know why US has essentially only two where other countries have several. I don’t know what the hold-up is or the mechanism for change, but I think competition is always a good thing (capitalism, baby!)

I feel like ranked choice voting for leaders and representatives is the optimal solution. Its potential drawbacks outweigh its obvious benefits, and it actually gives third parties a fair fight.

As far as representation goes, I think it does have its benefits, because it’s simply too much to ask of every citizen to weigh in on every single initiative. For big stuff (i.e. anything that will affect people directly), I’d obviously like to vote on it.

As far as ideology goes, IMO anything should go. Otherwise someone has to decide what is morally permissible in politics, and that decision can and will eventually be made by someone you disagree with.

First, I’ll take down the cubicle walls. Symbol of transparency. There’d be no titles. Everyone has the same job. Same goes for me. I’ll take your job by rejecting the title. Everyone will be known for their accomplishments.

Hmm conflict. You know, Scratch everything from before. I’ll tell you what: Go the other way. More cubicles. More division. Everyone is somebody’s boss, and that person can fire the person below them. And once a month, the lowest person… [Imitates cutting throat] Buh-bye.

American democracy could be significantly improved just by adding term limits Senators and Representatives, plus an age cap for Congress and the President. Taking steps to break the two party system would be even better.

I personally like Germany’s approach to parliamentary representation, where you vote for both a district representative and a party. Once the district seats are filled, more seats are added until each party is proportionally represented. This goes a long way to reducing the spoiler effect and helping third parties get a voice.

I know this is a controversial take, but I actually like the electoral college in principle. The goal of the electoral college is to balance the interests of urban and rural voters so that whoever wins the election will hopefully be good for both. Currently, electoral votes are distributed based on the results of simple majority votes at the state level, with some states including a ‘winner takes all’ rule. If it were up to me, I’d instead use state level alternative votes or something similar, and ban the 'winner takes all’s rule.

However, I don’t think we will see any of these in a very long time, if ever. The current system benefits the people currently in it, why would they change it? IIRC, the UK had a referendum to switch voting systems years ago, and their two biggest parties banded together to pressure voters to keep the existing system.

Okay, my answer is pretty removed, but I’d say I’d like a system where decisions are made by submitting automated proofs of their optimality, either absolute or over all submitted proposals in a defined time frame. The conditions of optimality would be pre-defined in a Constitution, and non-provable facts would be accepted or rejected via a decentralized voting system that would keep multiple diff chains and penalize e.g. voting for facts that are later proven false via a submitted proof. The proof system would hold all powers, but would be able to delegate decisions to entities under proven rules, which would come faster but possibly be overriden.

Representative parliamentary. If it’s a large country (both population and area) or geographically diverse country (eg an archipelago) it should be federal, if not unitary.

Proportional representation based on party lists. Getting on the ballot requires evidence of grassroots support. Silly example: you must have video evidence of you engaging with 5000 unique constituents in a 5 minute one-on-one conversation on the issues in the last year at their residence. The video must end with the constituent explicitly endorsing you. That means at least 5000 5 minute videos with 5000 unrelated people. That’s a lot of physical legwork were you must meet the people. There are better ways, this is just a simple example.

Choose a voting system that favours coalition building.

Elections should be publicly funded. Don’t ban political parties, do ban explicitly anti-democratic people. Antidemocratic ppl can’t work via proxies. They’re, justifiably, afraid that their proxy will steal the power for themselves.

Completely separate head of state (who should be powerless) and head of government. Lots of pomp, ceremonies, frequent press coverage of the powerless head of state. Let the portion of politics that is effectively a dog and pony show focus on him. Let people get emotionally swept up about him wearing a tan suit or sleeping with his secretary or get super proud about how totally not old he is. The head of state can be a show. The head of government should be a boring bureaucrat.

There’s more, but this seems a decent start.

My one: a bicameral parliament, with a lower house (like the US/Australian Representatives or UK Commons) doing most of the legislating, and an upper house of review (like the Senate or Lords). The lower house would be elected by a system of proportional representation, resulting in predominantly negotiated coalition governments as in continental Europe. (The layout would be hemicircular to facilitate this, as opposed to the Westminster layout of two benches facing off.) The government would be parliamentary, led by a prime minister who would appoint ministers (which would often be as per coalition negotiations).

The lower house’s electorates would be geographical, with each citizen living in an electorate with one or more MPs (having two, typically from different parties, could mitigate political minorities being unrepresented in their electorate). The upper house would break with this, but, unlike the Lords, would probably be elected. It could be geographical (as the US/AU Senate, with a number of Senators per larger region), or by some other division (perhaps different groups with specific interests and perspectives: industries, unions, young/elderly people, people with disabilities, remote regions, &c.). Alternatively, part or all of the elected upper house could be replaced with a system not unlike jury duty, where a number of randomly chosen citizens are drafted in to oversee the process for a period; hopefully in sufficient numbers, individual flaws would balance out, leaving a broader scrutiny of and input into the legislative programme.

There would be a head of state, who would be a ceremonial figurehead and largely apolitical, with no executive power per se. They may be popularly elected or appointed, and their terms would be longer than a parliament, providing a sense of continuity. Ideal candidates would be figures held in high esteem by broad cross sections of society; celebrated writers/commentators or other public figures, for example. Perhaps the role would absorb some of the duties of the poet laureate as well.

A system where citizens could choose to be active or passive participants with no barriers. Passive citizens could submit their desires through annual surveys but otherwise live a live free of politics. Candidates for representatives would be chosen lottery style from the pool of active citizens weighted by the surveys, than voted on by the active population.

Honestly, not a democracy.

Either a meritocratic oligarchy, where the best and brightest rule by council; or (my personal favorite because humans can’t handle having power for too long) an absolutist, benevolent artificial intelligence tasked with fixing our shit.

Both are a bit utopian though because we can’t stop mixing merit with money, and artificial intelligence with corporate greed.

Democratic confederalism.

One in which the population is well-educated, possesses good common sense, has an appreciable sense of empthaty, and is politically involved.

After that, it’s pretty much just details.

The quick basics I would want are single transferrable vote (STV), as it has a ranked ballot, regional representatives (important in a large, diverse country, imo), and pretty (although not perfectly) proportionate results.

I would also increase salaries and pensions for elected officials, but on the stipulation that they and their immediate family must liquidate all investments in order to take office, including real estate. The reason for this is to eliminate ulterior motives and reduce risk of corruption, and the compensation of course would be a very generous salary and pension so they never have to worry about their financial situation during or after leaving office.

I would also constitutionally eliminate the ability to take away someone’s vote, and to demonstrate why, I’ll copy-paste an old comment of mine from my reddit days:

What people like this miss about democracy is it’s more than just majority rule; democracy depends on minority rights, so the majority can’t just vote to trample over the minority.

This is not only to protect the minority (as you point out), but to protect democracy itself. An example:

There are 10 people. 4 of these people want to ban all fruits except mangos. 6 of them don’t want that.

So the 4 people scheme. One of those 6 people is really frickin ugly, and everyone can agree on that. So they propose to strip that ugly person of the right to vote (or just kill them or something). That vote passes 9 to 1. Ugly person is out of the equation.

The 4 people are still the minority, so they try again. One of those 5 other people likes to dip their pizza in marshmallow fluff, and everyone else agrees that that is absolutely vile. So they propose to strip that person with horrendous taste of the right to vote. That vote passes 8 to 1. Marshmallow pizza eater is out of the equation.

Now the 4 mango purists see they’re half the electorate. They just need to boot out 1 more pan-fruitarian. Fortunately for them, one of those remaining 4 pan-fruitarians always unnecessarily explains the punchlines of obvious jokes, and it really annoys everyone else. So they propose to strip that annoying joke explainer of the right to vote. That vote passes 7 to 1. Annoying joke explainer is out of the equation.

And now the mango purists have a majority and can ban all other fruits, counter to the true majority.

If this all seems abstract and unlikely, consider fascist movements and their tendency to start as big-tent to gain allies and gain power and then, once they’re in power, start trimming down who counts as the protected in-group until it’s only the core group they cared about in the beginning, producing lots of r/leopardsatemyface material in the process.

Can we appoint officials by sortition (by lottery) for a reasonable term, and then dilute power to where no one person is critical to conduct business?

Dunno if there’s a more elegant term, but fractal representative.

Each person is part of a neighborhood, first level council of appx. 100 citizens, like an apartment building or suburban block, which elects a representative from among them.

That representative must personally know every member of their neighborhood, and participate in a second level council of appx. 100 such neighborhood representatives (representing a total population of appx. 10,000).

That council elects a representative from among them to represent them in a higher third level council of appx. 100 second level council representatives (representing a total population of appx. 1 million).

Repeat as necessary.

The principle here is that each citizen can petition their 1st level rep., whom they know personally, to petition their 2nd level rep., whom the 1st level rep knows personally, to petition the 3rd level rep., whom the second level rep knows personally, etc. This provides an explicit chain of personal accountability between each individual and the highest authority.

I believe a lot of the issues in our present representative democracy models originate in abstract representation of millions of people, to whom one representative is neither morally nor functionally beholden. Campaigns are based on hollow promises and marketing slogans that most voters don’t scrutinize. Additionally, local issues are decided at levels too high and separated to understand them.

In the US, this would look like a hierarchy of roughly: block/neighborhood -> borough/town -> city/county -> state -> nation.

So me and my neighbors confederate, voting on our immediate issues, including the election of Neil as our neighborhood rep. He knows us all and listens to our needs and concerns. He and the reps of the 100 closest neighborhoods confederate, discuss the issues of their constituents, and vote on issues common to ask of them, including the election of Bertie to represent them on the city level. Bertie then listens to Neil and the other neighborhood reps to advocate their interests, including the election of Cathy to represent the city/county, which continues to the election of Steven to represent the state, and Nathan to represent the nation.

When I have a concern about the nation, I tell Neil, who advocates for the whole neighborhood when he talks to Bertie. Bertie now hears the combined concerns of all the neighborhoods, which she communicates to Cathy. Cathy hears the combined concerns of all the boroughs, which she communicates to Steven. Steven communicates the combined concerns of all the counties to Nathan. Every stage has a face. Each representative is accountable to, and personally familiar with, every consistent they represent. Votes bubble upwards, ivory towers are avoided, every citizen has a direct chain of 5 people, with personal familiarity, linking them to the president.