Comment by AnthonyMouse

> this means that in the modern political climate, the US Constitution is fully frozen

Would note that this is a very modern phenomenon, with Nixon having considered pushing for abolishing the electoral college in the 70s.

Yeah, I wasn’t clear enough. The first vote (before the election) requires a simple majority vote. The second vote (after the election) requires a 2/3 in favor vote in both houses.

I’m not sure if that’s worse than 3/4 states since the Netherlands isn’t so politically localized.

Further additions to your comment. Expanding on your downside: Big reforms like giving women the right to vote only took effect in 1971 on the federal level. On a cantonal level, Appenzell-Innerhoden had to be forced into it in the 90s by the Tribunal Federal, but well.

I'd add some advantages to the upside as well: some changes require a referendum, such as changes to the constitution. But there's more: a popular initiative can be launched and if you collect 100,000 signatures in 18 months, you can force a vote on your own law. This is most commonly done by political parties and adjacent organisations, so it is at least feasible that a privacy-conscious organisation could launch an initiative to make it illegal to store any kind of user-identifying data. It is even possible private citizens could do it. There would likely be a "contre-projet" arguing why this isn't a good idea, but there is often a for/against for any initiative or referendum and they get to present their views in detail (in paper booklets, the vote swiss app, and on the federal chancellery website).

Further upsides: unlike US/British/some other countries, nobody has a 50% voting block in the Swiss parliament and it has remained a coalition since the modern iteration of the country (since 1848).

Basically Swiss politics is extremely deliberative. I honestly think "we will quit Switzerland if they do this!" is a bit of a hyperbolic reaction.

Ah, so the referendum isn’t then scheduled for a date in short order if the requisite signatures are collected but held at the next regularly scheduled election? Fair enough.

I like the sound of the upside a lot though.

I think that’s an oversimplification. You can’t take the “free labor of performing democracy” and put it to equally good use doing anything else I can think of.

I guess you could work in soup kitchens, but that’s horribly inefficient welfare compared to just electing competent leadership, if the ultimate aim is to benefit The People.

Countries can be as unique as they want to be, but they still need a system for preventing authoritarianism. The existing system is fine if it's effective and not fine if it isn't.

It's an additional check. That's good, but it isn't always sufficient, because sometimes you can convince 51% of people to do something wrong.

> Whereas with ranked voting, the person who gets the most #1’s might not win and that can confuse some citizens.

Not ranked voting, ranked voting is still very broken. Rated voting. Approval voting is a rated voting system.

Score voting: Rate each candidate on a scale of 1 to 10.

Approval voting: Rate each candidate on a scale of 0 or 1.

Score voting (or STAR) is generally better and the argument that people are going to be confused by "that thing they use at the Olympics" is nonsense, but approval voting is fine if you want to silence the complainers while still using something that basically works.

> The US shows us right now that the constitution is just a piece of paper.

A constitution isn't just words, it creates a structure that exists in actual reality. The day before the tyrant comes you have multiple branches and levels of government. That stuff doesn't instantaneously cease to exist if they try to rip up the piece of paper, and its purpose is to fight against anyone who tries to rip it up.

If it fails at that purpose, your constitution contained insufficient checks and balances.(Notice that several of the ones in the original US constitution have been removed, and that was a mistake.)

France had a vastly bloodier path to that constitution as you know. And france’s constitution today is pretty bad. It fails to protect basic freedoms like speech and arms. It moves too much responsibility to the feds. Etc.