What new kind of new rules could foster productivity in Congress? How could we shake up the game to produce more problem solving and compromise?

In the first and the second article about the integrity of sports vs the integrity of politics, we saw that politics simply wasn’t set up for integrity, clarity, or performance. The game of politics wasn’t set up to produce accountability. It just assumed it.

Let’s generate some ideas right now, on the fly, and see how they change the game.

New rules to foster competition

Imagine we double the number of representatives so every district gets two- the top two vote getters in each election. Usually that’ll be a Democrat and a Republican.

In the election, there are two votes. First, you can vote just for one of the two incumbents. Second, you get to pick a first and second choice for the regular election. If your first choice is an incumbent who is voted out from the first race, your second choice counts.

We could leave the Senate as it is, except maybe shorten their term to four years. And have both senators up for election at the same time, again with the same rule.

If we guarantee two incumbents are squaring off against each other in each election, would they compete more? Would one want to score points by, say, doing what the people want? Maybe they’d support term limits, or anti-corruption legislation, or campaign finance reform?

Right off the bat, this will give us a turnover in Congress of about 55%. Today it’s only 10%.

New rules to foster working together

The number of Democrats and Republicans will probably be very close with the previous changes. Let’s see what happens when we change another rule.

Let’s say the new rule is: A law can only pass if it gets 65% of the votes. Would this lead to more compromises?

Maybe. They’d be competing to do what the people want, and they’d need at least 5-15% of votes from the other party to succeed. Would we get a law passed that requires universal checks for the sale of guns? (This is also known as “closing the gun-show loophole”, and letting individuals sell to anyone.)

New rules to break up the power

One more rule change: The parties share control. Each party can have control for a number of days based on their proportion. The minority party makes the calendar. The majority party picks a 2-week period to rule. Then the minority party. Then the majority party, etc.

The rationale for this is pretty simple. Why should a party with 54% of the representatives control the House or Senate 100% of the time? How would this change the game?

And what if the chairs of the committees also changed periodically? And what if the party that controls the committees must always be the other party from the speaker of the house?

There are LOTS more possibilities where this came from