#voting algorithms

From the perspective of consent, mere majority rule is obviously insufficient, as 49% of the population may not have agreed to a given policy. Liberal democracy addresses this through "civil rights," which are outside the reach of a simple majority. Nationalism and federalism address this by splitting disagreeing groups into separate jurisdictions. Both approaches are necessarily incomplete, because 100% agreement is effectively impossible to reach for most issues. Even when two sides of an issue aren't incompatible (as with abortion), people will disagree about other issues.

However, this does not mean higher levels of representation above 50% are impossible. This is the challenge of proportional representation and proportional legislation.

Multi-Party Systems

Politics is largely about forming coalitions. In a two-party system, each major party is a large coalition of competing interest groups. In a multi-party system, each party represents a smaller coalition of interest groups; once elected, usually several parties will form into a larger explicit coalition.

Whether there are two parties or multiple parties depends on the mechanism used to count votes and allocate seats. The 'first-past-the-post' system of a single candidate with the most votes, where voters mark only one choice, will tend to result in a two-party system, because voting third party is a "wasted vote" unless they have good odds to beat 50%.

In various proportional systems, voters may vote for a number of seats to be awarded to a party, to be filled out by a party list. There may be a minimum percentage of the vote necessary for a party to hold seats, but this is much smaller than 50%.

Multi-party systems can achieve proportional representation, but there are challenges for them when governing and for achieving proportional legislation.

The multiple parties may fail to form a coalition; in parliamentary systems, they may fail to form a government.

A coalition of parties may 'freeze out' a rival party and keep them from having proportional influence on legislation indefinitely.

The coalition may fail to achieve a majority and thus may be unable to legislate during a crisis.

A minor party just large enough to push a coalition over 50% may negotiate disproportionate benefit relative to its share of the vote.

Voters receive a choice over which party they vote for, but not a direct choice over which coalition is in power.

(A recurring complaint is that a more powerful party may also keep a less powerful party in the coalition while not following through on their demands – though this complaint itself may be negotiating for leverage.)

A multi-party system means more seats are contested, but does not necessarily result in better government decisions. Germany's decisions to close down their nuclear power stations made them more vulnerable during the fossil fuel shortage associated with Russia's invasion of Ukraine – thereby giving more leverage to one of their rivals, Vladimir Putin.

Depending on how a multi-party system is implemented, it may de-emphasize the character and opinions of individual politicians in directing policy, and emphasize the party and the apparatus that run it.

Two-Party Systems

In a two-party system, both major parties will be around 50% of the vote at the primary level of contention. (In the United States, with the increase in the national flow of information, this is the federal level.) This results in an alternating back-and-forth of rule where minor interest groups can receive some representation when their big coalition is in power, which is about half of the time.

However, there are challenges for a two-party system.

States or districts which consistently lean left or right of the national average may be ruled by one party consistently, resulting in the seats going uncontested, contributing to mismanagement and corruption.

The political minority do not receive legislative representation - especially if this is consistent, as above.

When districts consistently go uncontested, a strong opposition party apparatus capable of fielding good candidates and running solid elections may not be present - it would be a money pit with little reward during most elections.

Two-party systems are more vulnerable to gerrymandering than more proportional systems.

Issues may be nonsensically polarized into two opposing positions, when they would be better represented by three or more positions, or grouped in seeming nonsensical ways.[2]

Generally with how a two-party system is implemented, individual politicians will be more influential (such as West Virginia's Joe Manchin as of 2022).

In America, in which the two-party system is strong, it may be necessary for the two existing parties (and all their support infrastructure) to support a shift to a multi-party system, which they may be reluctant to do. A voting reform that leaves the national two-party system intact may have a better chance of their approval.

The tendency for the number of viable parties to be "one plus the number of seats in a constituency" is known as Duverger's Law. However, we can induce a two-party system artificially...

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[1] This theory works even if it doesn't reflect "true" public opinion, since institutional control is a major factor in a conflict and can influence public opinion.

[2] This last concern suggests a radical form of voting in which voters assign representatives by category of issue, but making that work (and resist tampering by political operatives, who would deliberately miscategorize everything) would be complicated and is beyond the scope of this document.

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Two-Party Two-Seat Proportional District Voting

Procedure

Only the two parties who received the most votes across all offices for the relevant level (state or federal) during the primary election go on to compete during the general election, ensuring there are only two viable parties.

Rather than each legislative district having one vote in the legislature (as exercised by a single representative), each district receives a number of votes in the legislature according to its adult citizen population. [3]

Each legislative district has two seats. The first seat goes to the candidate with the most votes. The second seat goes to the candidate with the second-most votes.

The district's votes in the legislature are split proportionally according to what percentage of the vote each candidate won in the general election. If Candidate A won 60% of the vote in the district of Townville, adult citizen population 100,000, then he would have 60,000 votes in the legislature.

Individual Considerations

In this system, votes are held by each individual politician.

While the general incentive for the party overall is still to win by as few votes as possible in order to make the fewest compromises, each individual politician's power and influence in the legislature continues to rise for every additional vote from 0% to 100% - winning by 60% or even 70% is desirable.

Likewise, voter approval falling from 70% to 60% matters. Voters in the aggregate not only have the opportunity to express a binary approval of a politician, but also a level of approval. If some would-be supporters sit out to protest some draconian policy but the rest of your base loathe the opposition party too much to vote for them, it's still problem for you as an individual politician.

Since votes are allocated by district, opposition voters turning out to specifically vote against a candidate rather than staying home is also a problem, even if you still win the district overall.

From the perspective of the opposition party, it's worth it to contest a district even if they only expect to win 30% of the votes, since that helps their overall balance in the legislature. Parties may have more diverse interests as you have more rural Democrats and more urban Republicans in the mix, rather than a rural and an urban party each contesting for the suburbs.

Political Machines

Votes per district are awarded by percentage population instead of raw number of votes because this reduces the incentive for political machines to add fake votes by reducing what they have to gain – particularly when districts have differing levels of turnout. District vote counts are also isolated from each other, which limits the damage from a political machine.

Further, every district is contested by a member of the opposition party, including a campaign apparatus which can fund a legal team. This means that every district can be subject to election observers that can sue if an election was handled improperly, rather than just writing off entire districts or entire categories of districts (such as big cities or rural religious areas).

Term Limits

Since a politician can only truly be kicked out of office by losing a primary election, every politician should be limited in both consecutive (6-12 years) and lifetime (12-20 years) terms in office for a given office. Spending too long in a single office increases the chance of creating patronage networks in which the candidate sells out the abilities of the office (since the politician more reliably has the abilities of the office available to sell, and a corrupt deal does not have to be made across multiple politicians), or uses the ability of the office to reward political allies (such as creation of bureaucracies staffed by political allies).

Gerrymandering

Gerrymandering in this system is not strictly impossible, but it is much more difficult, and the results are different from conventional gerrymandering.

For instance, gathering all big city Democratic Party voters into a single district will just create a single "Super-Democrat" with potentially millions of votes.

Gerrymandering in this system can influence the kind of politicians that appear, but it will have much less influence over the overall number of votes that each party has in the legislature.

Variations: 5-Star System

Voters could be asked to split their vote between the two candidates in increments of 20% - for instance, to vote 80% for one candidate and 20% for the other candidate. This would allow voters to express a lower preference for one candidate without giving a majority to the other candidate, but would favor candidates that had supporters more willing to express 100% for their own candidate.

In part because it incentivizes radicalizing one's voter base, and in part because it isn't clear that dedicated partisans should have more influence, it is not clear that preference-based voting is superior.

Variations: The Senate

For mechanisms like the US Senate, which are designed to force an intersection of policy that's acceptable between large and small or rural states, 1,000 votes divided up proportionally between two seats could simply be used in place of population for the number of votes per district (in this case, a state) in the legislature.

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[3] Limitation of voting to adult citizens is a separate topic for another essay.

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Campaign Promise Bonds

A campaign promise bond is a financial instrument that allows conditionally sending present campaign funds to a future re-election campaign.

Design Considerations

Politicians routinely make campaign promises that they do not fulfill, because they benefit from more people thinking the politician agrees with them than the politician actually intends to make policy for. (Saying things is cheap. Repairing infrastructure is expensive and may involve harming political allies. [4]) The more politicians push expectations beyond what they can actually accomplish, the more people assume politicians are lying about what they can accomplish. If the voters assume much of what a politician says is either a lie, misrepresentation, or exaggeration, this situation makes it unclear just what voters are voting for. [5]

Politicians lying reduces democratic legitimacy. So we would like some kind of promise that is binding.

On the other hand, any mechanism to make it outright illegal for politicians to lie will be captured by political operatives and weaponized against opposing political parties. Even if a 'campaign truth committee' doesn't just fabricate or misrepresent information, they can selectively punish only one party, or turn true statements into lies by redefining words. So it can't be a 'campaign truth committee'.

Politicians also need a way to adapt to changing circumstances if the conditions that favored their initial platform have changed since the start of their term, or make compromises with other politicians. Thus ideally, it shouldn't be a financial instrument based on their own personal funds or wealth.

And we must be careful that whatever we choose does not become a method to bribe politicians.

Procedure

1. Initialization of Primary Offering.

Prior to formally entering the primary campaign, the candidate comes up with a bundle of campaign promise bonds. Each is associated with a specific campaign promise, as specified in the bond. He then sets the fixed ratio of funds that will be deposited in each, e.g. 50% of funds to Promise A, 25% to Promise B, 12.5% to Promise C, etc. This bundle is the primary offering, so it isn't possible to only donate to a specific campaign promise.

2. Primary Campaign.

The candidate may redirect his campaign funds into shares of the primary offering at any time, but may not withdraw shares. The money is distributed according to the fixed ratio.

Voters may donate campaign funds to the candidate's campaign, or buy shares of the primary offering, the funds again being distributed according to the fixed ratio.

The candidate must post details about all the campaign promise bonds, in order, and the ratio of funds between them. He may advertise the specific dollar amounts associated with each campaign promise bond.

3.A. Primary Election - Loss.

If a candidate loses, voters who possess shares of the primary offering are refunded the funds. They are free to donate again to a different campaign.

Shares held by the candidate are returned to the candidate's overall campaign fund to be dealt with however leftover campaign funds are normally dealt with.

3.B. Primary Election - Win.

The candidate creates a new, second bundle of campaign promise bonds called the general offering. Like the primary offering, this has a fixed ratio of funding between bonds.

The candidate and voters may direct funds into either the primary offering, the general offering, or both.

4.A. General Election - Loss.

As with 3.A., the shares of the general offering and primary offering are refunded to donors, as these were associated with a term of office that now is not going to happen.

4.B. General Election - Win.

The elected candidate may now plow any remaining leftover campaign funds into either the primary offering or the general offering, allowing them to potentially recover leftover campaign funds in the next election season.

Prior to the evaluation, the elected official flags whether a promise was completed or not completed.

During this time, shareholders may sue if a bond was falsely marked as completed. The loser pays the cost of the litigation. However, a lawsuit may also be set pending for when the campaign promises will be formally evaluated later (step #5).

5. Evaluation.

The primary offering may be evaluated two months before the start of a new primary campaign at the earliest, or evaluation may deferred until the general election, with the exception of bonds that have specific times (e.g. "throughout my entire term, I will never invade Canada").

The general offering is similar, starting at two months before the general election campaign (so two months before primary elections would normally pick a specific candidate).

The campaign may not access funds from a contested campaign promise bond, but they may opt to take out loans against them.

If a campaign promise bond is ruled not-completed, the associated amount of donor-shareholder funds are returned to donor-shareholders, while the campaign's share of funds are paid into a general government fund that is evenly dispersed the next year among all citizens.

Funds from completed campaign promise bonds are campaign funds that the candidate may use for re-election campaining, but are separate to some degree from the general campaign fund (see #6).

The candidate may opt to raise another primary and general offering for the next re-election campaign.

6. Term Limit / Leaving Office / Re-election Loss.

The former elected official has four options for use of funds from successfully-completed campaign promise bonds if he will no longer be in the same office.

Donate to national party pool for allocating as campaign funds (1/2 remaining funds each year for 10 years; may not specify any conditions).

Donate to state/local party pool for allocating as campaign funds (1/2 remaining funds each year for 10 years; may not specify any conditions).

Send to general disbursement fund (as in non-completed bonds in #6).

Use these funds to start a new campaign for himself for any other suitable elected office in the country within 2 years.

Considerations

The bundling of the bonds as a fixed ratio of funding, and fixing of the platform at two points prior to the campaign starting, prevents a single funder or group of funders from throwing huge amounts of funds at a single issue or group of issues that's been broken up into small units to hide the nature of the transaction. They have to fund the full platform, or none of it, and the candidate's commitments on these matters are public knowledge.

At the same time, a candidate can ignore a campaign promise if he's willing to take the hit to future campaign funds.

Voters can donate to platforms speculatively, and only have to pay if the candidate gets elected to office, and only to the degree that he completes the campaign promises.

If a promise is not completed, one of the widest possible groups (every adult citizen) is compensated, which means that the amount of compensation is low, which disincentivizes sabotage.

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[4] For instance, repairing infrastructure might involve harming regulators (reduced regulations leading to reduced regulator jobs), environmentalists (a construction project consumes resources and can disrupt the environment), unions (if unions are driving the cost of the project above normal), or construction companies (if construction companies are driving the cost above normal levels). Even if all 4 of those groups are in agreement and the project arrives on-time, it still costs money and not everyone in the taxable area may benefit.

[5] Beyond "not the other guy".

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2-Stage Automatic National Coalition

in parliamentary systems, you vote for a party you like, which then compromises your principles for you by coalitioning w/ parties you hate. in the US system, the party already is a coalition with members you hate, so you have to compromise your principles yourself. sux.

- @adamleeds, on twitter, 2022

This is a technique which combines a multi-party system at the state level with a two-party system at the national level, allowing voters to vote on the ruling coalition, while preventing party-dominant states.

Motivations

The Internet has increased the flow of information through America. Power is also centralized in the federal government (if someone makes a state law it may well be overruled at the federal level). Both of these trends have lead to a focus on the national level of American politics.

With a focus on state-level politics, two state-level parties can fight for control of the middle-ground of that particular state. With nationally-focused politics, a state that's consistently to the right or left of the national average can end up dominated by a particular party, reducing both representation and competition.

Political battles feel high-stakes, because if an issue is decided nationally, it's decided everywhere (not just legally, but also socially, thanks to the Internet). The quality of political discourse – never particularly great – degrades, as no side feels it can afford a loss, and thus has to defend whatever bullshit the leaders of their coalition come up with.

This is worse with only two parties.

The first reason is because every issue is divided into only two choices. Sometimes this makes sense overall, but other times these choices aren't related to what would actually solve the problem. Often instead of wanting generically "more" or "less" of something, like regulations, you want better of the same amount of that thing.

Even when partisans for the two parties change their minds, they often simply flip and take the opposite stance rather than adopting a more nuanced position. (For a recent example, COVID stances flipped during 2020.)

The second reason is that these issues are grouped into two huge bundles, in ways that don't always make sense, which are presented as two opposing worldviews. While (if we're being charitable), the Democrats are liberal progressives and the Republicans are liberal conservatives, [6] many voters may feel as though switching to the other party requires them to switch sides on almost every issue at once. [7]

But if moving from Democrats to Republicans (or vice versa) is unthinkable, what about a move within the Democrats?

To some degree this is already possible with primary voting, but after the primary partisan voters have to vote for their party's guy in the general, which may still make them feel complicit. (Some voters would even rather waste their vote on a failed Libertarian candidacy with no chance of success than vote for one of the two main parties.)

What if, when confronted about building codes or environmental rules that make housing construction prohibitively expensive, a Democrat could say, "Don't blame me, man, I voted for the YIMBYs"? [8] What if he could actually mean that?

Though the US's long survival with a two-party system is itself an argument to keep the two-party system, suppose we also wanted to keep the Democrats and Republicans around on the national level particularly so that we don't get parliamentary shenanigans. (Someone will have to put together a coalition with at least 50% of the vote anyway.)

Our YIMBY Democrat couldn't vote for a YIMBY third party, because that would be throwing his vote away. If he voted for a YIMBY caucus within the Democratic Party, that would be less democratic than a primary vote. Somehow he would've voted for a YIMBY party that is also part of the Democratic Party.

Is that possible?

If we connect a multi-party system at the state level to a two-party system at the national level, it is.

Conditions

Each national district has two seats, reserved for the two national parties that obtained the most votes during the primary election.

Each state district has 5-9 seats, awarded to the top 5-9 parties during the general election. (There must be enough granularity to allow flexibility in the coalitions.)

Procedure

1. Primary Campaign.

Each state-level candidate registers with a state-level political party for the primary election that will choose the state-level party's candidate for the general election.

The state-level candidate picks a superior running mate – a national-level candidate. The national-level candidate makes an ordered list of which national-level party he would like to associate with. Most likely this will start with one of the two major parties that were selected during the last general election.

2. Primary Election.

Registered voters for each state-level political party vote on a state- and national-level pair of candidates to represent their party in their district. This probably uses either a contingent vote (similar to a compressed 2-round system) or instant runoff voting.

3. National-Party Elimination.

Each national-level candidate is treated as a voter with a ballot worth the number of votes they received in the primary election, including candidates below the majority of the district.

The two national parties which have the highest number of first-choice votes in the primary across all the primary elections in the country are kept and allowed to run in the general election. The rest are removed from the running.

4. Automatic National Coalition Formation.

The state-level party's national-party affiliation in the district is chosen by the national-level candidate that won the primary election for that district. Affiliation runs down his list of options in-order until selecting one of the two remaining national-level parties chosen in step #3.

If the national-level candidate did not specify either of the two remaining national-level parties, he is disqualified from the national-level general election.

The national party affiliation of the state-level party may vary district-to-district.

The national-level parties are now effectively coalitions of each state-level party in each district that shares their national-level party affiliation. (This is likely a left-coalition, a right-coalition, and a centrist party split between them urban/rural.) This is called the automatic national coalition.

5. General Offering, then General Campaign.

The national-level candidate for each state-level party puts together his general offering of campaign promise bonds (see section above).

This allows voters within the chosen automatic national coalition to choose the overall coalition platform, and the candidate to make promises to members of the other parties in the coalition.

6. General Election - State-level Parties.

Each voter votes for one of the 5-9 state-level parties on the ballot. Each state-level party legislator receives a number of votes in the state-level legislature according to the percentage of the vote they received in the district, times the adult citizen population of the district.

Someone who votes for a state-level party within one of the automatic national coalitions is known as a 'coalition voter' for that national-level party.

7. General Election - National Coalition District Representative.

Each voter may rank all national-level candidates, including national-level candidates that don't match their state-level party's national affiliation.

The national-level candidate with the fewest first-choice votes from their coalition voters is eliminated, and those ballots are then redistributed to the next choice.

This process then hops to the other coalition and eliminates the weakest candidate there, moving back and forth until each coalition has been reduced to one national-level representative. If all candidates in one coalition except one have been eliminated, the process proceeds in the other coalition until that coalition has also been reduced to one representative.

Though voters may vote cross-coalition (e.g. a Libertarian state-level party voter voting for a Democrat-affiliated national-level candidate), only same-coalition votes count against elimination as the coalition candidate.

After the two coalitions have each been reduced to one candidate, the remaining cross-coalition votes are allocated as "bonus votes" which counts towards percent control of the district's votes in the legislature. As candidates are eliminated, a ballot may switch back and forth between same-coalition votes and cross-coalition votes.

8. Abstentions & Exhausted Ballots.

Ballots which specifically have no positions marked are subtracted from the district's total number of votes in the legislature, as are exhausted ballots for which all acceptable candidates have been eliminated.

Procedure - Summary

The state legislature is split up into a bunch of parties, while the national legislature only has the two most popular parties.

Assuming the Green Party on the state level is usually associated with the Democratic Party on the national level, a Green Party voter first votes in the primary election to pick their party's state legislature representative, and their party's national legislature representative (probably a Democrat). They run together in pairs like President and Vice President.

All the state parties that are running Democrats in the national election are bundled together and pick a single Democrat to represent them in the national legislature during the general election.

The national candidates make promises to the members of the other parties in their group, and voters can rank the national candidates by which one they prefer. Voters can also vote for someone outside the group, but this isn't counted until after each group has a representative.

Further Design Considerations - National Party Affiliation

We can think of step #4, national party affiliation, as having two axes. The first is whether the party affiliation is determined at the district level (national party affiliation differs by district) or the state level (national party affiliation is the same for a state-level party in every district). The second is whether the national party affiliation is determined by the voters or by the candidates chosen by the voters.

For the first consideration, if we want national control to switch back and forth between parties, then the connection between a state party and a national party should be weakened. This is more difficult if all national politicians in the party must be switched over to the other national party at the same time – in that case the party will have adopted ideology to support its connection to a particular national party and depend on that affiliation more strongly to get elected. If a state-level party is routinely 60% A + 40% B, then a +10 B shift represents a few politicians switching rather than a paradigm shift that moves the overall party firmly into the other camp.

For the second consideration, a national-level candidate having to campaign for what they consider to be the opposing party may put in less effort, and may be yanked out of supporting structures by a surprise party switch.

Another way to view this is that overall, in majoritarian systems, if you're in the majority, you get to pass legislation, while if you're not in the majority, you don't get much influence at all on legislation. (Beyond this is the idea of proportional legislation, which is another topic for another time.) Supposing a centrist party wants to pass policy, then a big factor in which side they should join is uncertainty. (This may contribute to sticking with e.g. a left coalition rather than alternating rule.)

Splitting the party affiliation increases the uncertainty (because the whole centrist vote is no longer allocated as a block), and changes the scale of consideration (from the party as a whole to individual politicians). With better odds of a 50-50 split, it makes more sense for centrist politicians to join whichever side is currently expected to modestly lose, as their supporters will be a larger share of voters within that potential coalition (which could win with their support), increasing their odds of taking the national district representative spot.

Natural Extensions

A national-level party can create an official platform through promoting a series of standardized campaign promise bonds that it agrees to insure the legal defense of.

Features - Shared with Two-Party Proportional District

Every District is Contested - Because there are two seats per national district, there's always a reason to run a rival candidate to try and get the minority of votes, which can be combined with the votes from your party's stronghold districts in the legislature.

Marginal Votes Matter - Going from 70% of the vote to 60% of the vote influences an individual politician's power, so disapproval still matters even in "safe" districts.

District Political Minority Representation - The main political minority of each district receives a representative who has votes to bargain with in the legislature.

Increased Within-Party Interest Diversity - Instead of running a rural-and-suburban party against an urban-and-suburban party, each party has a substantial minority even outside of their geographic strongholds. This should lead to policy which considers the needs of all areas of a state, not just those electorally favored by the current ruling party.

National Majority - The procedure will almost always produce a national-level majority in countries with millions of voters, rather than a tie. As an enforced two-party system, parliamentary problems like failures to form a coalition are avoided.

Features - Additional to 2-Stage Automatic National Coalition

Pre-Election Coalitions - While there are multiple parties as with a more typical proportional system, the coalitions aren't formed after the election, but during the election process, which means a ruling coalition has been picked and can start governing on day 1.

Voter Choice of Coalition - Instead of the political parties coming up with the ruling coalition by themselves without input from voters, voters pick both between two broad coalitions and coalition membership. Regardless of what the politicians might want, the choices have been democratically legitimized.

Fewer Single-Party-Dominant States - Even a state which leans to the left or right of the national average should see multiple parties competing with each other to hold the state legislature seats. (Two-Party Proportional District would still see "red states" and "blue states," just ones with more competitive opposition parties.)

More Within-Coalition Variety of Politicians - Politicans are picked from several points within the coalition, rather than taken from the middle and filtered by the general. "Moderates" aren't just politicians close to the line, but can be official representatives of moderate factions within each party.

Partially-Binding Campaign Platform - Each national-level candidate lays out a specific platform (in the form of campaign promise bonds), where there is a method of financial leverage against the candidate for failing to implement campaign promises, while not completely preventing elected officials from responding to changes in the situation.

Increased Legibility of Coalitions - Just how much is each ideological voting bloc actually represented in the party? With this method, it can now be measured electorally. Not only that, but the campaign platforms allow better quantifying just how 'radical' one of the national parties really is.

Ranked Voting for National Candidates - Allows voters to express how they feel about multiple different candidates.

Risks

Dominant Coalition - This is difficult to evaluate without a field test, but some kind of structural reason may render one coalition more viable than another on a continuing basis, with the presence of multiple parties shifting the balance to a consistent +5 or something along those lines.

Identity Parties - Shared class or religious interests could lead to explicitly race or religion focused parties that would normally have been drowned out under a more conventional system, which could lead to an increase in tension if other voters perceive themselves as at odds with such a group.

Complexity - It shouldn't be all that complex in practice once voters get used to it, but politics is quite contentious.

Variants - Inter-Party Lawsuits

Standing for suit in resolution of campaign promise bonds offered by the national-level candidates can be shifted from all shareholders to just the party officials and/or elected officials of the state-level party within the same automatic national coalition, in order to prevent rival-coalition parties from buying up campaign promise bonds in order to conduct lawfare. (On the other hand, a loser-pays system should prevent this from being necessary.)

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[6] Yes, America has two liberal parties. From the perspective of Communists, liberals are "right-wing." Of course, from the perspective of Reactionaries, liberals are "left-wing." Neither party is interested in nationalizing all industries or reinstituting monarchy. Remarkably for a political topic, they're both even correctly named – "Democrats" and "Republicans."

[7] If the two parties are clouds of issues that are decided on somewhat randomly, which one do you pick? My personal solution is to pick whichever issue is currently the most avoidably worst, and make the decision based on that. (I can and have switched parties before, and will likely to do again.)