Process of Legislation in a Multi Party Presidential Republic

 In a multi party republic, where all public positions are elected through the full use of ranked choice voting with secret ballots, using the form of proportional representation by single transferable vote for multi member position as in a Congress, instant runoff voting for governors among others, legislation is still passed by the same institutions, through majority votes in the Congress in each House, and with the signature of the President or their veto, and the possible override by a 2/3 supermajority in each House, and states have their own version (a few states have weak vetoes though, but may be supplemented through line item vetoes).

But the increase in the factions and the decentralization of authority in the congress and the probability of a single party being unable to acquire enough votes to block a veto override has major implications for the process of legislation. So, what important things change?

A major thing to add is that parties become split in an important manner: You do not have to support any particular legislative candidate in an election in order to end up with someone from that party in power, and just because you support one candidate from a party does not necessarily mean that those who are also candidates of the party will also be elected from your district.

In addition, things that are typically factions in existing parties will probably end up in different parties, Blue Dog Democrats will probably be a more typical Liberal Party, much like the association of Liberal as in the Free Democratic Party of Germany, the Australian Liberal Party, and the British Columbia Liberal Party. Progressive candidates in the Democrats may enter into a new party, perhaps some Democratic Socialist or Social Democratic Party. Meanwhile, Republicans may split into an Conservative People's Party, or an American Nationalist Party. And the existing small parties, most notably Greens and Libertarians, will have significant number of seats in government, a larger number of people will participate in their pimaries and bother to stand as candidates in those primaries and so you get more competitive and effective, well fought primaries, and well covered by the press candidates, and their ideologies can become more developed, thorough, and based on a solid grouping of voters that people pay attention to.

 Elections also tend to be more competitive, it is much harder to win further terms with a system where gerrymandering is likely to be ineffective with few wasted votes (in an STV district with 6 members to be elected, over 85% of the people can be accurately represented with someone you probably voted for, over 60% of whom likely on first preference votes with empirical results from Ireland and likely more people will have voted for candidates and parties who have at least some candidates of their preference winning, and that you can't always just ride your party's wave of support, you need your own individual brand, and with primaries nominating several candidates, they stand to be much more competitive, and funding even by small donors can compete against those with large donations if they only need to convince a quota to win), especially beyond about 8 or 12 years. so something has to remain with the party like their base of primary voters and their committees with experience in developing ideology. 

A good way of responding to this change is to make parties internally more democratic, which ranked ballots also do a lot to help provide. If you are particularly active in a party, you may be aware that it's not just candidates for public legislative, executive, sometimes judicial positions chosen during primaries but also precinct chairs, county committees, state committees, district committees, and delegates to conventions or assemblies of the county, district, state, and eventually, even the national convention every four years, with those elections also more likely to be competitive, multi candidate with a wide range of opinions and people who could be chosen to be part of their movements, and representative of those who voted for them. If the role of presidential nomination is directly given to the primaries, then the role of the conventions in terms of shaping ideology to be based on representative and proportionally represented angles, factions, and thoughts among the party can be even more important with their amendments and votes on the party's platform, with similar proposals happening at the state and local levels.

Primaries also don't lead to as much of a problem of a Trump vs the other candidates in the Republican primary in 2016 with such radically different viewpoints expressed at the time that they could almost be separate parties if not constrained by plurality, the Democratic primaries, especially in 2020 where there were by my estimate, two thousand and twenty candidates running for the Democratic nomination for president, also on branches that could almost be different parties. Their arguments and contests, to the extent ideology is important, tends to focus on praxis, candidate characteristics and ethics, delivery on promises, and much more narrow differences rather than whether America will be a relatively liberal society with Biden or a social democratic, maybe with some sprinkles of democratic socialism in some policy areas, from Sanders. 

This phase is a crucial step to much of the most important legislation in the country, and also is likely to shape the viewpoints and goals of the legislative caucuses to a greater degree than today where the caucus is a major place of fighting between often fundamentally different factions within the party, one such factionalism for instance being the cause of why John Boehner was ousted from the speakership. It can also be more democratic too, it's much easier to be part of a convention of over 2000 Republican delegates or 4500 Democratic delegates than it is to be a member of their caucus, and more people will have their views represented by delegates chosen that broadly where you might have 20-50 delegates chosen per congressional district rather than 5 House members (at best, if your party even elects someone, and even then, probably no more than 3 in practice). And they don't have the incentives that incumbent legislators often have with such tight races for reelection in a general election, salaries of legislators, and lobbying.

That said, there will remain important roles for the legislative caucus. They will be the ultimate ones taking on policy proposals that don't come from direct ballot initiatives and questions (and those are limited to non federal issues), they will take ultimate responsibility for policy successes and failures before the whole people and not just one party's voters in their district, and they will make choices about very fine details on bills and budget proposals. They will take into account more of the views less partisan ordinary residents of their district will have when they need these voters to win.

A bill will still officially start in the same place, as a member of the Congress, or in the case of a tax bill, a Representative, but the idea of them can come from a wide range of places, like the presidential requests to legislators, sometimes some things that they are required to propose like some kinds of resolutions according to law (sometimes the majority and minority leaders or chair or ranking members of committees have obligations to do this), their party's deliberation groups, interest groups might propose a bill (and with proportional representation, viewpoints of interest groups with less money to only get maybe a tenth of congress rather than needing a majority in any district) that can be more just to poorer or forgotten people), local officials like state governors or mayors, and ordinary people of America might also propose bills (also more likely at local levels). 

For many simpler bills or less controversial bills or amendments to bills, same with resolutions as well, the most likely way this might be done is that the leaders of the varying caucuses will negotiate with their party's whip and the leaders of other caucuses who check with their whips to see if an idea has support, and check with the president to see if they will veto it and if not, proceed, or if opposed, if they have the votes to override the bill, and the bill is likely to sail through pretty quickly. Some agencies that automatically need reauthorization are likely to be like this. 

If it's less simple, a more complicated process is likely to be necessary. The bill would formally be introduced in the House in question, and that gets sent to a committee. Where the speaker or majority leader isn't likely to have the votes from their party alone necessary to sustain their decisions to delay a bill or to send it to the wrong committee if an appeal were to be launched, they are forced to on a more timely basis send it to an appropriate committee. The committee chair, or the representatives of the party of the speaker or president or other veto gates in this process who are unlikely to have a majority necessary to kill a bill or to refuse to hold necessary hearings and get evidence along with testimony, if necessary by subpoena, they have more requirements in practice to allow bills and resolutions to be heard and given a fair chance with less risk of partisanship or monopolization of power by party leadership. 

 Those chairs and speakers or presidents pro tempore are also elected by the plenum by secret ballot, with more influence from most of the members of the House who aren't in any caucus's leadership, they become more firmly loyal to the backbench and are less likely to stop a bill anyway if their compatriots at least want to hear a bill. 

The whole House also has similar powers to compel bills and resolutions to be heard, with more discharge petitions being likely to pass if not scheduled timely as no party has a majority on their own to stop it again. It could even get so bad with rebellion that they cause a motion to vacate the chair of an obstructionist chair or speaker or president pro temp to be passed by majority vote, so they don't want to risk alienating the entire plenum just for the benefit of their own party. 

The other House has these functions as well, and the same considerations, so a bill of this nature can be considered much like any other bill is as a consideration from many different constituencies that is much harder to kill automatically or by these procedural hurdles and gets to a solid vote in committee or in the whole house where everyone goes on record in support or opposition to a bill or resolution. 

The function of a whip and the discussions in a party's legislative caucus or conference rooms, to introduce ideas to them and encourage party discipline in supporting or rejecting it, also becomes much less about the idea of being able to decide what does or does not get on the agenda for the entire house or a committee, and so, liberated from that process, can be more constructive about what the ideology of the party really is and what they support and do not support without necessarily killing an idea outright or assuring it's passage. It is much less a tool of power for the floor leader or speaker. 

The filibuster isn't as necessary or productive a tool in this kind of world. Few parties will ever get majorities, so needing a supermajority is less necessary for ordinary legislation to protect minority right, to prevent the law from being a weapon of the speaker or a caucus leader, or for partisan aims. It is more sufficient to protect these rights by more ordinary majorities when they are on purpose broken up in to groups which more accurately represent the whole people, not as two polarized blocs hating each other but as a plethora which can agree with others on some positions and agree with others on others and has an inherent need to work together or risk being left behind in the ever un-satiated quest to fulfill the people's needs and their rights. 

And the veto as I mentioned before can be important, but so long as the president's party doesn't have enough support for the sustaining of the veto in either House, and doesn't face a large enough rebellion among their caucus to lose that third in either House, the president can be disregarded, and more bills, less restrained by some speaker or floor leader or chair of a committee, will force the president to take personal responsibility for the veto and authorizing some kind of written justification for the bill which could be read to be bullshit by the opposition to their governance, which could be a major risk, one less likely to be taken, especially if the president's nominees in the Senate are also less likely to be automatically confirmed, the administration is facing a scandal or otherwise has major congressional hearings coming up that could embarrass it, is going to run out of money for a project they want without congressional support being bargained for in return for the law passing that might otherwise be vetoed, and where the president's desired laws wouldn't be passed if the law congress wants but which could be successfully vetoed and sustained ends up vetoed. 

And any House of Representatives that can pass a bill in a proportional system is very likely one where they won a majority of the votes in a competitive election just like the president did, and will have just as much legitimacy, even more legitimacy, than the president has over bills and a president arbitrarily vetoing legislation supported by a Congress which was itself democratically elected and keeps getting reelected by the people is likely to be vetoing popular bills and undermines their own political capital, maybe even their reelection.

It is also important to note here that not all bills necessarily need to be passed by Congress. Some do, such as any bill which is to govern federal courts, but many laws can be passed by states if there is the appropriate supply from federal funds, a decrease in federal taxes so as to allow states to raise their own rates to pay for it themselves (without effectively taxing the economy twice for the same thing), and barriers or definitions states must apply are changed in the benefit of states. State governments can become much more productive in this model as well with competitive elections, the need to please the electorate and a vast diversity of that electorate in all it's forms as a cross section, and with fewer procedural tricks as well. If there is a movement for something like clean water without lead in a state, there is likely to be a party that can push for it even if they won't on their own have a majority and need to bring the issue up for everyone else to record their stance and vote on it. It's common for federal systems with multi party democracy to have more decentralization with stronger power over their own affairs, so you could expect decisions to be specifically needing a federal solution not just a local one. 

And the alternative in such a republic is laws made by executive fiat or judicial fiat, both of which have been common despite how much power Congress does have in fact to change the law which most court cases depend on (only a minority directly tie into constitutional rights) and which the executive depends on for power. A good society does not let a dictator of one make a decision immediately without consultation or consent of the people or an oligarchy of nine or three in an appeals court make decisions slowly, on narrow issues in many cases, expensively and when you yourself have standing, and with mostly lawyers being tied to cases. America has rejected monarchy and kingship with the Independence from the United Kingdom, why should it tie itself to such limited representation of so few and you hope they are a great statesman like Bismarck or Cincinnatus and not a measly Crassus who had gold poured down his throat for his decadence and stupidity?

That fiat is the alternative to productive debate, rule by laws made and maintained on purpose and while the laws still suit the people and are rejected when they do not anymore and where new laws are adopted on purpose with the support of the people when the people are unsatisfied or require new policy to be adopted, and which restrain the executive and judges and provide the policy direction they should take, and legislators taking responsibility, such legislators representing the true nation America could be in all it's complicated facets, it's many peoples in many states, responsible to the people, and where anyone of many or no faiths, many races, and many levels of income or employment or background can win without regard for who you were but instead who you have become and how you have made yourself shine of civic duty or fade into the sewer of corruption, and where your hopes and dreams or the dashing thereof depends on the victory of a single person in a single election to decide the fate of America for a century, where every Tuesday in November every four years the eyes of the world focus on just two mediocre people, and you take out your dice and roll; Iacta Alea Esto.