How to fix America's broken political system?

The Supreme Court itself is often an appellate court as well, and often when cases are heard, even if they are upheld, the reasoning will be expanded on or decisions reached for different reasons.

I don't see why you guys just do the obvious. Stop presidential nominations and have judges appointed by an independent commission.

As I said, I wasn't endorsing them, just mentioning them. They happened to come up on a podcast I was listening to, with no discussion of what the possible outcomes would be of such a situation. I didn't see any advantage of them over our current system, but I'm not about to pretend I'm super knowledgeable about such things.

In the current US political climate I'm pretty sure the appointing of people to that commission would become politicized, taking you right back to square one.

Independent commissions only really work if you establish some strong ground rules on how appointments should be chosen.

Simple. You make sure the commission is cross party and made up of non-politicians.

How?

People's party registrations are somewhat arbitrary, since you can register as anything you want (and plenty of people with strong leanings register as independent). The only people whose party affiliations are likely to be both determinable and meaningful are... politicians.

Oh, simple.

Independent commissions are a good thing, but that doesn't present a workable model for how adding an extra layer would fix the issue.

http://amp.timeinc.net/time/5338689/supreme-court-packing

I believe @Ancalagon mentioned something like that. What do people think?

I am still hoping to hear an answer to that. I am genuinely interested in why first past the post is bad and what a better solution would be. I am not wedded to that system, it is just familiar, so please tell me what you think would be better and why. I actually do want to know.

@Fruitloop

Sorry, I'm on vacation in Vietnam. Haven't been keeping up.

Either (a) party-proportional or (b) ranked choice voting would be a huge improvement over FPTP (first past the post).

Here's a recent thread in which the subject of proportional voting was discussed. The biggest benefit is that few, if any, votes are wasted in a proportional system. All voters are well-represented.

https://wordforge.net/index.php?threads/a-new-proportional-representation-idea.115776/

Ranked choice voting is probably the more popular idea, already used in Australia, Ireland, Maine, and some other places. The big draw is that it encourages friendly coalition building, since candidates need to seduce their opponent's supporters for the second choice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting

Both of these schemes avoid the problem of minority rule.

agree in part, limited terms set in rotation like the Senate so that one comes up per presidential term and no re-appointments allowed.
Maybe reduce to 8 justices so the term is 16 years for each. I like your tie idea, but not unanimous