American Politics- Alternitive Parties

Great Debates
21

Which is it? Are 10% of people really “Libertarians”, or do Libertarians get more involved in the electoral process? If their candidate gets 1% of the vote, I’d say they are far less involved than the average person.

I think a lot of people are frightened by the Libertarian party. I’m all for getting big government out of my hair, until I find out that also means they get out of the things I want their help on. Farmers aren’t going to vote against farm subsidies. The elderly aren’t going to reduce medicare.

“The large print givith, and the small print taketh away.”
Tom Waites, “Step Right Up”

22

Great! Now, do you have one for the radical liberal?

“The large print givith, and the small print taketh away.”
Tom Waites, “Step Right Up”

23

The greatest problem with the U.S. political system has to do with representation. In a typical European democracy, a party needs only about 5% of the vote to be represented in parliament. That means that if my minority opinion(s) are shared by even only 5% of the populace, I will be represented by the party I support in the legislature. In the U.S., however, it is all or nothing. This also means that theoretically one of the two major parties, let’s say the Republicans, could win with 50.01% of the vote (or even much less in 3+ way races) in every district in the country. You would then have a 100% GOP congress, and half the population would not be represented.
This of course is only an extreme example, but it does reflect the fact that you are not represented if your party does not fully win in your district/state. No coalitions, no shared power in close races, just absolute winners and losers.

Of course any system can lead to unsavory governments like in Austria. But at least there is a Green Party there in parliament to protest (and introduce votes of no confidence, which it just did – unfortunately with no success.)

24

So, if I’m totally middle of the road, can I support total freedom for guns to have abortions?

::grin, duck and run::

SanibelMan - My Homepage
“Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.”

25

http://sp-usa.org/

26

Sake said:

It is never wasted. I would rather vote for the party or candidate that I believe would serve us best even if the chance is remote that he or she is not elected. We take that chance, even in the two major parties.

If a candidate (like Bush or Gore) don’t follow at least 70% of the things I believe in I don’t vote for that candidate.

My vote this next presidential election, Libertarian, will say “I am tired of politics as usual and it’s time for a change.” I realize that the Libertarians are not widely known (my father had never heard of the party) but as time goes on things will change.

To sit back and go with the flow and vote for a candidate because he’s “popular” is wasting your vote. It’s the lesser of two evils syndrome.

27

Pardon my postings, I want to voice my opinions but my typos are way out of control. I promise to be more careful!

=========

Sake also said:

What do you define “alternative”?

I am a white female, 31, with no college education and my views are niether conservative or liberal.

I was brought up in a Republican household, in fact my mother worked for Senator Bill Armstrong to get him elected.

28

tech: It’s ethically admirable, but ultimately naive to vote with your conscience.

My personal observations of libertarian demographics may have nothing to do with the actual statistics of libertarian affiliation.

It would be interesting to have a mock presidential election on this board and then compare the results to the actual election in November. It’ll be tough to get all 4,000+ of us to vote (and only once) though! Any ideas how we can do this?

Yet to be reconciled with the reality of the dark for a moment, I go on wandering from dream to dream.

29

What is so naive about voting for those you believe in?

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Side note, Sake that particular posting is labeled as 666 me thinks there’s a hidden meaning here. < grin >

30

Why don’t we just hold a run-off between the top two contenders whenever no presidential candidate gets a majority? Don’t plenty of states and cities do that for their elected offices?

31

Sake:

The prepositional phrase was hardly necessary.

32

It seems to me that this ‘wasting your vote’ argument makes no sense at all. There has never been a federal election decided by a single vote, or even by a thousand votes. So you are always’wasting your vote’ in the sense that it won’t change the electoral decision.

But the impact of your vote is much greater if you vote for candidates with a small number of votes to start with. Adding a vote to someone who only gets 1,000 other votes makes a perceptible difference. Adding a vote to Al Gore’s 150 million or so will not.

Changes in party structure happen gradually. If the Libertarians get, say, 5% of the vote next time, it will be a wake-up call. Not only will the elected politicians have to pander to that new voting bloc (especially by trying to grab those voters in the NEXT election by moving towards a more libertarian platform), but in the next election the Libertarians would be able to raise more money, and they would be taken more seriously meaning they’ll pick up a few more swing voters. So maybe they get 10% next time. That makes them credible, and suddenly they get included in debates, have articles written about them, etc. So in the NEXT election maybe they have a shot at become a semi-official 3rd party, with perhaps 20-30% of the popular vote. Now they are in position for a run at the presidency, or representation in Congress or the Senate.

THAT is how change happens. No one voting Libertarian expects to see a Libertarian President in the next election. But they just do what little they can to maintain the presence, to keep the heat on, to push their beliefs forward. If real change comes, it’ll take time.

33

As you can see from the number of posts I have I am a virgin to this forum. I dont know if it is justified or not, but I take it as a source of pride that my first question was placed in the great debates section which implies to me that the moderator feels that this will be a long term, somewhat heated argument.
Here is my point of view. I use the 1992 election as an example, for demonstration purposes I’m going to use popular vote versus electoral vote. My job, bartender in a moderate to upscale hotel in Atlanta, allows me to talk to a significant number of people from all parts of the country. Although I can not offer any scientific data, I would estimate that 10 to 15 % of the people who voted for Clinton or Bush would have voted for Perot if they had felt that he had a “realistic chance of winning.” The vast majority of these people felt he had no chance because he wasn’t a candidate of the mainstream parties. If these people had voted for the man instead of the party he could well have been president (which is an argument for the current system in hindsight). My point is (and this maybe a different thread, I’ll let the moderator or Cecil decide) if there was a candidate who was someone that who most closely agreed your point of view, even if you are a Rush “dittohead” or a “yellow-dog democrat”, would you vote for him or her?

Is there a re-hab center for people hooked on phonics?

34

My favorite system has everyone ranking their top three candidates. The first-rank votes are counted, and if no candidate has a majority, the last-place candidate is dropped and all the second-place votes under him move up to first. The first-place votes are then re-counted.

For instance–say 40% of people vote Bush-Gore-Nader, 35% vote Gore-Nader-Bush, 20% vote Nader-Gore-Bush, and 5% vote Nader-Bush-Gore. Nader, in last place, is then dropped, and his second-place votes move up to first, giving Gore 55% of the vote and Bush 45%.

Anyone know what this system is called? I think the Reform party is going to use it to pick their candidate.

Dr. J

35

As for the OP:

I mentioned in the other thread that I am a registered Democrat, but that my views are more in line with the Green party. (I like the Labor party, too–what can I say? I’m a pinko commie hippie liberal. Now where did my hacky sack go?)

That said, I will probably vote for the candidate who represents my views the best, unless a likely winner is a candidate that I really don’t want to win. This would be the case in my above Bush/Gore/Nader race–I really like Nader, but I really dislike Bush. I am lukewarm on Gore, but I would probably vote for him anyway because he has the best shot at beating Bush. On the other hand, if Gore were the clear front-runner, I would probably vote Nader.

A lot of Greens are hoping Ralph won’t run for just this reason–they feel the best he could do is take a few percent from Gore, when that could make the difference between Gore and Bush.

Dr. J

(PS: Sam Stone–that is the saddest song ever written. John Prine is the man.)

36

Tech, how can you “believe” in a professional politician? I can not comprehend how someone could be so naive as to expect their politician to actually live up to his or her promises, especially when most of what is promised is impossible to fulfill (e.g., the President can not lower your taxes or outlaw abortions).

Lib: You’re on track, but a tad too cynical here. Voting and (more and more importantly) polling has a very significant effect on election results. My phrase was very necessary.

Sam, not to pick on you, but you’re wrong on several things. You’re wrong about the single vote, for one. In 1876 Hayes beat out Tilden by a staggering ONE electoral college vote! Poor Tilden even had 250,000 more popular votes, the poor bastard! That one vote clinched the presidency for Hayes.

If you’re talking popular votes, we have to go forward to 1880 when Garfield beat Hancock with a mere 7,000.

Gore won’t get anything NEAR 150M votes: We will be lucky to get 100 million citizens to vote TOTAL.

Changes in party structure and power tend to happen suddenly, often as the result of a national crisis. It would be great if the Libertarians could count on a gradual increase in political power. The American Independent Party hasn’t been so lucky. They were doing quite well in the 60s, culminating in 1968 with Wallace’s 9.9M votes (13.5% of the total). The very next election they floundered with under 1%. Ross Perot grabbed the limelight and an astounding 19% third party vote in 1992, only to command 8% of the vote in 96. I’m afraid the only chance the Libertarian Party has is to hold a powerful, young candidate in the wings and pray for a national disaster.

Midnight, it’s a good debate - thanks. I agree with your 10% estimate. Perceived political efficacy is dropping. It’s sad when fewer than 50% of this nation’s registered voters actually turns out to vote. To answer your question - yes. Even the electoral college is not bound by their Party, but is free to choose any of the candidates they so desire.

Yet to be reconciled with the reality of the dark for a moment, I go on wandering from dream to dream.

37

Actually, this already happens (sort of). If a candidate does not get a majority of the electoral votes, then congress chooses the next president. So Clinton must have recieved a majority of the electoral votes in order to take office without a congressional vote.

Under the US system, whether or not he recieved a majority of the popular votes is irrelevant. And I happen to think that’s a good thing, but I’m pretty weird.

38

What’s the advantage to this system? Compromise?

39

The main advantage (to the voting system I described) is that a candidate cannot win with a simple plurality.

For instance, say 30% of the voters like Candidate X enough to vote for him, but the other 70% find him completely repulsive. The other 70% are scattered around, so that 30% is the largest chunk. In our system, he wins. In the other system, the repulsed 70% would all probably rank him last, so he would not.

This is not very useful in our two-party-plus-hangers-on system, but would be very useful if there were multiple contenders. In that situation, it can prevent a candidate from winning by catering to a single special interest group. Think about it–if there were eight equally viable parties, you only need 13% to win. You could cater to a small group of the population, and even if 87% of the voters hate you, you’ll still win.

The biggest disadvantage is that it is complex, although the American people have managed to figure out post-season college football, so I think it could be done.

Dr. J

40

DoctorJ The system you are advocating can be known by a number of names. It is often called the single-transferable vote, the alternative vote, or IIRC the preference vote. The former name is usually reserved for multi-seat election, however.

Ireland uses multi-seat STV for its parliament, and Australia uses it for its Senate. Australia uses single-member alternative voting for its House of Representatives.

Despite what Erik Raven implies, how many political parties function effectively in a voting system has nothing to do with how the executive is selected. No matter how many parties the U.S. had, under the current Constitution there would never be a coalition Presidency. The Italy/Israel/Austria examples are strawmen the anti-reformers always put for the to discredit multipartism.

I support a system where the President is directly elected with a majoritarian system. This system could either be the alternative vote (similar to the one advocated by Doctor J except you could number as many candidates as you wanted, starting with “1”), or with a second-ballot runoff. A lot of people seem to think that the runoff would be some terrible thing, and that the required threshold should be reduced from a voting majority to 40% of the vote. Runoffs, however, are not terrible things, and happen routinely in some countries, two or three weeks after the main election. Senate elections could be carried out similarly.

For U.S. House elections, I support proportional representation, with open list voting, D’Hondt’s highest-average system, and medium-sized constituencies with between 5 and 15 members. States entitled to more than 15 Representatives would be divided into two or more multi-member constituencies; states entitled to fewer than 5 could choose another system, or just use the default system.

The highest-average system means, in a given constituency, a seat would go to the party that would have the highest quotient of votes-per-seat if it won that seat. So the first seat would go to the largest party, the second seat would go to one of the two largest parties, etc.

Open list voting means you vote for one (or more, but I support just one) candidate on one party list. The party’s mandate is determined by votes of all its members; party seats are filled by its candidates in descending order of votes they received as individuals.

Any similarity in the above text to an English word or phrase is purely coincidental.