# Proportional Representation in the US **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 29, 2005, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proportional-representation-in-the-us/319067 "2005-08-29T04:36:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Alien](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/57b2e6/32.png) [@Alien](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alien)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2005, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proportional-representation-in-the-us/319067/61 "2005-09-05T18:59:19Z")
> [@Vooodooochile](#): > > If it were adopted here, the political parties would win and people would lose. All the partisanship, the immature ideology-over-problem-solving, would be multiplied by a factor of the number of other parties it created. Since a hellava large amount of our problems are due to no more than political parties putting thier party ideology ahead of real live peoples actual problems and concerns, its a no brainer that we would just have more problems 9as well as the existing ones) and greater logjams to fixing them. > > It would also be the adoption of a religous belief as a fundamental structure of govt; the belief that there actually is such a thing as a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. When there are only groups, and not individuals, you may as well bend over and kiss your ass goodbye. Unless of course youre religous, then you can rest easy in self righteous smugness that no matter how much material misery you cause real live human beings, youre personal ideology has won. I couldn’t disagree more with this statement, and it’s certainly not the experience pretty much everywhere elsewhere in the world. The problem which you identify, that todays two political parties are putting their party ideology ahead of people’s real live problems, has to do with the _disconnection_ between representatives and parties: A representative is to little extent held accountable for the actions of his/her party, and a party is to little extent held accountable for the actions of the elected representatives belonging to the party. I belive it would be quite different if there were no parties (as some of the Founding Fathers intended), but still, the parties are there, they are just not held accountable to the extent they should be. I think you’re also grossly overestimating the size of the religious right, but I’m sure **BrainGlutton** knows more about that than I do. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2005, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proportional-representation-in-the-us/319067/62 "2005-09-05T19:06:51Z")
> [@Alien](#): > > I think you’re also grossly overestimating the size of the religious right, but I’m sure **BrainGlutton** knows more about that than I do. I don’t think **Vooodooochile** is talking about the religious right. ---
**Author:** ![Vooodooochile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/0ea827/32.png) [@Vooodooochile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vooodooochile)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2005, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proportional-representation-in-the-us/319067/63 "2005-09-05T19:14:14Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > There are countless real-world examples of wholes greater than the sum of their parts – an automobile, for example. Wow, a car will still run without a carburator? You mean its still just as functional, its still the same ‘whole’, if theres no steering wheel? Man, Ive been really getting ripped off by my mechanics. No, there are not countless real world examples. Name any number, any quantity, that is greater than the sum of its consituent parts. There is no such thing; much in the same way the earth is not flat, though it seems like it. > [@](#): > > Leaving that aside – how does a multiparty system embody that “religious belief” any more or any less than does a two-party system, or a nonpartisan system? Because it breaks everything into groups. Nothing is individuals, its groups. Individuals have no weight/say/impact outside of ‘groups’ under prop rep. It structuralizes the secular religous belief that the individual is ~not~ the fundamental unit of society (and the only way individuals are not the base unit of society is if there actually is such a thing as a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts). No two individuals think exactly the same on anything, so in a prop rep (or any group-based) system, ~all~ individuals are forced in some measure to subvert themselves to a group. Its sick I know, but there you go. Yes, the same thing happens here, ~but its not built into the structure~. All political parties could dissappear tomorrow in the US and it would not affect our voting ~structure~ at all. We would just have a shitload of candidates to choose from. Political parties in the US are an accretion on the system, not built into it. And that is a Good Thing. > [@](#): > > That would free us from what we’ve got now – not a tyranny of the majority, but a tyranny of the **plurality,** in which the biggest faction is able to leverage its slight edge into hegemonic dominance over policymaking. It also means that rather than the priority being finding solutions that work no matter who they piss off, the priority would swing to ‘consensus’, meaning the people causing the problems would also have to agree on the solution, thus ensuring that the problem took a far longer time to be fixed if it ever got fixed. It also means that the partisan gridlock that happens now and we all cant stand would just be magnified. It means that pragmatic solutions would be constantly held hostage by ideological nutjobs. It means that, eventually, people would be looking to govt less and less, considering how long it took to do anything, and taking care of matters themselves in order to avoid the inevitable ‘concensus’ building. We arent an enlightened fuedal system. Our rights werent granted to us by some crown long ago. Our congresses authority rests on our consent, not on the enlightened wand-waving of some potentate. I think prop rep and other group based systems are nice sort of de-compression systems for places making the transition from fuedalism to freedom, but there is a large element of fuedal structure in prop rep and other group based systems. ---
**Author:** ![Ms2001](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ms2001/32/18463_2.png) [@Ms2001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms2001)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2005, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proportional-representation-in-the-us/319067/64 "2005-09-05T20:12:20Z")
> [@Vooodooochile](#): > > Wow, a car will still run without a carburator? You mean its still just as functional, its still the same ‘whole’, if theres no steering wheel? Man, Ive been really getting ripped off by my mechanics. What a bizarre way to interpret **BG** ’s post. Are you feeling all right? I believe the point was that a car is more useful than a pile of car parts. Even if you have two complete sets of parts, you won’t be able to drive them anywhere unless they’re put together. And yes, a car can run [without a carburetor](http://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-injection.htm). Welcome to 1991. 😉 > [@](#): > > No, there are not countless real world examples. Name any number, any quantity, that is greater than the sum of its consituent parts. There is no such thing; much in the same way the earth is not flat, though it seems like it. How about the computer you’re using right now? The core of your CPU is just a tiny slice of silicon. Want to trade it to me for the fist-sized chunk of silicon on my shelf? You’d come out way ahead! How about trading the contents of your hard drive for an equal number of 1s and 0s? Hell, since it’s a holiday, I’ll give you _twice_ as many 0s for no extra charge. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2005, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proportional-representation-in-the-us/319067/65 "2005-09-05T20:39:16Z")
> [@Vooodooochile](#): > > Wow, a car will still run without a carburator? You mean its still just as functional, its still the same ‘whole’, if theres no steering wheel? Man, Ive been really getting ripped off by my mechanics. :rolleyes: A disassembled automobile is the “sum of its parts,” but it is not a “whole.” Properly assembled, the parts can perform a function collectively that none could perform individually; thus, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It works the same way with organizations of human beings – governments, armies, business corporations, churches, political parties. > [@Vooodooochile](#): > > Because it breaks everything into groups. Nothing is individuals, its groups. Individuals have no weight/say/impact outside of ‘groups’ under prop rep. It structuralizes the secular religous belief that the individual is ~not~ the fundamental unit of society (and the only way individuals are not the base unit of society is if there actually is such a thing as a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts). Are you sure you’re a conservative? One of Edmund Burke’s objections to the French Revolution was that it left the individual naked and alone before the state. He preferred a traditional society organized in “little platoons” – e.g., the country manor with its tenants and lord, the parish council, etc. – which could mediate and moderate state power. Of course the individual is, and always will be, the fundamental unit of society in the sense that the atom is the fundamental unit of matter. But atoms can be organized into larger units in countless ways. In society, groups matter, always have, always will. In any case, it is not at all true that individuals matter less in a multipartisan system than they do in a two-party system, nor in a nonpartisan system. Individual **voters,** I mean. Perhaps you are referring to individual **candidates?** Is a nonpartisan system what you would prefer? Many municipalities use nonpartisan elections. I have never seen the slightest scrap of proof --maybe you can provide some – that such systems produce greater political empowerment for individuals, or more honest/efficient/effective government, than partisan municipal elections. The same range of interests and ideologies come into play in both systems. The difference is that in a partisan system, each candidate comes with a party label to indicate what views/policies he/she endorses. Do not underestimate the value of party labels. True, they are not as useful as they might be under our present system, where each party is a “big tent” and the Democrat in a given race might be more conservative on most issues than the Republican. But they are still very useful in allowing voters to have at least a fingernail grip on what their choices are, without researching the personal history of each individual candidate. > [@Vooodooochile](#): > > It also means that rather than the priority being finding solutions that work no matter who they piss off, the priority would swing to ‘consensus’, meaning the people causing the problems would also have to agree on the solution, thus ensuring that the problem took a far longer time to be fixed if it ever got fixed. It also means that the partisan gridlock that happens now and we all cant stand would just be magnified. It means that pragmatic solutions would be constantly held hostage by ideological nutjobs. It means that, eventually, people would be looking to govt less and less, considering how long it took to do anything, and taking care of matters themselves in order to avoid the inevitable ‘concensus’ building. Ask **Alien** if any of those things are problems in his/her country. These are not complaints about PR in most places where it is used. And in practice, the alternative to forming public policy by multipartisan consensus is usually giving one party the power to call most of the shots, as now in the U.S., and almost always in the UK. Why is that preferable? True, a PR system can lead to instability, and to a “tail wagging the dog” situation that inflates the power of minor parties. Opponents of PR in the UK reason that if Parliament were elected by PR, the smallest party, the Liberal Democrats, would become the most important one, because it would be in a position to go into coalition with the Conservatives or Labour at its own discretion. But that comes of combining PR with a parliamentary system. That problem wouldn’t arise in the U.S., if we maintained the separation-of-powers system at the state and federal level, so the legislature would not be responsible for “forming a government.” Coalitions would form, but they would be ad hoc and issue-specific; the Greens might caucus and vote with the Libertarians on military and foreign policy, and with the Socialists on tax policy. > [@Vooodooochile](#): > > We arent an enlightened fuedal system. Our rights werent granted to us by some crown long ago. Our congresses authority rests on our consent, not on the enlightened wand-waving of some potentate. True. What’s that got to do with this? ---
**Author:** ![Alien](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/57b2e6/32.png) [@Alien](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alien)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2005, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proportional-representation-in-the-us/319067/66 "2005-09-05T20:41:50Z")
> [@Vooodooochile](#): > > Because it breaks everything into groups. Nothing is individuals, its groups. Individuals have no weight/say/impact outside of ‘groups’ under prop rep. It structuralizes the secular religous belief that the individual is ~not~ the fundamental unit of society (and the only way individuals are not the base unit of society is if there actually is such a thing as a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts). > > No two individuals think exactly the same on anything, so in a prop rep (or any group-based) system, ~all~ individuals are forced in some measure to subvert themselves to a group. Its sick I know, but there you go. Yes, the same thing happens here, ~but its not built into the structure~. All political parties could dissappear tomorrow in the US and it would not affect our voting ~structure~ at all. We would just have a shitload of candidates to choose from. Political parties in the US are an accretion on the system, not built into it. And that is a Good Thing. I’ve been thinking hard for a pattern of examples from various countries that would prove you right, but I can find none. There’s no real life difference. In both systems representatives have an individual voice, but when it comes downs to it you either play along with the party or step back and you stand alone. > [@Vooodooochile](#): > > It also means that rather than the priority being finding solutions that work no matter who they piss off, the priority would swing to ‘consensus’, meaning the people causing the problems would also have to agree on the solution, thus ensuring that the problem took a far longer time to be fixed if it ever got fixed. It also means that the partisan gridlock that happens now and we all cant stand would just be magnified. It means that pragmatic solutions would be constantly held hostage by ideological nutjobs. It means that, eventually, people would be looking to govt less and less, considering how long it took to do anything, and taking care of matters themselves in order to avoid the inevitable ‘concensus’ building. Quite the opposite. The idea behind the [theory of consensus decision-making](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_decision_making) is, according to the cite, ‘_to deemphasize the role of factions or parties and promote the expression of individual voices_’. In any democratic system you need 51%, so if 51% is part of the problem, then, obviously, the problem may not be solved. Anyway, I see it as nice to be able to work with only the parties which one agree with from case to case, instead having to deal with the same party leadership on each and every case. I would also submit that in no political debate is partisan gridlocks more prevalent than in an environment where two factions stand opposed to each other. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2005, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proportional-representation-in-the-us/319067/67 "2005-09-05T21:15:50Z")
It’s really quite amazing how different my perspective is from **Vooodooochile** ’s. All the problems he is predicting from proportional representation seems to me are _current_ problems that are _caused_ by the two-party system. And I don’t get all that stuff about eliminating the individual as the basic unit of democracy. Nobody prevents an individual from becoming his or her own group. Combine P.R. with fusion (as in New York) and you should be gold. Our current system exacerbates these problems. ---
**Author:** ![Alien](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/57b2e6/32.png) [@Alien](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alien)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2005, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proportional-representation-in-the-us/319067/68 "2005-09-05T22:39:52Z")
> [@Alien](#): > > Quite the opposite. The idea behind the [theory of consensus decision-making](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_decision_making) is, according to the cite, ‘_to deemphasize the role of factions or parties and promote the expression of individual voices_’. In any democratic system you need 51%, so if 51% is part of the problem, then, obviously, the problem may not be solved. Anyway, I see it as nice to be able to work with only the parties which one agree with from case to case, instead having to deal with the same party leadership on each and every case. > > I would also submit that in no political debate is partisan gridlocks more prevalent than in an environment where two factions stand opposed to each other. Forgot to add, _consensus decision-making_ has nothing to do with multi-party systems as discussed in this thread, so it’s really irrelevant to the debate. It’s about the 51% majority in both systems. As for partisan gridlocking, I meant to say that in a two party system a partisan bill would probably get 40% automatically, with 40% opposed, then they would have to work it from there. In a multi-party system a party on the far left may join with a party on the far right on a specific issue, ref. **Brainglutton** ’s examples, while the center is opposed. ---
**Author:** ![LasVegasKid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@LasVegasKid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LasVegasKid)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2005, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proportional-representation-in-the-us/319067/69 "2005-09-05T23:41:39Z")
The concept of proportional representation, without strict limits, is another one of those liberal ideas that sound good as rhetoric but make little moral or practical sense. After all, at its extreme, the majority could vote to do anything, from locking up all Moslems up to nationalizing all oil companies. The dirty little secret of democracy is that it only works if there is a dominant moral system in place to avoid these extremes. A better system might be a kind of proportional voting system based on who is affected. If some populist demogogue wanted to vote to take all the land of all the small farmers and develop the land for low income housing, the affected farmers, since they would be the most harmed, would get 10000 times the votes per farmer than the city dwellers who are only voting their self interests (i.e., either to get some low cost housing or to get those who would live in those low cost properties out of their neighborhoods.) Yes such a system would be cumbersome but it would certainly be fairer and in the debates required to implement such a system, maybe common sense would come to the fore and people would realize that the reason our Founding Fathers put this system in place is that they understood the temptations inherent in being the majority and so they needed to develop a system to temper these temptations. And this doesn’t even touch on the issue of having majority rules apply to scientific issues like global warming or drilling in Alaska. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2005, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proportional-representation-in-the-us/319067/70 "2005-09-05T23:57:37Z")
> [@LasVegasKid](#): > > The concept of proportional representation, without strict limits, is another one of those liberal ideas that sound good as rhetoric but make little moral or practical sense. After all, at its extreme, the majority could vote to do anything, from locking up all Moslems up to nationalizing all oil companies. The dirty little secret of democracy is that it only works if there is a dominant moral system in place to avoid these extremes. 😕 But that problem is inherent in **any** form of democratic system. (In the U.S. we have avoided it, or tried to, by having a written constitution where certain rights and guarantees are set beyond the reach of the ordinary political process. Whether that is even necessary is debatable; the UK has established a pretty good human-rights record with no written constitution.) The issue for debate here is whether a PR-based multipartisan system is better or worse than an SMD-based two-party system. I say it is better, because, among other things, to get anything done in a PR Congress you would have to marshal an actual **majority** in support. Under the present system, you need only a **plurality** – that is, a plurality in the electorate can translate into a majority in Congress. One of the Founding Fathers, I forget which one, said that a legislature should be a “miniature portrait” of the electorate and “as exact a transcript as possible” of the range of interests and opinions among the people. What we’ve got now is not a miniature portrait but a distorting funhouse mirror, with some features grossly exaggerated and other shrunk to near-invisibility. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2005, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proportional-representation-in-the-us/319067/71 "2005-09-06T00:02:57Z")
And BTW, **LasVegasKid,** what’s so horrifying about the possibility of a majority voting to nationalize all oil companies? I’m reminded of Publius’ litany of horrors unrestrained majority rule might produce – including (gasp!) paper money! ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2005, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proportional-representation-in-the-us/319067/72 "2005-09-06T00:05:16Z")
> [@LasVegasKid](#): > > The concept of proportional representation, without strict limits, is another one of those liberal ideas that sound good as rhetoric but make little moral or practical sense. After all, at its extreme, the majority could vote to do anything, from locking up all Moslems up to nationalizing all oil companies. The dirty little secret of democracy is that it only works if there is a dominant moral system in place to avoid these extremes. > . You seem to be refering to some kind of tyranny of the majority, and I can’t see in what way it’s related to proportionnal representation. Whether or not a tyranny of the majority can exist is only dependant on the limits put by the constitution. It has nothing altogether to do with the way the representants are elected. I don’t see in what way it’s a “liberal idea”, either… ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2005, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proportional-representation-in-the-us/319067/73 "2005-09-06T00:07:06Z")
I had forgotten about this thread. Thanks for the answer to my questions about the prevalence of the proportionnal representation and about the organization of american parties (though I still don’t realy get how it works in practice in the latter case). ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2005, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proportional-representation-in-the-us/319067/74 "2005-09-06T00:13:28Z")
> [@LasVegasKid](#): > > A better system might be a kind of proportional voting system based on who is affected. If some populist demogogue wanted to vote to take all the land of all the small farmers and develop the land for low income housing, the affected farmers, since they would be the most harmed, would get 10000 times the votes per farmer than the city dwellers who are only voting their self interests (i.e., either to get some low cost housing or to get those who would live in those low cost properties out of their neighborhoods.) But, how can you say that the farmers are the “most affected” in that scenario? Seems to me the people who might live in the projected housing are also pretty heavily affected. By what argument\* is the self-interest of the farmers to be preferred to the self-interest of the city dwellers? And if you could prove that, how could you reliably quantify the differential between the interests of one group and another? \*The argument that would actually be used, if this happened in the U.S., is that the farmers’ interest in their land is a property interest, and the Fifth Amendment guarantees they can’t be deprived of it without compensation. It would also be argued that family farmers have a historic role in American culture, that it’s better to preserve the status quo when any benefits to be derived from changing it are uncertain, etc., etc. But all of that is irrelevant to the structure of any electoral decisionmaking process. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2005, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proportional-representation-in-the-us/319067/75 "2005-09-06T00:16:48Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > I had forgotten about this thread. Thanks for the answer to my questions about the prevalence of the proportionnal representation and about the organization of american parties (though I still don’t realy get how it works in practice in the latter case). You’re not alone, but this thread might help illustrate the process, at least at the national level: [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=296924](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=296924) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2005, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proportional-representation-in-the-us/319067/76 "2005-09-06T14:47:30Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > Whether or not a tyranny of the majority can exist is only dependant on the limits put by the constitution. It has nothing altogether to do with the way the representants are elected. Actually, it might. See post #70. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2005, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proportional-representation-in-the-us/319067/77 "2005-09-07T17:29:41Z")
> [@Vooodooochile](#): > > If it were adopted here, the political parties would win and people would lose. All the partisanship, the immature ideology-over-problem-solving, would be multiplied by a factor of the number of other parties it created. Since a hellava large amount of our problems are due to no more than political parties putting thier party ideology ahead of real live peoples actual problems and concerns, its a no brainer that we would just have more problems 9as well as the existing ones) and greater logjams to fixing them. I’m trying to figure out where you’re coming from, **Vooodooochile.** Correct me if I’m wrong – you seem to be a “progressive,” in the old, early-20th-Century definition of the term. The first Progressive Party ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United\_States\_Progressive\_Party#The\_first\_Progressive\_Party](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Progressive_Party#The_first_Progressive_Party)) was a mainly middle-class and upper-class political movement, devoted to honest, transparent, vigorous and effective government, but also to fiscal responsibility with no deficit spending. The Progressives had a technocratic, professional vision of government that purported to transcend ideology, class interests and partisanship – an old Progressive slogan was, “There is no Democratic or Republican way to pave a street.” But that way of thinking was fundamentally mistaken. How to pave a street might be purely technical problem; but deciding which neighborhoods get paved, what property should be condemned to make way, and who should pay how much for it are all political questions, in which different social classes and ethnic groups might have different and conflicting interests, and in which differing ideological notions of justice and fairness would inevitably, and **properly,** come into play. Certainly it is better to have as many public decisions as possible made by professionals and experts than to have them made by party hacks, in the tradition of Jeffersonian-Jacksonian populism and urban machine politics. But the idea that Progressivism itself is not an “ideology” is pure illusion. The Progressives, no less than any Marxist, believed they had an inside track on what amounts to a purportedly scientifically proveable vision of the “truth” and the “good,” and what could be more ideological than that? The Progressives had a Puritan revulsion for the “logjams” and “logrolling” of the conventional legislative process – if you **know** what’s best for society, why compromise? The Progressive movement is what got us nonpartisan municipal elections, as well as a lot of “direct democracy” reforms designed to enable to people to do an end-run around the politicians – ballot initiatives and referenda, recall elections, etc. But for all that, the Progressives were anti-democratic in a lot of ways. They were essentially elitists, in the mold of Alexander Hamilton. They supported voting qualifications that would discourage the poor and immigrants from voting at all; they opposed the urban political machines that, at the time, were the principal means for such people to relate to and participate in government. The Progressive tradition is still alive in American politics. Its most recent manifestation was in the Reform Party – which ultimately broke up because, among other things, it was always an ideologically incoherent alliance of Progressives and Populists. See this article by Michael Lind from 1999: [Fatal Attraction](http://www.slate.com/id/36428/) > [@](#): > > John Anderson’s progressive Republicanism belonged to the distinctive political tradition of Greater New England–a territory that arcs from Maine to the Pacific Northwest and was settled by 19th-century Yankee Protestant settlers. The Yankee’s secularized Puritanism combines an enthusiasm for social reform–such as abolitionism, Prohibition, women’s suffrage, civil rights, eugenics, and the anti-smoking crusade–with an often-priggish moralism and an apocalyptic horror of “corruption.” Most third-party movements have originated in Greater New England. The name of one movement launched during World War I tells the whole story: The Nonpartisan League. > > The Germans and Scandinavians who settled in western Greater New England reinforced the secular puritan ethos, although they were more likely to be socialists than the Yankees, whose fear of corruption has often made them enemies of big government. And Prohibition divided liquor-hating Northern Protestants from beer-loving Germans. Even so, the Protestant pietism of many Germanic Americans meshed neatly with the Puritan religious culture of New Englanders and their western cousins, while socialist enthusiasms were easily merged with Social Gospel Protestantism in the northern-tier states. It is no coincidence that Anderson, the standard-bearer for the Yankee-Germanic tradition in 1980, is of Swedish descent–nor is it a coincidence that in 1984, Anderson, formerly a Republican, voted for Walter Mondale, a fellow Swedish-American. > > Southern populism, which earlier had produced Huey P. Long, Georgia’s Tom Watson, and the Southern supporters of William Jennings Bryan, spawned George Wallace. Populism has more often found a home in the Highland South than in the coastal “black belt,” which has been dominated since colonial times by the elitist conservatism of ruling-class Bourbon families and their allies. Drawing on the traditions of the Scots-Irish settlers of Appalachia and the Ozarks, Highland Southern populism encourages a tribal approach to politics and rewards leaders who are flamboyant and bellicose. Andrew Jackson was an early example of this type; Patrick J. Buchanan is its latest incarnation. > > Perot united Anderson progressives and Wallace populists, but in an unstable pairing. Wallace’s supporters were social conservatives who favored activist government, as long as it benefited them and their families, while Anderson’s voters were social liberals more concerned with good government than with expensive government. The Wallace voters tended to be white working-class Democrats on their way into the Republican Party; the Anderson voters by contrast were often former liberal Republicans in transit to a new home in the Democratic Party. Since the Reform Party broke up, some Progressives have found a home in John Anderson’s Independence Party – [http://www.mnip.org/](http://www.mnip.org/) – which has had little political success outside Minnesota. So, is this you, **Vooodooochile?** Or would you characterize your politics (or non-politics, if you will :rolleyes: ) differently? ---
**Author:** ![LasVegasKid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@LasVegasKid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LasVegasKid)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2005, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proportional-representation-in-the-us/319067/78 "2005-09-08T04:36:12Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > : One of the Founding Fathers, I forget which one, said that a legislature should be a “miniature portrait” of the electorate and “as exact a transcript as possible” of the range of interests and opinions among the people. What we’ve got now is not a miniature portrait but a distorting funhouse mirror, with some features grossly exaggerated and other shrunk to near-invisibility. You are assuming that the “funhouse mirror” is a function of the present system. I would argue that it is rather a function of the entrenched interests that we have allowed to distort the process and which would distort any process that does not deal with it first. It is all well and good to debate a two-party system vs. a multiple party system, it is the kind of debate our Founding Fathers could have had when they were first setting our nation on its often bizarre and often beautiful path. But in present day America, many things have to be done before any system can work better let alone well: 1. Find some way to ban lobbyists or at least keep them from being able to spend so much money to get their way 2. Find some way to minimize the issue of campaign funds. It is obscene that elected officials spend about 40% of their time begging for money for themselves instead of for their constituents. 3. Mandate that all elementary schools teach both ethics and political science. 4. Mandate that all students must know certain things about US history before they can graduate. I would probably have about 100 things on the list, from when and why the Civil War was fought (I saw a lady on TV who said it was 1950!) to the date of the attack on Pearl Harbor and D-Day, to when we landed on the Moon. 5. Take away the dis-incentives to vote. I would change the system so that those who don’t vote are the ones called to jury duty, though anyone could volunteer for this duty so you don’t discriminate against voters who might want to serve. 6. Involve citizens more in the process. Many of the countries mentioned in previous posts have citizens who feel much more empowered by voting than we do in America. 7. Take away the citizenship of anyone convicted of a violent felony. After they are released from prison, pay some other nation to take them in. 8. Find a way to legalize drugs. It is estimated that 60% of all robberies are drug-related. There is nothing wrong with a multi-party system per se and smarter people here than me have listed its benefits. But I do think such a system should be organic. So I would not require it but would remove most of the obstacles put up by both major parties to restrict other parties from forming and growing. I would not remove all such obstacles though for there are dangers in having no obstacles. The greatest danger to America I see is its fragmentation into hundreds of disparate or single interest groups (i.e., the NRA party, the Black Muslim party, the Moral Majority party, the anti-abortion party, et al) such that nothing could be done quickly and a major terrorist attack could splinter us into separate nations. ---
**Author:** ![Ms2001](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ms2001/32/18463_2.png) [@Ms2001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms2001)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2005, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proportional-representation-in-the-us/319067/79 "2005-09-08T05:59:10Z")
> [@LasVegasKid](#): > > You are assuming that the “funhouse mirror” is a function of the present system. I would argue that it is rather a function of the entrenched interests that we have allowed to distort the process and which would distort any process that does not deal with it first. I disagree. Here’s a hypothetical scenario that demonstrates exactly how our voting system can distort the positions of the electorate: Suppose there are two parties in the country, the Red party and the Blue party, and they are polar opposites on every issue. 49% of all voters support the Red party, and 51% support the Blue party. All voters are spread out equally, so that in every district at every level, 49% of the votes are Red and 51% are Blue. In that scenario, **every** elected official in the entire country would be Blue. Nearly half the country would be totally unrepresented! Now, clearly America isn’t like that in real life… but it’s somewhat similar. Our voting system only provides an accurate picture of the electorate when the voters are spread out geographically - when all the Red voters live in separate districts from the Blue voters. To the extent that people with opposing political views live in the same districts, and the number of Blue voters in Red districts is different from the number of Red voters in Blue districts, our voting system distorts the results. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2005, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proportional-representation-in-the-us/319067/80 "2005-09-08T13:23:04Z")
Okay, I was with you most of the way, then you threw me. > [@LasVegasKid](#): > > 1. Take away the citizenship of anyone convicted of a violent felony. After they are released from prison, pay some other nation to take them in. This has got to be a joke, right? Why don’t we just mandate the death penalty for all felonies? > [@](#): > > 1. Find a way to legalize drugs. It is estimated that 60% of all robberies are drug-related. What does this have to do with the structure of the electoral system? > [@](#): > > But I do think such a system should be organic. What the heck is this supposed to mean? Was the unprecedented system established by the Constitutional Convention “organic”? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proportional-representation-in-the-us/319067.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/proportional-representation-in-the-us/319067.md?page=5)