I see. A very well-presented argument. It certainly makes me lean a little more towards the multi-party system. But I am not quite ready to go over to the other side just yet. As in most things, the devil is in the details. Unless we can send 49% of a representative to Congress, there are problems with it, as well as less drastic solutions. The main problem I see in such a system is that you would end up spending your time parsing numbers. after all, in the real land, the proportions are not mutually exclusive. You can have (and I am making these numbers up for this example) 40% white, 30% black, 55% anti-abortion, 22% pro-Iranian invasion, 45% anti homosexual unions, 66% term limits, 5% give all the land back to the Indians, 8% close America’s borders to all Immigrants, 19% impeach the President. How do you decide which proportions get what? And how do you decide in what package? Do you give a seat to 4 black lesbian women who favor immigration reform or to 2 homosexual men who favor gun control? And who decides? Unlike a system that elects people, it seems some kind of committee would have to be in place to dole out the proportions. And imagine the possible graft inherent in that scenerio! Perhaps I mis-understand the mechanics of a multi-party system. If so, please enlighten me.
As far as less drasic solutions, one might be a kind of enlightened gerrymandering, redrawing districts to try and avoid the after-mentioned scenerio.
I was postulating a few things I think could help make our political system work. One of the problems with America as I see it is that we have been a land of entitlements, and citizenship has become the most abused of these. People feel they are entitled to be a citizen, regardless of how badly they behave. Many won’t register because they might “horrors!” be called to jury duty. Nearly 40% who are registered won’t vote. And so, no, it isn’t a joke. I really do believe violent felons do not deserve to be citizens. And, except in certain instances, I do not believe in the death penalty so that isn’t an option. But considering that nearly all studies have shown that the death penalty is not a deterrent to violent crime it would be interesting to see if loss of citizenship would be?
As far as legalizing drugs, of course it would be a complex thing to do but I do think that a part of the reason people don’t vote is because the amount of crime on the streets and in the boardrooms of America make them feel that government doesn’t work so why bother? Therefore, anything that could lessen crime should raise belief in the working of the political process and make the process work better.
You let people form whatever parties they want to form, you let them all on the ballot, you allow fusion candidates – and then you let the electorate vote. That’s what determines the proportions. What have we been discussing here, after all?
And they are right. That is the effect of the 14th Amendment. If a U.S. citizen is convicted of a crime, he/she can be deprived of many of his/her civil rights and possibly even of life – but not of citizenship, and the most fundamental right it carries with it, the right of residence on U.S. soil. Citizens cannot be deported or exiled. It would take a constitutional amendment to change that. And if we adopted exile as a punishment for crime – what would other countries think of that? It’s just a way of pushing our problems off on somebody else.
Err…people vote. What exactly did you think we were talking about??
If 35% of the people vote for the black lesbian anti immigration party, then it gets 35% of the seats. If 15% vote for the lesbian party, 20% for the black party and 5% for the anti-immigration party, and nobody for the black lesbian anti-immigration party, then the formers get respectively 15%, 20% and 5% of the seats, and the latter get none.
People vote in a proportionnal representation system.
Proportionnal representation and multi-party system are two different issues. You can have a multi-party system with the current american system. Actually, you do have one. It only happens that there are only two parties of any significant importance.
Proportionnal representation favor the existence of numerous parties because people know their vote won’t be “wasted”. Even if only say, 8% of the voters support the Green party, they’ll still get elected representants. So they will vote green. In your current system, not only they know they won’t get any representant, but also they could have the republican candidate (that they dislike the most) being elected if they don’t vote democrat. So, they’ll vote Democrat.
The odds are against having a multi-party system without electoral reform, though. Duverger’s law asserts that “first past the post” elections, like the ones in the US, naturally lead to a two-party system.
Yes, and I agree completely. I just wanted to explain to ** LasVegasKid ** what we were talking about, which isn’t the tyranny of the majority, nor the abolition of popular vote, and not even, at least in theory, the implementation of some mysterious “multi-party system”. The question is merely “which method should be used to elect the representants of the people?”
Both true. For comparison, look at the UK: It has a single-member-district system, within which local political history and conditions have produced what amounts to a “two-and-a-half” party system. The Liberal Democrats (formed in 1988 by a merger of the Liberal Party and the Social Democrats – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Democrats_(UK)) are, proportionally, much larger and better-organized than any third party in the U.S. They got 22% of the vote in this year’s general election – and only 62 seats in the House of Commons, or slightly less than 10% of the total. Not surprisingly, PR is at the top of the LibDems agenda. Tony Blair made a campaign promise in 1999 to hold a national referendum on PR elections for the House of Commons; but, what with one thing and another, he seems to have left that on the back burner for six years now. The LibDems are not likely to get PR until such time as an election produces a Parliament with no clear majority party, which would mean the LibDems would be a necessary partner in a governing coalition – and they could demand PR as the price of their cooperation.
But how could that happen in the U.S.? We don’t have a parliamentary system, and no third-party movement has proven strong enough and stable enough to seriously contest state-legislative elections, let alone Congressional elections. If we ever get PR, IRV or fusion here, it can only result from grassroots organizing.
Say, where’s Vooodooochile in this thread lately? I’m still waiting for him/her to get real about what kind of electoral system he/she really wants, and why.
Gerrymandering is a half-assed solution to any political problem. E.g., drawing black-majority districts so African-Americans can elect some of their own to the legislature (1) does nothing for African-Americans living in white-majority districts; (2) is arguably unfair to non-blacks living within those black-majority districts; and (3) is arguably unfair to blacks within those districts who might want to vote according to some other criterion than the candidate’s race. But a PR system would give blacks, regardless of where they live, the option to vote along racial lines and pool their voting strength behind black candidates, or to vote according to some completely different criterion, according to their individual preferences.
Another successful Progressive reform was the 17th Amendment to the Constitution (1913), which provided for direct popular election of United States senators. That serves to illustrate the fundamental differences between the Progressive and Populist world-views. I have spoken to members of the America First Party (America First Party) – a Populist, paleoconservative organization that emerged from the Buchanan wing of the Reform Party when it broke up – who want to repeal the 17th Amendment* and go back to letting the state legislatures choose U.S. senators. From a Progressive point of view, the 17th Amendment was about empowering the voters to do an end-run around those corrupt careerists in the state capitols; from a Populist POV, repealing the 17th Amendment is about restoring states’ rights and giving the state legislatures, as such, a voice to resist the incessant encroachments of the power-mad federal biggummint. They’re clashing over the same issue for completely unrelated reasons.
And they both have some good, arguable points! In my view, that illustrates a core reason why we need a multi-party system. In politics as in any other highly complicated and mysterious field of human endeavor, the process of seeking the “truth” is a lot like the six blind men trying to determine the true shape of the elephant. If they could only quite squabbling and sit down and compare notes, they might come up with a consensus picture that is something close to the whole picture. Our present system, OTOH, produces a political arena where the “an elephant is like a fan” school is locked in a constant death-struggle with the “an elephant is like a snake” school, and the “sword,” “wall,” “rope,” and “tree” viewpoints can never get a word in edgewise.
*An idea which has been debated in this forum before – http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=178451.
I have been reading about proportional representation and it seems as if it has at least as many flaws as the current system.
The majority of the flaws have to do with the fact that those most adept at politics can pervert any system. I can imagine a variety of ways to pervert this one:
Behind the scenes people could put up candidates that appear to be for whatever issues are in vogue at the moment but would really support the issues of their backers.
Behind the scenes people could decide a specific issue party threatened their interests and put up individuals who mirror the positions of that party but are just unelectable enough to draw some votes away from the targeted party but not enough to win. After all, there must still be a threshold percentage to get anyone from a party elected.
Not being protected by a “major” party, any individuals running in parties the establishment doesn’t like could be smeared with half-truths and falsehoods. And since the only counter-force to this type of thing, the media, would be focusing on possibly hundreds of candidates, they could not devote sufficent time to defusing all of these attacks.
And internally. the possible problems would depend on which type of proportional system was in place:
In a closed list system, there could be a the great temptation to bribe whoever is fronting the party to get certain candidates to the top of the list where they would be assured of a place if the party meets its threshold.
In an open list system, there would be many of the same problems we now have albeit on a smaller scale, i.e., the candidate with the most money to spend is most likely the one the voters would pick. In fact this is more likely than in the present system since this system inherently has many more candidates so name recognition becomes a far more important factor.
In a Mixed-Member Proportional Voting system, which is designed to have the best of both worlds, you could also have the worst of both. The main problem here would be utter confusion on the part of some voters. I can imagine millions of ballots mis-punched because people either out of habit don’t vote for multiple candidates or vote more than twice since they think it is okay.
I also believe the proportional representation system would be even more devisive. After all, whoever wins in this system can truly be pegged as not representing all of the people so many people would tune this candidate out.
A further flaw is that a proportional system still isn’t representative of all the people but only of all the people who vote. Of course it shares this flaw with the current system but if it is supposed to be better than the one system all places where it is no better should be brought up.
No. As for your #1, elected representatives are bound by the party program. The party program is the result of a vote, on issue by issue, by party members. Elected representatives are neither appointed, nor free to do a 180. Now, ‘behind the scenes people’ exist in any political system, and they certainly can ‘lead’ the issues to some degree, but the party’s position on the big issues are agreed upon by the party members on a vote.
As for your #2, your way off. Actually, I think you are forgetting something (or I misread your post): If someone ‘behind the scenes’ wants to steer someone into the top posistion of the party simply because that person mirrors the viewpoints of a different party, but also wants to make sure that that person is unelectable so that the party doesn’t reach the threshold percentage for representation [phew], well, then the party will not have representation at all, right? Only party members can choose who should be party leader, locally or nationally. In a PR systems voters don’t cast their vote for an individual, but for a party (though some systems allow for individual preferences). Rarely do voters cast their vote on a single issue of the kind you’re thinking of.
Again, you’re missing the point. Your statement is true, but only in the sense that any individual can be smeared. However, #1 a party leader being smeared will make big headlines, and #2: a Mr. Nobody being smeared will not attract any bigger headlines in a FPTP system either.
As I said before, the party leader (and other important positions in the party) are elected by party members. Any party member can run for party leader. Further, those on list (that is, as position #1, #2, etc) as the party’s representatives in a national election are elected by party members in each district (though some of the new far right parties do the opposite). So, you’ll need to bribe 51% of the party members.
Individuals do not raise and spend money, campaignwise or any other way, to be nominated as the party’s top candidate :rolleyes: Those who want to be elected by their fellow party members would have to build alliances (important) and speak the issues. Naturally, deciding upon a party leader can be a dog fight.
Besides that MMP isn’t widely used, you should be aware that PR systems AFAIK generally don’t use punch cards (from the top of my head I can think of no such place, but there are many countries with PR). To simplify, I actually voted today and what I did was to pick a piece of paper with the name of the party I wanted to vote for (there’s one pile of paper for each party), I pushed the paper down into the box, and that was it. Hardly rocket science.
I would say it’s the other way around. There are Americans (to take one example) who are voting for the Dem candidate even though they really want to vote Green or Progressive. If the Dem gets 55% that doesn’t mean 55% of voters really wanted the Dem, even though the numbers say so. Over here, we define winners and losers based on whether the party gained or lost support. As for legislation, you still need a 51% formal/ad-hoc coalition to pass laws. As I said, I voted today. This election our dividing lines were a center-right coalition (3 parties), a center-left coalition (3 parties), and the far-right party who nobody (so far) wants to deal with any more than they have to.
Since voter participation is 70%-80% in PR elections in Europe (don’t know about other places) and only 50%-60% in FPTP US I need a better argument than that.
Reading your post, I think you need to step outside the box you know as the elections are done in the US to properly understand PR elections (no pointing fingers intended). There are flaws in PR systems, in particular related to too low thresholds for representation, but most of these flaws have been covered previously in this thread.
Why is that a flaw? If I were British, I would want a form of PR that might could give one or two seats in Parliament to the Monster Raving Looney Party!
What exactly did you think we were talking about??
