If enough people wanted these things, they would get them - any idea that enough people want will be supported by the Democrats or Republicans (or both). Third parties are pushing for things that most people don’t want - they want to ban abortions, legalize marijuana, abolish income tax, confiscate all firearms, and put landmines along the Mexican border. None of their ideas has approval by a majority. But they don’t care if the majority doesn’t agree with them - they know they’re right - so we should rewrite the Constitution so they can get elected anyway even though the majority of people don’t want them in power. They’re saying that because they can’t get 51% of the votes, we should invent a system that lets them get elected with 5% of the votes.
Well the classic (literally) example is the collapse of the Roman Republic…
You had a situation where the body politic became ever more divided between conservatives and reformers. Opponents of reform became more and more vehement, resorting to ever more desperate means to stifle reform (and all the while the need for reform became ever more pressing).
Eventually the democratic principles of the republic were discarded one by one, and politics became more and more violent, ultimately ending in out-right civil war.
Nonsense; the public option being a recent example. If the party leadership of both parties doesn’t want something to happen, it won’t happen no matter how popular it is because there’s no practical alternative to them. We have a very narrow spectrum of allowed political positions in this country.
It’s called “being allowed to have a say”. I doubt it’s a coincidence that we also have a low voting turnout; most people are effectively disenfranchised. Their views aren’t even going to be brought up for consideration, much less a vote.
That’s not necessarily correct.
The UK uses “first past the post”, Australia uses preferential voting or “IRV”. In the context of a single member electorate, both are winner takes all, but how the winner is determined is obviously different. Both place significant impediments for a third party candidate to win an electorate, but even more on a third party winning sufficient electorates for a say in government.
Conversely if you have a form of proportional representation then you do have a mechanism that encourages multiplicity of parties.
An extreme version of this became known at the NSW ‘tablecloth’ election in 1999. To elect each of the 21 members required a quota of only 4.55% of the roughly 4 million eligible voters. The prospect became a ‘micro’ party picnic. A total of 264 candidates representing 80 parties or groups creating a ballot paper one metre wide by 700mm deep. As a result of Byzantine web of truely machiavellian alliances, support and preference deals the last seat in the Legislative Council was won by Malcolm Jones of the Outdoor Recreation Party who won only 0.2% of the primary vote.
The Australian Democrats have a 30 year history and have waxed and waned through that time. They are moribund at the moment. They have periodically held over 10% of the national vote, and in pockets they have held well over 30%. But they have only held one lower house seat in either the Federal or 6 state parliaments. (Mitcham, SA '77-'83) under preferential voting.
However, in the upper houses, with proportional representation they often held representation well above their voting mandate. The corrollary of this is that you must accept at times a minority party holding the balance of power over the majority.
There’s a big difference between being allowed to say something and being allowed to give orders. People should have the widest possible latitude on expressing their opinions and the narrowest possible latitude on imposing them on others.
I say the reason a lot of people don’t vote is because they’re happy with the way things are. They don’t feel their views are being ignored; they feel they’ve been embraced by the two mainstream parties. And they’re right - that’s why the two big parties are the mainstream parties.
No, they are wrong if they believe that, and I don’t think they do in the first place.
But I thought that the goal of a proportional system was to give a party with 1% of the vote… 1% of the power, not 45%?
Which definitely makes you a “glass half full” kinda guy!
I fear you are mistaken.
I know of no person who ever says they aren’t voting for that reason. I have seen cited that their vote won’t make a difference, or that they don’t want to have to vote for the lesser of two evils.
So… in this particular case, the “High” were the establishment Republicans. I figure the “Low” were nutcases and bigots and such who contributed a lot of energy and money to the party, keeping the High in office. Somewhere along the way a “Middle” formed of people who broke off from the High, as well as some grassroots people who elevated themselves out of the Low, and said they would better serve the interests of the Low. Helped along by Fox News with a lot of chest-beating anti-intellectual populist cheerleading…
…anyway, I’m sure there’s an analogy in here somewhere.