Dems

Paul Henry Rosenberg rad at gte.net
Tue May 4 10:10:19 PDT 1999


Charles Brown wrote:


> >>> Paul Henry Rosenberg <rad at gte.net> 05/04/99 10:40AM >>>
> Instead, we ought to be focusing on the history of democratizing social
> movements, and ask what kinds of political structures would be more
> favorable to them. Proportional Representation in legislative elections
> is clearly one that would, as is the use of the single tansitive vote
> (STV) in elections for executive offices. This combination would
> facilitate third party formation, and provide a foundation for party
> expansion and coalition governance, so that people would not face the
> dilemma of fearing they are "throwing their vote away". This in turn
> would put further pressure on the Dems not to drift ever farther to the
> right.
>
> So long as we retain our current electoral system, there are fierce
> obstacles to consolidation of left electoral power which will always
> constitute an enormous drain on our energies, even when we do manage to
> acheive scattered success. Neither strategy -- forming a third party or
> building a progressive force within the Democratic Party -- can succede
> so long as the electoral structure remains as it is, a choke-point to
> strangle the energies of movements from below.
>
> (((((((((((((((((((
>
> Chas.: This is not meant to criticize the whole analysis of Paul
> Rosenberg's post here. But there is something of a double bind
> here

No kidding!


> because to institute proportional representation, which would
> require constitutional amendments, state and federal, would
> require winning 2/3 and 3/4 's majorities among the currently
> elected Dems and Reps.

Well, yes, to effect a full-bore transformation of the entire political system, we'd have to get rid of the Senate as it now exists.

But:

(1) PR on the local level is simply a matter of city or county law in most cases. There were dozens of cities who adopted PR in the 20s and 30s, despite fierce opposition. New York City did away with PR as part of the Red Scare in '49 or so, which was typical of how it was finally destoyed in most places, but it's still used here and there.

(2) State legislative elections are similarly under state constitutional law. Illinois had a system of limited proportional representation in its lower house for nearly a century. State which have the initiative process to amend their constitutions are ALL ripe for PR at the state level.

(3) The main barrier in the House of Representatives is a law passed in the 1960s requiring single-member seats, meant to prevent the South from electing representatives state-wide to thwart black political representation. Cynthia McKinney is spearheading an effort to get this law repealed.

(4) The perverse Supreme Court rulings (typified in Shaw v. Reno) overturning majority minority districts have a silver lining: they lay a foundation for ANYONE challenging the drawing of districts lines to dilue their voting strength. Ultimately ANY district lines will do this, and the only solution is to ELIMINATE districts entirely.

A REALLY RIGOROUS reading of the 14th Amendment in particular would compel the Supreme Court to find that NO districts can be Constitutional at any level, save those specified in the Constitution itself -- the number of representatives (determined by census) and senators (2 each) given to each state.

Naturally, we cannot expect the Supreme Court to make such a ruling out of the blue. Brown v. Board of Education didn't come out of the blue either. But one can see from the above that political strategies to implement PR are indeed quite practicable.


> They ain't stupid when it comes to defending their political
> advantages. They don't want to promote third parties. For example,
> they currently severely limit third party ballot access. In other
> words, the precondition for executing this plan would be to win
> the majority of Dems and Reps to undermining their own parties.

Well, they've already done so. Here in California we recently voted for an open primary system, which was opposed by ALL the parties (including Greens and Libertarians).

The real challenge is to get voters' frustration with party insularity (an already powerful force) translated into a truly constructive direction. This is where local initiatives become important, since a working example is the best advertizement.


> I say this , but I can't fulfill my obligation to propose an
> alternative plan to Paul's.

Perhaps my responses will encourage you to shift your focus to the exploration of altertives that synergize with PR, rather than competing against it.

I don't by any means see PR as a stand-alone solution to all our problems, and questions about how it interacts with other strategies, instutitions, forms of organizing, etc. are of the utmost importance.

-- Paul Rosenberg Reason and Democracy rad at gte.net

"Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"



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