>We can vote.
>
>We can change our politics locally. These things matter, and they count,
>and they take effect (assuming you don't violate the Constitution of
>your respective political administrative unit).
>
>
>-- The Priority List
>
>I think #1 is voting system reform, which can happen on as small a scale
>as a town or city.
>
>It might interest you to know that the very first novel written in a
>Romance language, Blanquerna by Ramon Lull (1287), involved voting
>system reform. Lull was unhappy the way the voting for Pope took place,
>and proposed a method which met the Condorcet Criterion.
>
>Outside of that, Duverger's Law says that any voting system like
>Americans have naturally results in a two party system.
I agree that the US first-past-the-post system is quite backward, but it isn't the only problem. The other thing that you have to acknowledge is that the US doesn't have even a two-party system, it has a no political party system. In fact, at the level of national politics, the US can't even be said to have a system at all, in the sense that national politicians are elected by up to fifty systems.
>Free the Voters to express their will for third parties.
In the American system political parties are fan clubs, with no electoral mechanism provided for them to submit their manifesto to the will of the people. Merely changing the voting system won't change that unless political parties are actually allowed to determine their candidates for election.
Here in Australia and probably in many other countries, elections have been reduced to a spectator sport by the power brokers in political parties. It becomes pointless to join any of the major parties because members have no power in them. Over the last couple of decades, people seeking an active role in politics have responded by setting up new parties. Amongst other things.
But just because they can do that here and in most democratic nations, doesn't mean it will work in the US.
What would be the point. Electoral politics in the US was reduced to a spectator sport not by the hijacking of political parties, but by the candidate nomination system being rigged to prevent political parties playing any part. Changing to a preferential voting system won't solve that basic problem. Not if new political parties can't stand candidates.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas