Member of the State House of Representatives in New Hampshire, the third largest governmental deliberative assembly in the anglophone world.
> >The point you missed is that a sane Ranked Ballot system will increase the
> >number of electable parties.
>
> You miss my point, somehow. A "ranked ballot system" by which I take
> you to mean preferential voting wouldn't necessarily permit an
> increase in *electable* minor party candidates. (Maybe the opposite,
> since preferential voting means a candidate for a single-member seat
> must attain over 50% of the two-party preferred vote. Whereas under
> first-past-the-post it is possible for a candidate who is the last
> choice of a significant majority of voters to get elected, so long as
> he or she is the first choice of more voters than any other
> candidate. That can't possibly happen with preferential voting.
You must be an expert. Certainly not at voting math, but at something.
In neither Schulze nor Tideman must the winning candidate get over 50% of the two party preferred.
The main point is that people in an FPTP system _must_ hedge their bets, and vote "lesser of two evils" in order to vote strategically. The result, time and time again, when a third party has taken part in the Presidential election, has been the defeat of the more progressive of the two mainstream candidates.
The Liberty (Abolitionist) Party! Twice they defeated the anti-slavery Presidential candidate (Henry Clay and Lewis Cass). The Greenback (fiat money) Party. The Bull Moose (TR) Party. The Greens in 2000.
Neither do you seem to care about the will of the voters. The will is expressed through the vote. The amount of information contained in the ballot directly and immediately correlates with the amount of information the "governing class" gets. FPTP limits that information more than any other type (except Confidence, or one-candidate votes).
Ranked Ballots allow more expression, have a mathematical basis, and allow voters to indicate their support for third party ideas without damning their "mainstream choice."
> Even proportional representation, where more than one seat is filled
> in proportion to the ranked preferences of voters, though it does
> lower the bar for minor party and independent candidates to be
> elected, doesn't necessarily mean it will happen. Tasmania's state
> parliament has been elected by PR for over a hundred years, but until
> about 20 years ago very few minor parties were ever elected. Less
> than in other states in fact. (Where the relatively small Country
> Party was able to capture single member electorates in rural areas.
> In Tasmania they never did any good.)
I'm not saying Ranked Ballots _create_ third parties. I'm saying it _allows_ for third party support to be accurately gauged, and gauged when it counts, not just in phone polls.
Most PR countries (Tasmania would be a very small country, you admit) have many parties. Maybe one member of a third party in body won't make a bit of difference, but maybe that reflects more on the relative tension in Tasman State politics.
> There has also to be disenchantment with the two major parties.
There also has to be a populace who gives a rats ass, and is knowledgable enough on the issues to make an informed choice. America doesn't lack a sufficient level of disenchantment with the two major parties that Perot and Anderson, in the last 26 years, didn't make passable independent third party Presidential runs, not to mention much lower ones. The libertarians brag they have thousands of tiny offices nationwide.
> >At that point, no one will be able to make
> >the argument as forcibly that party power brokers control things.
>
> I just don't see how party power brokers in the US control anything at all.
Which is the exact opposite of your original contention. Bye!
> >There are other ways to weaken the parties vis-a-vis the candidates, but
> >voting system reform is the most rational.
>
> Why is weakening the parties in respect to the candidates a good
> thing exactly? I mean, if you are a capitalist who wants candidates
> to be isolated individuals so that they are not accountable to anyone
> and don't have to have any cohesive platform, that would be good.
> They would be more readily susceptible to corrupt influence. But why
> would ordinary people want politics to be even more corrupt than it
> has to be? You are coming across as a bit reactionary to me.
In Australia they don't have many conscience votes, which means the Parties control the votes of the members, unless the Party says "we free you from our control for this one vote."
You make no sense whatsoever.
> If you have a two party system voting system reform would allow other
> parties to weaken it. Doesn't in itself weaken the two party system
> though. It certainly doesn't undermine the party system, though
> depending on the way a preferential system is designed it may tend to
> undermine the power of party number crunchers, to giving more power
> to voters by forcing parties to give voters a choice of candidates
> from each party, rather than just one candidate, take it or leave it.
> But in the US, where so far as I can tell the parties have no power
> at all, that isn't an issue.
Then you apparently either have a strange, or completely ignorant, viewpoint of the US party system.
Party discipline in vote in the US Congress is a well studied field. It exists.
I'm afraid that you really seem, over and over and over again, to come off like you read something once, believed it, and have proceeded from there.
> >A second factor which I often consider is that donations to candidates
> >are limited, but donation limits to parties are much higher. Huh? This,
> >perhaps as much or more than the voting system which encourages a two
> >party system, also helps the parties (and their powerbrokers) over the
> >candidates.
>
> Is that how political parties get power in the US, by having most
> election funding channelled through them? I understood the candidates
> themselves had personal control of funding?
Then, yet again, your understanding is flawed.
> Wouldn't it be much better, in terms of accountability, for parties
> to control funding? Do I detect a note of hostility from you towards
> the very notion of political parties having a role to play in
> electoral politics? I suspect this may be typical of Americans.
> Otherwise, how could the system be so drastically rigged to exclude
> political parties, without massive outrage?
Exclude? Never. They will always exist. Who said excluse? Not I. Party controlled funding _completely_ undermines any new thinkers who might emerge. No Party, a deliberative body itself (e.g. DNC, RNC) is not going to adopt any outlying views, and they never have. It's only after a long time that the party has been forced to adapt and move on.
> It seems bizarre to be blaming political parties for disenchantment
> with democracy. Literally, flogging dead horses. Yes, its the
> electoral system, but not in the sense that it gives political
> parties too MUCH power, but in the sense that it prevents them having
> any power whatsoever in electoral politics. Political parties, when
> they are doing what they are invented to do, are the only way
> ordinary people can collectively exert political power. We can't
> afford to buy influence as individuals, we can only hope to do it by
> organising. In a democracy, political parties are the major way
> ordinary people can get involved in civilised politics. Without
> political parties meaningful involvement in elections, elections in
> the US necessarily tend to be irrelevant to government policies,
> merely popularity contests.
The current system allows only two parties. The Greens, Libertarians, Christian "Family" Parties, whatever, are forced out of politics by the current system. This calcifies the system.
> Bill Bartlett
> Bracknell Tas
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