> > >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.
Yes, these systems however are designed to do the opposite of what proportional representation does. they are mutations designed to prevent minority groups who are vehemently opposed by a majority of the population from being represented in proportion to their voting strength. Or at Least Schulze is, never heard of the other one. I don't know why you'd mention such systems in the same breath as proportional representation though, it wouldn't have occurred to me.
Obviously a system designed to *thwart* proportional representation isn't a proportional representation system.
>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.
That would be to vote tactically, not strategically. If you wanted to be strategic, you'd keep advocating a vote for the minor parties instead of the lesser of the two evils, hopefully causing the lesser evil to keep losing elections it could win if there was preferential voting. The lesser evil must eventually realise that voter reform was very much in their interest and make it their first priority. Apon which you might switch to advocating a vote for for the lesser evil.
> 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.
Great! Keep up the good work.
>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.
The more progressive of the two mainstream candidates is obviously as thick as two short planks if it hasn't worked out how to solve its problem then. Dumber than George Bush. They deserve to lose.
>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."
Yeah, what makes you think I don't agree with that. I simply understand the implications of it a bit better. From actual experience of it in operation.
> > 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.
OK. I thought you were going further than that, sorry.
>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.
Well sure. But they might just be a bit conservative and unadventurist, rather than indifferent. I suspect that the people who vote differently from me aren't simply stupid and indifferent. I fear that they have thought about it and are deliberately indicating that they want something different than I do.
> 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.
That's a bit scarey. The worst part is that I don't think they are merely ignorant and indifferent.
> > >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!
I doubt I was that careless about how I expressed my original contention. And I certainly haven't changed my view. Are you sure You didn't misconstrue what I said or take something out of context?
>
>> >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."
Technically, they can vote any way they please. The only sanction the party has is not to endorse the rebel at the next election. However the rebel would be free to stand as an independent, or seek endorsement from another party. Happens from time to time. It could be argued that the party has too little control, since the politicians can ignore party policy (as endorsed by voters at a general election) en masse (and often do, VERY often) while the party can hardly dis-endorse its entire parliamentary wing.
>You make no sense whatsoever.
It makes perfect sense. Without this rather weak discipline, there can be no party policy as such. What would be the point of democratically considering and resolving party policy, then putting the arrived at party policy up to a vote of the people, if the people they vote for on the basis of the published policies had no committment and in no way accountable to those policies. People would be voting blind.
Without some sort of party discipline, the party's policy is merely hot air. It only has substance to the extent that the elected politicians elected on the platform advertised, actually stick with the platform advertised. And if they don't, the whole party is accountable to the voters for the breach of faith.
What is the point of democracy without that? A party is at least a little easier to keep accountable, because if the whole party gets the blame for breaches of policy, all the other elected members and the organisation can be made to pay the price.
Of course the executive government of the US and even the states of the US is not a parliamentary based government, but a single person. So you probably don't get it. But in a parliamentary system, where the government is accountable to a parliament, rather than the parliament being confined to the role of reviewing legislation, this is especially significant.
You simply couldn't have a government elected on that sort of unaccountable basis.
> > 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.
How does the party organisation discipline rebel politicians then?
>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.
In what way? Where exactly does my understanding of the facts fail? Or is it my analysis of the facts that is flawed, you are being quite vague?
>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.
Yes. We simply disagree about which part of the US system is chiefly to blame. We agree, I repeat we AGREE, that the FPTP is a real problem. But it is not the only, or perhaps even the major impediment to minor party candidates. The hurdles that candidates have to face to simply get on the ballot are just as serious a problem, particularly in respect to candidates representing political parties.
To the extent that political parties have little control over who their candidates will be and hence what policy platform 'their' candidate will campaign on, there is no meaningful sense in which a political party can be said to have any involvement in electoral politics in the US. Quaintly 18th century, but not a real democracy in the modern sense of having political parties. So what would be the point of having more political parties anyhow? Sure, they can act as pressure groups, but how does the way of counting votes interfere with that?
Not at all. It only influences electoral politics and even the existing parties suffer under that system.
> > Bill Bartlett
>> Bracknell Tas
>> ___________________________________
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