Topics created by frenzed

Yes, in party-list PR it would be good to allow us to vote for 2 parties…our favorite (but maybe not seat-winnable), & a seat-winnable party we like.

I prefer that. But it would be regarded as a complication. Anyway tradition wanted to discourage small parties. The option to vote for two parties would be rejected as a complication.

For a first PR proposal, just propose ordinary list-PR, like 2/3 of the world’s countries use.

Later we can propose the 2-party option.

That's the same idea the German NGO Mehr Demokratie proposes. I proposed a similar modification to MMP that uses approval voting for the direct mandate and multi party choice. The party vote is distributed equally among all approved parties, then all parties that don't reach the threshold are excluded and the vote is distributed equally among the remaining parties.
It has the same effect as a second choice, but with the added benefit that voters don't have to limit their vote to one party.

@frenzed said in Hello from Ed Hitchcock, New Zealander in France:

We need politicians to work in cooperation in groups, because the other option is dictatorship.

I don't see how you arrive at that.

Unless you consider groups to include things like "the Senate," any a particular Congressional committee, or some sort of special interest group that concentrates on a single issue (e.g. the Sierra Club). But those aren't parties. Parties tend to encompass everything, that is, a politician is a member of one party to the exclusion of other parties. That makes everything tribal, as well as correlating things that aren't necessarily correlated in every voters' mind. (for instance, say I am anti-abortion but pro-gun control)

I like the idea that both voters and candidates can consider each issue independently. Parties tend to force them together.

The problem in the US (and in many jurisdictions) is that the elections system freezes out all but two estalished parties.

Sure. Duverger's law. That's because of plurality voting, which I think most of us consider "the enemy."

A recent election for mayor of San Francisco (where I live) had 8 candidates, none of which were affiliated with a party. This worked because there was a ranked choice election. (IRV is not perfect, but it sure is better than plurality).

Some of the candidates "teamed up", advertising together and such. (saying things like "whichever of us you put first, put the other one second") Various special interest groups endorsed one or more candidates, but the candidates weren't "members" of any group, at least not to the exclusion of other groups.

How is that dictatorship? Even if it is for a parliamentary type election (Senate, Congress, board of Supervisors, etc), I don't see how parties are needed or benefit anyone if the election method is resistant to vote splitting.

DfiyLe3UwAEY-HU.jpg