OT 2 party political system

[Narrew]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:

quote:

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I don't remember where I read it, but supposably George Washington warned against going to a 2 party system.

It was in his farewell speech at the end of his term. He actually warned against the formation of political parties (factions, as he put them) period, not just a 2 party system. Most of the "founding fathers" warned against such things.

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And didn't Jefferson ignore it and start the 2 party system?

[Fyron]

Narrew, yeah, pretty much. Damn that Jefferson!

[PvK]

I think there could be several ways to improve the voting system, but the one that seems most natural to me would be to have the votes be weighted equally, and a simple majority wins, in a single vote-casting. That is, everyone votes for all of the candidates whom they approve enough to want in office, and the one with the most approvals wins.

There should probably be a minimum. Perhaps a candidate needs at least, say, 50% approval to win.

If no one gets the required minimum vote, then I suppose it depends on whether it's considered more desirable to get someone elected immediately, or whether it's more desirable to insist that elected offcials get at least a certain minimum amount of approval. That might vary depending on the type of post.

If speed is desired, then maybe don't have a minimum, or make the minimum low, and just choose whoever got the highest approval, as long as it meets the low minimum.

If a minimum approval is considered more important, then perhaps hold a new election, and perhaps disqualify all the candidates from the first round, since none of them were approved by the required percentage of voters.

PvK

Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
PvK, what exactly are you suggestion there? Variable votes? If someone doesn't come out on top, the votes for the losers are re-counted using the second selection?

Ex, there are four candiates A, B, C, and D.

Voter 1 picks, in this order:
A
C
D
B

His vote is first counted for A. If A doesn't have enough votes to win, Voter 1's vote becomes a vote for C. If C doesn't, D.

[tbontob]

PvK, I think what Phoenix-D was trying to point out (without saying it), is that with that system, someone will get the majority of votes.

[tbontob]

PvK, I think what Phoenix-D was trying to point out (without saying it), is that with that system, someone will get the majority of votes.

EDIT: Sounds good in theory, not sure how it would work in practice. Like who would be the first candidate to dispose of?

Probably, a better way is the candidate with the least votes is eliminated and his votes redistributed amonge the others. And so on, until there is a clear winner.

[Phoenix-D]

"That is, everyone votes for all of the candidates whom they approve enough to want in office, and the one with the most approvals wins"

How is this any different than the current? Unless you restrict people from voting twice for the same person..

[tbontob]

The more I think about it, the more attractive it seems.

For example.

Candidate A has a platform which 60% of the voter approve.

Candidate B has a platform which 40% of the voters approve.

Normally Candidate A would win.

Then comes the spoiler. Candidate C has a platform which had the approval of 25% of voters who would normally approve of Candidate A's platform.

So, you have
Candidate B 40% of the votes
Candidate A 35% of the votes
Candidate C 25% of the votes.

So, candidate B would normally win.

But under the suggested voting method, Candidate C would be eliminated and his votes would be distributed in accordance with the voters second preference, which in this case would be A.

So, A wins with 60% of the votes.

Now, normally it would be more complicated than this with some of the votes going to B, but it does illustrate the point.

[teal]

The two party system is enshrined in American politics because there is no other possible mathematical outcome given the voting system. For an eyeglossing acount of this see "An Economic Theory of Democracy" by Anthony Downs. Downs makes one big assumption however, that is that political issue space is only two dimensional (i.e. left vs right). As many of you are aware of the political compass website you can see that political issue space has perhaps more dimensions than just two (left and right on the horizontal, libertarian and authoritarian on the vertical). I say perhaps because even on that website people tend to be distributed along a diagonal line from the lower left corner to the upper right (with a few honorable and notable exceptions). So as long as most people roughly fall along this diagonal line, then we will have a two party system. The time is ripe for a shakeup in the system when most people fall off the existant line into the other dimension.

For example: traditionally the left (Democrats) are seen as fiscally liberal and socially liberal while the right is fiscally conservative and socially conservative (sadly given recent Republican behavior I can no longer say the right is fiscally conservative with a straight face. I have taken to calling them the "slash and spend" Republicans to go along nicely with the stupid "tax and spend" Democrats. But at least the Democrats understand that you have to raise income to raise spending.) Anyhow, a case can be made that most Americans are fiscally conservative but socially liberal (i.e. they would prefer for the government to spend responsibly and not tax very much but they would also prefer for the government to stay the hell out of their bedrooms and for it not to tell them what to do with their bodies). Thus the time may be right for a break in the two party system. The Democrats have tried to adopt to this social left fiscal right with the Democratic Leadership council and the so called New Democrats who are really quite fiscally conservative (for Democrats) while still retaining their social liberalness. I don't really see any such equivalent group on the Republican side. The moderate wing of that party as represented by John McCain and Jim Jeffords and Olympia Snow is pretty much dead in the water with very little power at all (Jeffords had to bolt the party). I would love to be contradicted on this point though. I would respect the Republicans a lot more if I saw any sort of moderate influence in their caucas at all instead of everywhere you look seeing narrow special interests being represented. (this Last point of course shows my personal bias...

I was going somewhere with all this long winded sillyness. Oh yeah. Before we go rushing off to fix the two party system by making it more representative, we have to ask the question is that actually a good idea? There are important protections for minority peoples and parties in the current system. I am afraid that one unavoidable side effect of making the system more representative is that we take a step closer to the "tyranny of the majority". Which the founding fathers were also very much afraid of and to my mind for very good reason. Pure Democracy has some pretty big problems.

Anybody who's still reading... Cheers!

Teal

[narf poit chez BOOM]

cheers. browsing webcomics, looking here on the side.

[Suicide Junkie]

I think you guys got PvK all wrong:

Here's how I think what he said is supposed to work:
1) When you vote, you can choose as many of the candidates as you like. Zero and All are both acceptable votes.
2) Any candidates with less than 50% (or number of your choice) of the votes are eliminated from any future calculations.
3) If one or more candidates remain after step 2, the one with the most votes wins.

So, For example:
4 candidates: Zack, Yolonda, Xavier, and Wanda.
8 voters: Alice, Bob, Cindy, David, Elaine, Fred, Gerald, and Helen.

Alice votes for Zack.
Bob votes for Zack and Xavier
C votes for Y,X,W
D votes for X,W
E votes for Z,Y,W
F votes for Z
G votes for Z,W
H votes for Z,W

Totals:
Zack - 6/8 = 75% approval
Yolonda - 2/8 = 25%
Xavier - 3/8 = 37.5%
Wanda - 5/8 = 62.5%

Thus, Yolonda and Xavier are kicked out of politics, and Zack gets the job.