From: Shawn K. Quinn <[email protected]>
2. As a result of #1, a vote for any candidate who finishes below second
place is effectively the same as voting for the eventual winner. Put
another way, it robs the second place candidate of the votes needed to
win.
This is called "Duverger's Law". See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law"In political science, Duverger's
law holds that plurality-rule elections (such as first past the post)
structured within single-member districts tend to favor a two-party system and
that "the double ballot majority systemand proportional representation tend to
favor multipartism."[1][2] The discovery of this tendency is attributed to
Maurice Duverger, a French sociologist who observed the effect and recorded it
in several papers published in the 1950s and 1960s. In the course of further
research, other political scientists began calling the effect a "law" or
principle.Duverger's law suggests a nexus or synthesis between a party system
and an electoral system: a proportional representation (PR) system creates the
electoral conditions necessary to foster party development while a plurality
system marginalizes many smaller political parties, resulting in what is known
as a two-party system.While a principle of political science, in practice most
countries with plurality voting have more than two parties. While the United
States is very much a two-party system, the United Kingdom, Canada and India
have consistently had multiparty parliaments.[3][4] Eric Dickson and Ken Scheve
argue that there is a counter force to Duverger's Law, that on the national
level a plurality system encourages two parties, but in the individual
constituencies supermajorities will lead to the vote fracturing.[5]
"So... in Texas, Trump won. That means voting for Gary Johnson was the
same as voting for Trump. Voting for Jill Stein was the same as voting
for Trump. Voting for Evan McMullin was the same as voting for Trump.
If everyone in Texas who had voted just for Gary Johnson had voted for
Hillary instead, we'd be having an entirely different discussion because
Trump would not have won."
This development is, in general, very good for Libertarians such as myself. It
means that we are going to be consistently influencing elections, probably from
here on in. And that means that the two major candidates will have to start
listening to libertarians.
>I will say this: at least Jill Stein or Evan McMullin couldn't have been
>any worse than Trump. But the system as it stands now doesn't even give
>them, or others who run outside of the two major parties, a realistic
>chance to win the presidency. This sucks, but it is what it is.
My proposed solution is to give each candidate for a Congressional office
influence in voting, proportionate to the vote totals in the election. If
there are three candidates, A, B, and C, with 50%, 45%, and 5% of the vote, the
minority candidate gets an office elsewhere, and can neutralize part of the
vote of the majority-vote candidate, if he wishes.If the majority-vote
candidate is voting on something that is uncontroversial, agreed with by the
minority-vote candidates, his vote will get an influence of 100%. If the
minority candidates choose the opposite position, the net result will be
50-45-5=0: There will be no net vote from that state.
Jim Bell
