In the US a party selects a slate of individuals and you can vote for that slate and then change some of your votes. In some other countries you can only vote for slates and can't then change votes. I propose allowing parties to select intersecting slates of individuals. The Republicans could promote a slate who they chose the Democrats could do the same. The Greens, too poor to do all that, could chose the people they liked and in some cases put up their own people. In voting for the Greens you would be voting for all the people the Greens selected, some Republican some Democrat etc. In addition you would be voting Green and that would be counted. Voters could vote green and change some votes. They could look at any candidate and see if the Green's backed him. We have a situation where there are so many candidates are on the ballot that voters make decisions in the dark. Often this is done on the basis of ethnicity and a number of politicians are suddenly getting Irish names. We also have a lot of politicians with names like Lowtax and Legalpot. This is actually a tradition going back to just after the American revolution. I don't regard such candidates as nuts, I regard them as American history buffs which is almost as bad. Allowing slates would give voters more information on the spot. Candidates must be able to refuse slating. You may not want to be on the American Nazi slate even though they want you. This means if the Rosegarden party gets two votes everybody will know it. If the Greens get ten million votes even if they had no candidates they will have a lot of clout.
