Good Evening, Dave re: "In New York, at least, the two major parties each do such as appoint half the members of the Boards of Elections." and also in regard to the related comments about "party leadership", "party activities", "party business", "state party", and "county organizations".
To me, this says "the structure of government" and the "responsibilities of voters" are what the parties say they are. I think that degree of control is pretty much the same in all the states. Ought we not question such an arrangement? Nothing in our Constitution grants such rights to political parties, yet they dictate all of our political activity. Do we see nothing wrong with that? Is that not, indeed, the cause of our political system's failure? Have we become so accustomed to partisan dictatorship that we can't see how destructive it is? re: "In at least most states electors are not directed by their party but by party members in elections and/or caucuses." Yes. But what is the rationale for a few of our citizens ... the so-called "party faithful" ... dictating the actions of people who are supposed to, after they study "such candidates as become visible to them, do their voting." re: "You start with the size of legislature desired. If legislators should each represent about 750, multiply my numbers by 10." That's fine. The question I'm interested in, though, is how the legislators are selected. Who names the candidates? Would we not be better off finding a way to select them from among ourselves? In what way do we benefit by having them named by people who can control their votes? re: "You had mentioned pr, so I propose THE VOTERS organizing themselves into the right size districts with no boundaries" We have no means for the voters to organize themselves. The parties define the districts. It's called gerrymandering. It is an example of how the parties control our political process. These are the grave inequities we must find a way to correct. We can count the votes any way we like. As long as the parties control the process, we will lose. Fred ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info