On May 18, 2008, at 19:05 , Fred Gohlke wrote:
re: "Political proportionality is the one that people most often
discuss since the election methods/systems typically provide
regional proportional automatically (e.g. in the form of single
seat districts and forcing all voters to vote at their home region,
without asking about the opinion of the voter)."
Should I infer that there is a basis for opposing regional
proportionality?
I'm open to all kind of proportionality scenarios (also other than
political and regional). All this depends on the election and society
in question. I do have some sympathy towards regional
proportionality since in many systems one could otherwise soon get a
very capital area centric set of representatives (who appear more
often on TV and news etc.). Regional proportionality may thus help
guaranteeing that all parts of the country will be represented well
enough. On the other hand voters that think mostly in ideological
terms (rather than regional) may not like being limited to regional
candidates only. Regionally oriented voters may like the idea of
having regional candidates much more. But as said, different
countries and elections have different needs.
(Also some more complex methods that would allow voters to give their
opinions on all candidates but that would still maintain also
regional proportionality are possible.)
I also tend to think that any naturally occurring groupings among
citizens are in most cases a richness of the society and they have a
positive and trust creating influence on their members, and are
therefore usually (at least as long as they are not targeted against
other groups) worth supporting rather than something that should be
rooted out.
I urge consideration of the idea that seeking representation is a
poor approach to resolving the imperative of pursuing minority
interests.
For me proportional representation of minority opinions (5% of the
seats for 5% of the voters) at the top level decision making bodies
is at least not a negative thing. Other approaches can be used too.
In our electoral system, those who control the government are
partisan. The primary purpose of their governmental acts is to
preserve their primacy.
Yes, at least it is typical that incumbent people and organizations
tend to make choices that maintain their current power and position.
It is good if the system has also some forces / features that work
against letting this very basic trend become dominant.
Partisan political structures retard the advance of progressive
ideas. They are inherently backward-looking.
I see this to be linked more to the incumbent nature of the current
political parties rather than to calling various interest groups in
the "political structure" "parties". The name doesn't thus make the
parties bad but the power may corrupt them.
The electoral method I've outlined addresses this by foregoing
partisanship in the search for intellect, talent and integrity.
Yes, it has many good features. But of course one can not rule out
the possibility of people asking each others what party/ideology they
represent and then making decisions based on this (rather than always
making their decisions based on "the qualities of the candidates" only).
I fear, though, it will be a long time before the advantages of
looking forward can supplant the penchant for looking backward.
I think this is a continuous (and never ending) fight. We just need
to work all the time to keep the system sound and well working. It's
a living process.
Juho
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