Fred Gohlke wrote:
Thank you for writing that, Brian Olson, I felt it but wouldn't say it.
My impression, from trying to follow some of the discussions on this
site, is that there's little, if any, interest in democracy. Instead,
the esoteric schemes proposed here seem intended to empower minorities
(factions, really) at the expense of the majority. Would that there
were more interest in Dr. Jane Junn's admonition that we "... reenvision
the incentives for political engagement to be more inclusive of all
citizens."[1]
I wouldn't say that. Consider Condorcet. One of the greater problems
with plurality is vote-splitting, which favors minorities since it
destroys a center that many think is good but only a few think is great.
Thus, adopting Condorcet would help the majority, not minorities at the
expense of the majority, and inasfar as people stop involving themselves
in the political process because of the two parties appearing alike from
Duverger, replacing plurality with Condorcet would also help people get
involved.
Another example, as given in other posts here, is algorithmic
redistricting. If the districts in a region is gerrymandered, that means
that some faction is getting a superproportional share; that is, that
the current state of things is empowering a minority at the expense of
the majority. That minority is usually aligned with whoever drew the
district borders in the first place. Again, using either algorithmic
redistricting, real proportional representation, or both, would help
majorities in these cases, and again, to the extent that this dissolves
two-party dominion, it makes it easier for new entrants to get into
politics.
It may look like the systems we're discussing would benefit factions
against the majority since it'd support more parties or independents.
But I think that's just a side effect of considering the political
duopoly "right". It's not that politics fragments so minorities can play
it, it's that it's already been rigged and the fixes would move it back
to something more sensible.
I think that, personally at least, I'm trying to find ways of making the
political dynamics be more responsive (while not overshooting into
oscillation, of course). If the people uses this to preferentially elect
those who are less corrupt, then that is good; if they can more easily
join the process itself, then that is good also.
That's not to say there aren't problems that limit participation that
would not be fixed by switching the method. Your candidate report
document gives some, such as that close knit communities are becoming
more rare. Improving the election methods themselves does not exclude
doing something about those problems, and one can do both, or either,
and the improvements would compound.
More extensive changes have also been discussed here, like delegable
proxy, which would weaken formal party structures considerably.
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