Greg Nisbet wrote:
You will be represented whether you like it or not...
Some countries have women's quotas, racial quotas, geographical quotas etc.
What are your thoughts on these?
I think it is generally a bad idea to impose this sort of requirement
on the people. Manipulation of the will of the people "for their own
good" isn't right. The government, however enlightened it considers
itself, should not subvert the will of the people. It is important
that the legislature be accountable and completely under the control
of the people.
If electoral intervention bad is not a good enough argument... try this.
Who decides which groups are worthy of representation and which are
excluded from protection?
Wouldn't this procedure elect a suboptimal candidate? There is no
guarantee that the people's choice would be replaced by someone with
similar issues. This would prevent representation in cases where the
candidate mandated by the quota replaced a dissimilar candidate.
Does this help or hinder actual social change?
This is an important argument. It is not clear to me that women's
quotas make society less sexist, racial quotas less racist, or
geographical quotas less balkanized. Looking to the example of
geographical quotas that we have in the Untied States, it has fostered
regionalism, in fact. Pork barrel spending is at an all-time high and
congressmen bicker over policies based on which state they help or
hurt.
I'll reply to this quickly as I'm about to leave this computer for a
while. I think that such quotas may be of use in the short term, to get
the system on the right track, but ideally, the election method should
be based just on the voters. Thus it would be a way of jumping from a
local optimum to a better local optimum, if you see it in system terms,
or of incorporating groups so that they can lift themselves up
afterwards. Of course, this relies on very powerful checks so that those
who get superproportional voice don't decide they like it that way and
stop the quota from being phased out later. Also, the maintainers would
be sufficiently wise to know when to phase it out - not too early and
not too late.
----
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
