On Oct 31, 2009, at 11:08 AM, Kevin Venzke wrote:
(PR makes sense in general but I wouldn't deny people
the right to achieve the political balance using two-party
systems if they so want.)
How would this decision be made? Majority rule?
It's not hard to imagine a referendum with that kind of effect. I
don't see how you can get away from majority rule; even if we elect
a body using PR-STV to vote on the party system, that's still majority
rule (or a super-majority rule with a possibility of no outcome), it's
just different people voting in the end.
I don't have a counter-suggestion, but there does seem to be a
practical problem here.
PR-STV was used in quite a few US cities in the first half of the 20C.
Mostly, it got repealed when the local majority party realized that
they could benefit from majority-take-all voting, and could avoid
sharing power by repealing PR.
One can imagine establishing a "culture of PR" where even members of
the majority support the idea that others should be represented; this
seems to be the case in various places outside the US, and for
whatever reason in Cambridge MA. But this has certainly not been the
rule in the US.
----
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
