2011/10/31 David L Wetzell <[email protected]> > On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 11:58 AM, Jameson Quinn > <[email protected]>wrote: > >> The reason PR makes you sound more like a whiny loser than single-winner >> reform is that PR is essentially a results-oriented idea. If you say you >> want PR, people know that you mean you want different winners, and they can >> easily check who that would be in practice. And that makes it easy for them >> to pigeonhole you. > > > dlw: all election rules are results oriented ideas. Some pragmatists > believe that the essence of all ideas are their results. >
My point was: many politically-active people quickly filter new ideas by partisan advantage. This can be as blunt as "If it hurts my party, I oppose it" or as sophisticated as "If it helps the party of the person who is proposing it, then that must be their primary motivation." Since PR, unlike single-winner reform, has highly predictable partisan results in the short term, fewer people have the open mind to listen to you talk about it. > Well, I believe that making more "more local" elections more competitive > and thereby more meaningful checks on $peech is something that would appeal > to the different factions of the #OWS a lot more than stuff on > single-winner reform. > This is a good non-partisan goal. Both PR and single-winner reform would help here. It is easier to convince people that this is your sincere goal when talking about single-winner reform, for the reasons above. > The latter is too esoteric and let's face it, a lot of it is chasing each > other's tails, as it's too easy to tease out something that might be > (mis)construed as a deal-killer in any election rule. > Yes, it is important to stay grounded in reality, and not get caught up in improbable scenarios; something which, you're right, is more of a danger when talking about single-winner reform. Anyway, I think we probably already agree more than it would sound like, in that activism should be balanced between PR and single-winner advocacy, and not too focused on just one side of that. Jameson
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