On 01/10/2013 04:38 AM, Richard Fobes wrote:
On 1/5/2013 8:12 AM, Jonathan Denn wrote:
> .... The purpose is to draft a Constitutional Amendment for omnibus
> electoral reform. For these people everything is on the table. We had
> to pass on another household name because that person wouldn't put
> Term Limits on the table.
(...adding to what I wrote earlier)
Term limits are perceived as "needed" because elections aren't working.
If elections did produce fair results, elections would be the best way
to limit the term of an incumbent politician.
Instead of dismissing the person who doesn't want term limits "on the
table," I'd suggest clarifying (in your reform) that term limits are a
backup plan in case primary elections are not reformed (to be truly
competitive).
I think term limits, at least for actual political positions (as opposed
to party positions), have a real purpose, and that they would still have
a purpose under a better voting system.
Consider a country that's leaning too far left for the population's
wishes. A right-wing candidate is elected. This right-wing president (or
PM, through parliament) starts moving to the right. For this, he or she
gets approval from the people and starts being considered a good
president or PM. Let's say it's "he" and "president". Then he continues
moving to the right (because he is right-wing, after all), overshooting
the optimum. Because he has gained some reputation for being a good
president, the voters continue to support him until he goes very far to
the right.
The point here is that if there are term limits, he can only go so far
before he's no longer eligible for re-election; and the replacement has
no reputation to insulate him from reality.
This is a bit like the alpha in an exponential moving average, or the
proportional gain in a proportional controller. If you set it too far in
one direction, it never reaches the desired point; if you set it too far
in the other, it oscillates or reacts to noise as if it were signal.
From an engineering perspective, the hard part is then to find some
balance so that people don't overstay their welcome on the one hand, and
that the system doesn't lose itself in shifting spur-of-the-moment
"animal sentiment" on the other.
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