On 5/30/2013 12:44 PM, David L Wetzell wrote:
...
dlw: If neither can dominate and we have some exit threat between them
and away from them, possibly changing the specific two parties at the
top or forcing them to merge with a growing (or regionally strong) third
party, then it'll be easier to check the influence of special interests
on both of them.
...
I also think that 3rd party aficionados will recognize that the
imperative is to incorporate the use of PR asap so as to mitigate the
cut-throat competition between the two major parties that prevents us
from making progress on so many issues that desperately need change and
to trust that as a result of the changed rules that both major parties
would be seriously changed for the better even if their names do not change.
Rather than giving up on voter control of the Republican and Democratic
parties, I want to increase voter influence on these two parties. That
is why I promote reforming *primary* elections.
I agree that third-party candidates should win often enough to indicate
the extent to which the main parties (which could be more than two at a
distant future time) fail to be controlled by the voters.
Privately David asked:
> What are the approaches you advocate for?
For primary-election reform (which are single-winner contests) I promote
VoteFair popularity ranking, which is mathematically equivalent to the
Condorcet-Kemeny method.
(IRV cannot handle enough candidates for this purpose. Approval voting
would provide improvements here, but I'm not a supporter of approval
voting for widespread use.)
For multi-winner use I promote VoteFair representation ranking. It is
unlike any other voting method I've seen. Details are at:
http://www.votefair.org/calculation_details_representation.html
(STV is inferior to this method.)
In addition I advocate the use of VoteFair party ranking to identify
political-party popularity. Those results would be used to allow the
two most-representative parties to offer two candidates in each race,
and would limit less-popular parties to either one or zero candidates in
each race.
(IRV cannot handle this kind of general election. Let's say it's a
Congressional election in which there are two Republican candidates, two
Democratic candidates, one Green-party candidate, one [whatever]
candidate, and no additional candidates.)
To solve the gerrymandering problem I advocate using VoteFair
representation ranking in double-size districts (to elect the two most
representative candidates in each district), plus having some additional
seats filled based on party-based proportionality. ...
... But choosing the candidate for the proportional seats would NOT be
done using any kind of party list, and instead would be based on which
district-based candidate lost in their district yet demonstrated he or
she is the most popular candidate (of the specified party) compared to
the other losing candidates (of that party) in the other districts.
The full approach includes providing for a smooth transition to better
elections. And the approach includes a proposed Constitutional
amendment for reforming Presidential elections, which involves
complications that IRV advocates don't seem to be aware of.
(IRV advocates seem to think that after adopting IRV in more places, the
details for dealing with IRV's limitations [especially its inability to
handle three somewhat-equally popular political parties] can be worked
out later.)
Broadly speaking, in the context of this discussion with David about
FairVote (not VoteFair) strategy, I do not see either FairVote or IRV
advocates promoting a full election system that works together.
Instead I hear "let's use IRV here, and STV there, but stay with
plurality voting there and there, and let's ignore the consequence of a
third-party presidential candidate winning some electoral votes and
preventing any candidate from winning a majority of electoral votes, and
we're confident that everything will all work out."
IRV and STV have been tried elsewhere (notably Australia) and those
governments are just as corrupt as the U.S. (single-mark-ballot-based)
and European (PR-based) "election systems."
Ironically most IRV advocates say they want third parties to grow, yet
IRV cannot handle more than (let's say) 3 main candidates in a general
election, so that will lead to a dead end if there should turn out to be
four main parties.
Richard Fobes
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