Generalized parties.

[Charles Fiterman]

In the US a party selects a slate of individuals
and you can vote for that slate and then change
some of your votes.

In some other countries you can only vote for 
slates and can't then change votes. 

I propose allowing parties to select intersecting
slates of individuals. The Republicans could promote
a slate who they chose the Democrats could do the
same. The Greens, too poor to do all that, could
chose the people they liked and in some cases put
up their own people.

In voting for the Greens you would be voting for
all the people the Greens selected, some Republican
some Democrat etc. In addition you would be voting
Green and that would be counted. Voters could vote
green and change some votes. They could look at
any candidate and see if the Green's backed him.

We have a situation where there are so many candidates
are on the ballot that voters make decisions in the
dark. Often this is done on the basis of ethnicity
and a number of politicians are suddenly getting 
Irish names. We also have a lot of politicians with
names like Lowtax and Legalpot. This is actually a
tradition going back to just after the American 
revolution. I don't regard such candidates as nuts,
I regard them as American history buffs which is
almost as bad.

Allowing slates would give voters more information
on the spot. Candidates must be able to refuse slating.
You may not want to be on the American Nazi slate 
even though they want you.

This means if the Rosegarden party gets two votes
everybody will know it. If the Greens get ten million
votes even if they had no candidates they will have
a lot of clout.