[EM] Extremism

[Alex Small]

It is sometimes asserted in various places (including, occasionally, this
forum) that PR promotes extremism and single member districts (SMD)
promote moderation.  There's no denying that PR would give representation
to small extremist factions.  But small extremist factions would still
have small caucuses while large centrist groups would have large caucuses.

Let's look at a case where SMD may actually contribute to extremism: 
California.  After the 2000 census the 53 Congressional districts were
drawn to favor incumbents with the sole exception of Gary Condit's
district (for the obvious reason that he was an even bigger embarassment
than Bob Dornan, if that's possible), and the only spoil taken by the
Democrats was that the new Congressional seat was gerrymandered to elect a
Democrat.  In the state legislature, most of the seats are also safe for
their incumbents.

The result of this incumbent protection is that legislative elections are
now decided in the party primaries.  Party loyalists are of course more
extreme than the rest of us.  The CA legislature seems to have a lot of
incredibly liberal Democrats devoted to fulfilling every bad stereotype
ever associated with liberals, and the state Republican party is so
dysfunctional that their strongest candidate is the guy who gave us "True
Lies" and "Kindergarten Cop."  The only thing stupider than a liberal is a
California Republican.

If we had PR, and we were liberated from the tyranny of the party
loyalists, a centrist party with a name like "People Better Than Gray
Davis and Dana Rohrabacher" could probably capture 30% of the vote.

Now, one could make a good argument that we might achieve moderation by
drawing legislative districts with the goal of ensuring competition.  But
given a choice between trusting the political process to sages with maps
and census data, or trusting the common sense of my fellow citizens, I'll
take Joe Voter over sages with maps.

Responses?



Alex