[EM] Is strategic voting a bad thing, really?

[Paul Kislanko]

wclark at xoom.org wrote

My immediate intuition was that while something like DSV+Plurality would
still result in two parties being dominant, *which* two parties those
were
might be more subject to fluctuation, than with standard plurality.

Part of the problem with the two-party system (as I see it) is that
social
inertia may keep one party in power long after it "should" have been
replaced by some popular third-party.  I think there's some argument to
be
made that the USA should currently have a two-party duopoly consisting
of
Greens/Republicans or Democrats/Libertarians (or even
Greens/Libertarians.)

--------------------------------------

It's not the exact vote-counting method that engenders and sustains the
two-party system in the US federal government - not much would change
even if every state switched to (pick your favorite plurality
replacement) as long as the "party in power" controls how elections are
conducted.

The only "national" election is that for president, and the president is
not elected by popular vote, but by "electors" that the voters elect by
whatever method.

The egregious "errors" that the electoral college system can lead to are
not due to using plurality to select the winner in any particular
elector election (though there certainly might be better ways to select
them).

The real problem is that 48 of the 50 states have decided that electors
run as a "slate" with a "winner take all" result. Two states (I forget
which two) do NOT do this. 

Instead, since the electoral college representatives of the states
represent their 2 senators + 1 * (number of representatives in the
house) they elect one elector for each House district and only the two
"statewide" positions are given to the winner of the popular statewide
vote.

Whether the slate of delegates is determined by a statewide
"all-or-none" or a proportional system with electors selected by
district is entirely up to the individual states.

The true "electoral reform" movements should be directing their energy
to have states adopt the more representative version of the current
electoral college. By this November I strongly suspect that the voters
in the states with the largest number of "winner take all" procedures
will be so sick of the two ad campaigns that they'd quickly vote for a
STATE constitutional amendment to move electoral college delegate
selection to the district level.

That will not change the duopoly system at all, since the party in power
will still get to draw the districts, but it would make the whole system
more democratic and less likely to make the US look like a third-world
country that can't hold a fair election.