[EM] electoral college/ two-party-duopoly

[Adam H Tarr]

Curt wrote:

>Due to the fact that the EC requires a majority (not plurality) to win 
>outright, and due to the winner-take-all nature of the states, this is 
>how the EC encourages a two-party system.

I think it's more accurate to say that the EC greatly benefits from a two 
party system, than to say it encourages it.  It's plurality that 
encourages the two-party system.

>[ The first issue really illustrates what I find so impossible about 
>IRV advocates, because many of them advocate IRV *in presidential 
>elections*, but *before* removing the EC.  Implementing IRV in pres. 
>elections on a state level, without changing the EC, has *no* effect 
>whatsoever, 

Not so.  It could swing an election from one major party to another in a 
swing state, by transferring the votes of a wing party.  To take 2000 as 
an easy example: give Gore the Nader votes, and he as a clear majority in 
Florida.

>save to increase the chances of the election just being 
>sent to the House of Representatives.  It's this reason alone that 
>leads me to find much of the pro-IRV reasoning bizarre. ]

There is an argument that IRV perpetuates a two-party system almost as 
well as plurality does.  That's a bad thing in general, but in the 
isolated case of trying to avoid elections being sent to the House, it's a 
good thing.

>Back to my question.  Some of the intent behind the EC - or, should I 
>say, some of the perceived benefits of it - are stability in 
>government.

I've never heard that argument.  The one I've heard most is that it gives 
more representation to small states.  Which is sort of true, except:

1) Some small states actually get under-represented in the EC, due to 
being just short of getting an extra representative.  So the EC is 
actually pretty erratic in this regard.

2) In any presidential election, the only people that really had a hand in 
electing the winner are the ones who voted for the winner in states the 
winner carried.  However, real power is the power to actually change the 
election.  With that in mind, the real swing votes were cast by those who 
voted for the winner in states the winner NEEDED to carry to win.  In 
2000, that was every Bush state.  But in most elections, only the large 
states actually play a swing role.  So the small states are frequently 
marginalized in this way.

3) People tend to associate small states with rural populations and 
certain interests, but the EC is a very crude tool at best if increasing 
the representation of those interests.  And why should they get a larger 
say, anyway?

So, the EC should be abolished, but that's not news around here.

>  Sure, perhaps too stable, but I personally do find it a 
>hard argument to make that a multiple-party legislative body is clearly 
>and incontrovertibly better than a two-party legislative body.  When I 
>see the nature of some of the power-sharing alliance agreements in some 
>parliamentary bodies with many small parties, it doesn't seem to do a 
>much better job of democratically representing the population than a 
>two-party body (this reaches the outer limits of my study and I don't 
>have many examples to draw on; the only one I find myself thinking of 
>in this regard is Israel's).

The unstable parliamentary democracies are the ones where the ruling 
coalition needs to maintain a majority so that it can form a government.  
Even if we had 50 parties in the house, there would still be no need for 
this.  Sure, they'd have to think of new rules for forming committees and 
such, but the executive branch is elected seperately in the USA, so all 
those stability issues are not a problem.

>So when I'm faced with the spin of a two-party system demanding 
>stability, and thus requiring that all third parties fashion alliances 
>before legislative elections rather than after, I don't really have a 
>convincing rebuttal.  It seems to me that these alliances would have to 
>happen sometime, because most legislative issues come down to an 
>up-or-down vote.

Yes, but if you put more diverse opinions on the floor, that are more 
representative of the people, then you give the people more choices about 
how the government is run.  Right now, (to pick an example out of a hat) 
voters can't easily elect a representative to congress who will oppose 
affirmative action but support abortion rights.  If I have those opinions, 
I'm probably going to end up voting for a candidate who will misrepresent 
me on one of them.  More parties would solve many such connundrums.

>It just begs the question for me - if there were other ways to make 
>sure third parties had better representation earlier in the system, and 
>there were other reforms enacted, if we could solve those problems in 
>different ways, then is this facet of a two-party system really all 
>that much of a flaw?  Perhaps these third parties just require better 
>representation within their favorite of the two main parties.
>
>In short, is it not possible to simply reform the two-party duopoly 
>rather than get rid of it entirely?

I really don't think so... as long as you have two parties, you 
essentially force the voters to tie their decisions on every issue 
together and cast one vote, even if they disagree with 49% of those 
decisions.

-Adam