[EM] electoral college/ two-party-duopoly

[Adam H Tarr]

Curt wrote:

>I should have been more clear - Such an IRV scheme has no effect on
>making it more likely their candidate will win or that their interests 
>will
>be reflected.  They can't win the EC until they have 270 EVs, at which
>point they're not exactly a third party anymore.

Sure.  That's a generally true property of IRV as far as I can tell: it 
really only helps the biggest parties.  That's what Mike Ossipoff is 
talking about when he calls it "non-reform".

>> 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.
>
>What pro-IRV argument makes sent-to-House elections less likely?

Certainly none, but I wouldn't expect them to be dramatically more likely 
under IRV.

>If I were to overhaul it and still keep the EC, I'd award each state's 
>EVs
>proportionally according to the placement of each candidate in that
>state.  According to that scheme, by the way, Bush just barely won in
>2000 (spoiled by Nader) - Gore actually won more of the ultra-close
>states in 2000.  I'd figure the placement of each candidate with a 
>better
>voting scheme.  (Thus my question about normalizing placement of
>multiple candidates on a 100-point scale a few threads ago.)  I'd
>re-apportion the EVs to more accurately reflect the population.  I'd 
>want
>some way to come up with a more thoughtful compromise/ratio between
>popular and regional representation (less arbitrary than 435:100).

As I said in my reply to Dave, I think the simpler (and much more 
accurate) solution is to scale the votes.  (just cutting and pasting) If 
there are N votes cast in North Dakota, then multiply every vote from 
North Dakota by 3/N.  If there are M votes cast in California, then 
multiply every vote from California by 54/M.

>> ...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.
>
>I agree, but the point against such an arrangement is that it could spur
>even greater gridlock within the legislative body.

Maybe, maybe not.  Legislators have the freedom to vote on individual 
issues, and on any given issue, if there's a majority, it will pass what 
it wants.  The fact that the members of that majority may change from 
issue to issue is not relevant.

Again, most of the deadlock issues we tend to associate with multi-party 
legislatures are actually caused by the need to hold a coalition together.

>>> 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.
>
>However, in a representative democracy, this is kind of the point.
>Part of my input has already been accounted for in earlier elections -
>primaries and the like.  And so, my representative in DC isn't really
>expected to represent *me*, he's expected to represent the consensus
>of which I am a part.  I expect to not fit that mold exactly.

I find this argument really unconvincing.  Yeah, you might have some 
additional impact in the primary, but in one-district plurality you 
fundamentally have a choice between two things, neither of which might 
represent you well at all.  Basically, the national parties set the 
agenda, and you pick between two national platforms.  Sure, there are 
exceptions, but that's a pretty good first order approximation.  And 
thanks to gerrymandering, you don't even get to pick which platform you 
elect -- in stead, the platform picks you.

>So I don't see how it's clearly better.  I see Condorcet as inarguably 
>better
>than Plurality and IRV, but I don't see multi-party representation as 
>inarguably
>better than a two-party "duopoly".

Some reasons (some mentioned above):

1)  It forces everyone to pick one of two viewpoints on every issue in one 
package.  This distorts the results in some issues.

2)  It consistently underrepresents certain viewpoints.

3)  It makes it far easier for money to corrupt the process, with only two 
targets to throw money at.

4)  PR with multi-member districts allows a much higher percentage of 
votes cast to actually elect a member of congress, thereby increasing 
voter satisfaction and turnout.

I could go on if you want...