[Election-Methods] Partisan Politics

[Fred Gohlke]

Good Evening, Juho

re: "I already commented earlier that the "groups of three" based method 
that you have studied does not implement proportionality in the 
traditional way."

You're right.  It's not traditional, but it sure is proportional.  One 
of the unspecified conditions I intended for the 'groups of three' 
method was that participation in the election process should be 
mandatory, as it is in (I believe) Australia, Singapore and New Zealand. 
  If every person in the electorate participates in the process of 
selecting those who will represent them in their government, there can 
be no greater proportionality.


re: "Large parties (or whatever opinion camps) tend to get more 
representatives to the higher layers (more than their proportional size 
is)."

Is that assertion not based on the assumption that large parties (or 
opinion camps) must dominate our political existence?  What is, is not 
necessarily what must be.  Partisan interest can not compete with 
private interest when private interest is given a means of expression. 
When each member of the electorate can pursue their own political 
interest, the sum total of their interests must always be the interest 
of society.

When people have an opportunity to exercise their own judgment, they may 
be influenced by family, race, education, partisanship, national 
heritage, age, health and a multitude of other minor considerations, but 
none of these will override their vital interest in the specific issues 
of their time and place.  If the preponderance of a community has a 
coherent desire, it will, given the means to do so, achieve it ... 
regardless of whether the desire is labeled liberal, conservative, or 
any other doctrine.

It is a fallacy bordering on foolhardiness to seek the solution to 
societal problems in doctrinaire proposals.  The difficulties we face, 
the wars we wage, the threat to our environment, are real.  They require 
real thought, not the pseudo-thought of partisanship.  Doctrines may 
attract adherents but they beget confrontations rather than solutions.

That the concepts I speak of do not exist is a given.  The question in 
my mind is whether we can look past the mind-numbing influence of 
partisanship to seek empowerment of the humans among us.

Fred