[Election-Methods] Partisan Politics

[Juho]

On May 18, 2008, at 19:05 , Fred Gohlke wrote:

> re: "Political proportionality is the one that people most often  
> discuss since the election methods/systems typically provide  
> regional proportional automatically (e.g. in the form of single  
> seat districts and forcing all voters to vote at their home region,  
> without asking about the opinion of the voter)."
>
> Should I infer that there is a basis for opposing regional  
> proportionality?

I'm open to all kind of proportionality scenarios (also other than  
political and regional). All this depends on the election and society  
in question.  I do have some sympathy towards regional  
proportionality since in many systems one could otherwise soon get a  
very capital area centric set of representatives (who appear more  
often on TV and news etc.).  Regional proportionality may thus help  
guaranteeing that all parts of the country will be represented well  
enough.  On the other hand voters that think mostly in ideological  
terms (rather than regional) may not like being limited to regional  
candidates only.  Regionally oriented voters may like the idea of  
having regional candidates much more.  But as said, different  
countries and elections have different needs.

(Also some more complex methods that would allow voters to give their  
opinions on all candidates but that would still maintain also  
regional proportionality are possible.)

I also tend to think that any naturally occurring groupings among  
citizens are in most cases a richness of the society and they have a  
positive and trust creating influence on their members, and are  
therefore usually (at least as long as they are not targeted against  
other groups) worth supporting rather than something that should be  
rooted out.

> I urge consideration of the idea that seeking representation is a  
> poor approach to resolving the imperative of pursuing minority  
> interests.

For me proportional representation of minority opinions (5% of the  
seats for 5% of the voters) at the top level decision making bodies  
is at least not a negative thing. Other approaches can be used too.

> In our electoral system, those who control the government are  
> partisan.  The primary purpose of their governmental acts is to  
> preserve their primacy.

Yes, at least it is typical that incumbent people and organizations  
tend to make choices that maintain their current power and position.   
It is good if the system has also some forces / features that work  
against letting this very basic trend become dominant.

> Partisan political structures retard the advance of progressive  
> ideas.  They are inherently backward-looking.

I see this to be linked more to the incumbent nature of the current  
political parties rather than to calling various interest groups in  
the "political structure" "parties". The name doesn't thus make the  
parties bad but the power may corrupt them.

> The electoral method I've outlined addresses this by foregoing  
> partisanship in the search for intellect, talent and integrity.

Yes, it has many good features. But of course one can not rule out  
the possibility of people asking each others what party/ideology they  
represent and then making decisions based on this (rather than always  
making their decisions based on "the qualities of the candidates" only).

> I fear, though, it will be a long time before the advantages of  
> looking forward can supplant the penchant for looking backward.

I think this is a continuous (and never ending) fight. We just need  
to work all the time to keep the system sound and well working. It's  
a living process.

Juho






	
	
		
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