[EM] language/framing quibble

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

Fred Gohlke wrote:
> Good Afternoon, Kristofer Munsterhjelm
> 
> Thank you for your thoughtful comments.  I understand and agree with you 
> on plurality and two-party dominion, and their off-shoots, 
> gerrymandering and the various forms of corruption.  The difference 
> between our views seems to be the focus on finding a 'better way' to 
> count votes when (in my opinion) the real problems are the 'who' and the 
> 'what' we vote for.  Until we enable the people, themselves, to select 
> who and what they will vote for, changing the way the votes are counted 
> is an exercise in futility.
> 
> Although you didn't specifically say so, I take it you do not consider 
> the political duopoly "right".  Neither do I.  But neither do I see 
> wisdom in fragmentation ... replacing the duopoly with a multitude of 
> smaller factions ... because it bypasses the vital step of studying the 
> nature of partisanship and how it came to dominate politics, right here 
> in the birthplace of 'The Noble Experiment':
> 
>    "When the Founders of the American Republic wrote the U.S.
>     Constitution in 1787, they did not envision a role for
>     political parties in the governmental order.  Indeed, they
>     sought through various constitutional arrangements such as
>     separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism, and
>     indirect election of the president by an electoral college to
>     insulate the new republic from political parties and factions."
>     Professor John F. Bibby[1]

You are right in your assumption: I do not consider the political 
duopoly right. On the other hand, I don't consider better election 
methods to be mere tweaks. The construction of organizations and their 
interplay in the domain of politics is, I think, more than anything else 
a process. The process is influenced by both external and internal 
constraints: what weakens and what strengthens.

A plurality system serves as a constraint that gives voice to the two 
most likely choices and consequently silences the rest. However noble 
minor parties or groups may be, there is no way that they can compete, 
at least not without displacing a former major group or party (as the 
Republicans did after the Civil War, occupying the empty space left 
after the collapse of the Whigs).

I think that a proper election method can offer the people a much better 
way of picking their leaders, when that is required. Ideally, such 
leaders would not be required, and we'd all be in a minimally 
hierarchical society, but reality intervenes.

Because organization is a process, the change of election methods don't 
just change how the people pick their representatives or leaders, but 
also how those leaders react to the now-differing constraints, and how 
the people in turn respond to those changes, and so on. Using a party 
neutral method (like STV) would also encourage indpendents to run since 
they'd actually have a chance, and thus weaken the partisanship you 
refer to. With Duverger's tendency reversed, the multiple parties would 
keep any one party from gaining such dominance that it could trump 
through policy unopposed, even more so since the opposition of multiple 
parties would be stronger than the opposition of a single party.

If considered desirable, party power could be weakened further by rules 
similar to those of the consensus government used in some Canadian 
territories. One should still be careful not to consider organization 
itself an evil and reason that since dictatorships are the extreme of 
order, the extreme of chaos, on its own, would be ultimate liberation. 
At the least, one should have something with which to replace the old 
party dynamics, or risk that groups make their own rules (rules that 
favor themselves, naturally).

To sum that up, I am saying that first, altering the methods of election 
can lead to favorable results beyond the immediately obvious. Second, 
perhaps partisan politics can be improved upon, but if there'll still be 
elections, there'll still be a need for good election methods; and 
third, further decentralizing changes will be next to impossible to get 
through when the ruling parties are so few and hence so much a central 
power.