[EM] What's wrong with the party list system?

[James Gilmour]

Juho Laatu  > Sent: Monday, July 04, 2011 4:30 PM
> (Of course the idea of having proportionally ordered 
> candidate lists in a closer list election would make voting 
> in the actual election even simpler. But then one would need 
> to have a primary to find the ordering for each party.)

But that would not give proportional representation of the voters, i.e. those who voted in the public election.  Any ordering of a
party's list by a primary election can, at best, reflect only the views of those entitled to vote in that primary.  That is a
private, internal matter for each party. For real proportional representation of the VOTERS, the voters must be free to express
their opinions among the parties and among the candidates within the parties.  That can be done only in the actual public election,
i.e. all at one time, when all the voters know which parties are contesting the election and can see all the candidates of all the
parties.

James