[EM] Has this idea been considered?

[Juho Laatu]

On 7.7.2011, at 22.54, Russ Paielli wrote:

> Also, consider the fierce opposition that would develop from any group that thinks they would suffer. And who might that be? How about the two major parties! Do you think they would have the power to stop it?

If we assume that one of the main targets of political parties is to get lots of votes and lots of power, then any new election method that makes it possible that also other parties might win some seats in some elections are something that they clearly should oppose. From this point of view all attempts to make a two-party system less two-party oriented are doomed.

Actually all administrational systems and organizations resist change for some very similar reasons.

From individual representative point of view any changes in the election method are extremely risky since they themselves got elected with the old method. Changing that to something new might not elect them again. And the old method will, with good probability.

IRV is interesting since it looks like a quite radical reform, but it clearly favours large parties. Fears of some small party winning a seat are much smaller in IRV than e.g. in Condorcet. That may be one reason why IRV has made some progress while Condorcet has not.

What didi people think before the nowadays generally agreed idea that all countries should be democratic. Maybe some idealists discussed the possibility that one day ordinary people might rule the country. I'm sure many others laughed at them and told them that such changes are dangerous and will never work, particularly since they are not in the interest of the current rulers, nor any other rulers that might overthrow the current rulers. So reforms are just a joke and idealistic dreams like democracy will never work. There would quickly be some new rulers that would kick the poor commoners out and probably even kill them.

Today many of us live in democracies and people can make changes if they so want. Actually that was the case already before the age of democracy. Changes were more difficult to achieve then. Now making such improvements should be comparably easy. And despite of having democracy the world is not perfect yet. Improvements are still possible. The key problem is actually, as you say, to agree on the targets, and make a model that majority of the rulers (voters) agree with, and that looks plausible enough so that people can start to believe in that change.

> I wish there were a good, viable solution, but I just don't see it happening in the foreseeable future.

We will see.

Juho