[EM] Challenge: two-party methods

[James Gilmour]

Juho Laatu  > Sent: Saturday, July 09, 2011 10:35 AM
> After some recent discussions and thoughts around two-party 
> systems I thought it would be interesting to discuss 
> two-party systems also in a more positive spirit. The 
> assumption is thus that we want the system to be two-party 
> oriented. We want to have two strong parties, and one of them 
> should rule. We want to allow only well established parties 
> with wide support to rule. The first obvious approach is to 
> ban all other parties than the two leading parties. But maybe 
> we don't want  to be so brutal. Let's not ban the possibly 
> already existing, much liked and hopeful third parties. It is 
> also good to have some competition in the system. Let's not 
> allow the two leading parties think that they don't have to 
> care about the voters and they can do whatever they want, and 
> stay in power forever.

This is a very strange proposal, all the more so because your principal objective is not clear.  Is your objective to manipulate the
voting system so that all the smaller parties are more or less crushed out of the political system, leaving only two?  Or is your
objective to ensure single-party majority government where the government comes directly from the national elections?

The first of these is not, to my mind, compatible with any definition of democracy.

If single-party majority government is the objective, that is very easy to implement.  If no party (in fairly representative
elections) wins more than half of the seats, allocate 55% of the seats to the party with most votes nationally and divide the
remaining seats proportionately among the remaining parties.  This has already been done in national public elections, e.g. in Italy
in the 1920s, when the 'premium' was two-thirds not 55%.

Assuming you are suggesting this in the context of electing an assembly (national or regional parliament) and not a single-winner
election (state governor or president), it is very interesting to note what happened in Malta after STV-PR was introduced some 80
years ago.  Before STV-PR was introduced AND for the first 40 years of its use, candidates from three, four or five parties were
elected to the Parliament at each election, but for the past 40 years only two parties have been represented in the Parliament.  If
you believe at all in representative democracy I think it is much the best to leave that aspect of party dynamics to the voters.

James