[EM] Electoral Pluralism

[David L Wetzell]

In light of the #OWS statement on electoral reform.
http://anewkindofparty.blogspot.com/2011/11/people-before-parties-electoral-reforms.html


My Thoughts about an alternative possible "consensus" statement for
non-electoral analytical types.

1. Democracy is a never-ending experiment.  It also is like a garden that
can go to seed.
We need to join the rest of the world in experimenting with better ways to
tend our democracy.
This entails changes in election rules, not just changing who is in power.

2. The most important change is to use both single-winner and multi-winner
(or Proportional Representation) election rules.
Single-winner elections give us leadership who can be held accountable.
Multi-winner elections  give us pluralism and protection for minority
rights.
We need both of these values.  A common sense way to combine them is to use
more multi-winner
elections for "more local" elections that otherwise are rarely competitive,
while continuing to use mainly single-winner elections
for "less local" elections.

3. We need to realize that election rules are like screwdrivers.  One
election rule does not work well with all elections.
As such, we need to consider alternatives to our current election rule,
First-Past-the-Post.
Most election rule alternatives like (.short list with links to brief
descriptions.), but not the  "top two primary" used in (...) or the
plurality "at large" voting used in (....), would improve things.

 dlw
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