[EM] Electoral Pluralism

[David L Wetzell]

>
>
> DLW wrote: 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.
>
> [endquote]

>
> DK: Single-winner makes sense for single-person tasks such as mayor,
> sheriff, or governor.  We should agree that this class of tasks should be
> left to this type of electing.
>
> Proportional representation makes sense for multi-person tasks such as
> councils or senates.  These tasks have often been elected via single-winner
> mode - if so, change to multi-person should be done only when/if value is
> seen in this by groups involved..
>


> [/endquote]
>

dlw:I doubt those "elected" by single-winner to such posts will ever see
the value of switching to a multi-seat election.  But I would not classify
the Senator races in the US as rarely competitive.  The US and state
congressional and city council elections would be much more natural
options.  And we wouldn't need to make all of them multi-seat winners
either.  The statement only calls for more "more local" elections to be
decided with multi-seat elections.  So in a parliamentary system like Great
Britain, one could switch from FPTP single-seat elections to
super-districts with 4 seats each, which would be allocated by a 3-seat
form of PR and a single-seat (possible alternative to FPTP) election.

>
> 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.
>
> [endquote]


> DK:Agreed FPTP is a loser from a simpler time.
>      Need to allow voters to vote for more-than-one, although some voters,
> some of the time, will see no need for this.
>
[endquote]

The point here is to call for electoral pluralism, rather than to attack
FPTP.  This way when our opponents defend FPTP in some way that obfuscates
the matter, we can reply that we are calling for the use of more than one
election, since FPTP is not the right election rule for all elections.
 They'll have a harder time arguing against that!


> DK:     Need to allow voters, when voting for more-than-one, to indicate
> relative preference among these.     Primaries were an invention to help
> with FPTP pain.  Methods that satisfy the above needs see little, or no,
> value in primaries with their expense.
>      Runoffs were another aid for FPTP pain.  As with primaries, possible
> value of runoffs decreases with methods that do better in the main election.
>      Approval, while fixing the first above problem at little cost, fails
> to help with the second.
>
[endquote]
dlw:  You're missing the point.  Yes, there's lots of things one can do,
but the key thing is to frame the need to experiment and to use more than
just FPTP.  Because I would argue that it's the near exclusive use of FPTP
which is the worst thing of all, we can compensate for its continued use in
some elections...

>
> Methods list:
>      Need to be understandable to, at least, most voters.
>      If to be usable over county and state districts, must NOT have to
> retrieve local data as IRV does.
>      Should (must?) tolerate write-ins.
>      Must tolerate several candidates running in a race and report their
> relative strength.  This means that a weak candidate will be visible, with
> this helping progress to be visible, up or down.
>

dlw: Yes, but we don't need to include all that in a statement for the
public. It's part of the process of experimentation, or learning from
experience and the ex post use of analysis to make clear what's likely
going on...

>
>  dlw
>
>
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