[EM] A response to Juho Laatu

[David L Wetzell]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Juho Laatu <juho4880 at yahoo.co.uk>
To: EM list <election-methods at lists.electorama.com>
Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2011 20:14:45 +0200
Subject: Re: [EM] hello from DLW of "A New Kind of Party":long time
electoral reform enthusiast/iconoclast-wannabe...
On 31.10.2011, at 18.20, David L Wetzell wrote:

> This is not about getting third party candidates elected, it's about
making our polity tend towards a contested(and far more dynamic) political
duopoly, rather than a (somewhat contested) political monopoly.

I'm not sure what your targets for the national level are. This sentence
however sounds like
1) representatives of minor third party should not be elected,
dlw: It's not a should, it's a matter-of-fact that in the US third parties
are not strong and so it doesn't make sense to push for electoral reforms
that help them a great deal at the expense of the two major parties.

2) the strongest party should win in each single-winner district,

dlw:This will tend to be true in any single-winner election because of the
economy of scale in vote-getting...

3) the target is a political duopoly (in each district),

dlw: The target is to prevent political monopoly in each district.  If
there tends to be duopoly in each district, it need not be the same two
parties in every district.  Thus, there will be scope for minor parties to
contest the political duopoly.

 4) the political duopoly should just be more dynamic than today, which
could mean that new parties may replace the current major parties when the
small parties grow stronger than the old parties. These requirements
reflect what I tried to achieve a while ago. I'm just wondering if that is
also what you want.

dlw: Absolutely, the parties should be more willing to change themselves
and need to merge with successful minor parties or even be replaced.   I
think the GOP is going to implode when the major fissures between the
social and economic conservatives come to a head in this coming year.
 Then, it's possible that blue-dog democrats might merge with the more
powerful rump of the GOP and the rest of the Democratic party will turn to
the biggest of lefty third parties.

dlw

Juho
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