[EM] Utilitarianism and Perfectionism.

[Juho Laatu]

On 10.2.2012, at 2.02, James Gilmour wrote:

>> Juho Laatu   > Sent: Wednesday, February 08, 2012 8:29 PM
>> 
>> I think I agree when I say that the first decision (in the 
>> USA) is whether to make the current two-party system work 
>> better or whether to aim at a multi-party system.
> 
> Juho
> Don't you think you might just be starting in the wrong place?  Asking the wrong first question?
> 
> In a representative democracy, surely the first requirement is to ensure that any "representative assembly" (e.g. state or federal
> legislature or city council) is properly representative of those who vote.

Sounds good - both with two parties and with multiple partes.

>  If when provided with the means to choose freely among
> all significant viewpoints, the voters choose to cluster around two parties, then a "two-party system" will properly and fairly
> represent those voters.

Or maybe "two parties" would represet them. It seems that the voters did not want to limit themselves in a two-party set-up, i.e. a "two-party system".

>  In other another jurisdiction, the voters may choose to cluster in significant proportions around three or
> more parties when one would hope the voting system would be sufficiently sensitive for all the significant clusters to be
> represented directly.

This sounds like a proper multi-party environment.

> 
> There are real examples from national and sub-national elections where sensitive voting systems, responding to the voters' expressed
> wishes, elect representatives from several parties, but also example of where, despite the choice of several parties, the voters
> elect representatives from only two parties.

Yes, this sounds like a multi-party environment that uses some inappropriate method, maybe one taht would work better in a (not multi-party proportional) two-party environment.

Based on this, I'll now answer to the question on if the starting place was wrong. I think I (or the people in question) made an assumption that I don't want to have all people to be represented proportonally. It seems that I want to have two parties that will alternate in power. Third parties are allowed to win single-winner elections only if the grow big enough. In multi-winner representative bodies proportionality is not a requirement, except that I want the growing third party to beat one of the current two leading parties when they grow larger than one of the current leading parties.

This system that I tried to describe is some kind of an evolved version of the current two-party systems. I don't want to say that it would be my favourite. But it might be one option for people who want to keep their two-party system, but that want to make it more flexible with respect to third parties.

Juho



> 
> James
> 
> 
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