[EM] Jameson: Democrats and voting system reform

[Michael Ossipoff]

Jameson said:

1. I am sympathetic to the idea that we shouldn't dismiss IRV out-of-hand
simply because it has inferior properties. Its better momentum is a force
to be reckoned with.

[endquote]

IRV has some great properties, but, with the existing electorate,
IRV's FBC failure, and its tendency (like Plurality) to stay at an
unliked Myerson-Weber equilibrium disqualify it.

In IRV elections, I'd probably favorite-bury too, top-ranking a
compromise. IRV's u/a strategy is to rank the acceptables in order of
winnability (I don't know exactly what that would mean in detail, but
one's rough impression of winnability would do).

Whether that's ok depends on how well people judge what's acceptable.
When someone thinks that a party as corrupt, sleazy and bought as the
Democrats is acceptable, and also thinks that the winner must be a
Democrat or a Republican, then any FBC-failing method is very bad
news.

In general, when people don't agree on what's acceptable, many won't
like the results of FBC-failing methods.

As for IRV's FairVote momentum--If it's momentum you want, Plurality
has the most of that.

With the electorate that we have at the present time, IRV won't do.
What I was saying was that any electorate that is able to, by
Plurality, elect the Greens to office would also be competent to make
good use of IRV. For such an electorate, IRV would be fine. Therefore,
it's perfectly good for IRV to be proposed in the GPUS platform.


Jameson continued:

 ...what I myself can do as
a progressive, and to talk more about the Greens and Democrats...

[endquote]

The Democrats are getting elected regularly with Plurality. They don't
need a new voting system.

A progressive talking about the Democrats? And how much "progress"
have the Democrats been giving us lately?

Jameson continued:

3. [...]  Any idea that starts with
"first we elect a significant Green caucus to congress..."

[endquote]

No, it would be better to elect a Green president too.

Jameson continued:

or "Since greens
are immune to corruption and hate gerrymandering

[endquote]

Perhaps Jameson is aware of Green corruption that I haven't heard of.

The Democrats and Republicans are notorious for their corruption.
Their supporters just accept it as a fact of life.

The GPUS platform is the sort of document that would be written by
people who genuinely want something better, not by people motivated by
corruption.

At least there's one good way to react to corruption when we vote:
Don't vote for known corruption. That means we don't vote for
Democrats or Republicans.

Jameson continued:

[ Speaking of electing Greens to office] is a dead end.

[endquote]

It's the only upward road we have.

You want to know what a dead end is? Continuing to vote for Democrats.
We've been over this, but I'll say some of it again:

Someone defined insanity as expecting something different, when
continuing to do the same thing.

Saturday Night Live did a skit in which two people in a carpentry
workshop were having a discussion:

"I sure hate it every time I drive a nail into my thumb, and hammer it
all the way into the table."

"Yeah! I hate it every time I do that!"

They must be Democrat-voters.

If you're going to talk about the Greens, then you might want to
consider reading their platform.

If you did, you'd find that their platform offers the same things that
pretty much everyone is saying that they'd prefer. Their platform
would remedy the things that everyone is complaining about.

So why aren't they winning the elections? It's a combination of two reasons:

1. People haven't read their platform, and don't know what is offered.

We often hear that it's a person's duty to vote. Wrong. If someone
won't inform himself about what's offered, then it's his duty to _not_
vote.

2. Some people say, "Of course _I_ want something better, and _I_
would prefer what the Greens offer. But they can't win. So we must
pragmatically vote Democrat".

Meanwhile, of course everyone else who wants something better and
knows that it's being offered is thinking or saying the same thing.
Everyone who wants something better is following eachother (and their
tv), like a herd of sheep or cattle, and voting for something that
isn't better--voting for the same old usual corruption.

And what would we risk if everyone who wants something better actually
voted for what they want, instead of voting Democrat? The Republican
might win? So what? The Republican regularly wins anyway. It would
hardly be an unprecedented disaster. In fact, today's Democrat is
worse than yesterday's Republican anyway.  Continuing to loyally
support them hasn't made them any better.

How could we get a better voting system enacted?

Certainly not by "lobbying", advising or requesting political
incumbents. They and their bribers have no wish to change the voting
system that's keeping them in power.

Some states have state initiatives. Doing an initiative campaign costs
a lot of money and requires a lot of support and help. And voting
systems aren't exactly the hot topic that everyone talks about. Forget
state initiatives.

As I said in this thread's initial posting, the only way voting-system
reform will happen, for elections to national office, will be by
electing a president and Congress that want to do that.

Because the Greens offer changes that closely match what everyone says
they want, they have a much better chance of winning an election than
would a voting-system initiative, even if someone (other than
FairVote) could afford to finance one. Even FairVote hasn't
accomplished any successful state initiatives.

So a Green government is by far the most feasible way for voting
system reform for elections to national office to ever happen.

And, as I said, any electorate who can elect the Greens by Plurality
won't have any difficulty making good use of IRV.

Jameson said:

So, from that perspective, what do I think the important tactics are?

Priority one is to grow the movement.

[endquote]

How long have we been saying that, while EM members continue to devote
their time to discussing which unimproved Condorcet version is better?

Jameson continued:

Priority two is to win federal, and more-importantly state, elected
officials to our cause.

[endquote]

:-)  See above.

That means engaging in electoral politics,
principally at the primary stage. In other words: we cannot sit and dream
about a third-party tomorrow

[endquote]

Your trouble is that you dream about a "3rd party" tomorrow, while
continuing to vote for the Democrats today. With that behavior, your
tomorrow will never arrive.

So no, don't just "dream about a 3rd party tomorrow". Vote for what
you want immediately. What if everyone did? Let's find out.

Jameson said:

, we must also find candidates and movements we
can honestly support within the two parties.

[endquote]

Nonsense. There aren't "the two parties'. There are many parties, and
at least some of them reflect what people want a lot better than your
"the two parties" do.

Additionally, they aren't legitimately two parties. As Gore Vidal
said, it's just one party with two right wings.

What you mean to say is, "the two officially sanctioned,
media-permitted parties"


Jameson said:

For me, a progressive, that
means working inside the Democratic party.

[endquote]

:-)



Jameson said:

...willing to work with good people inside a major party

[endquote]

Jameson's "major" parties are "major" only in the sense that they're
all that is exclusively promoted, exclusively covered, by the mass
media, with all of the cattle loyally following behind.


Jameson continues:

even if you believe
that the larger part of that party is corrupt and counterproductive.

[endquote]

And what is the uncorrupt and productive part of the Democrats?   :-)

Did Jameson vote for an uncorrupt Democrat this year?


I've suggested the possibility of a voting-rights lawsuit, regarding
Plurality's forced-falsification. But I must admit that of course it
would almost surely be futile.


Jameson said:

Where does IRV and FairVote fit into this? Obviously, your answer to that
will depend on how you feel about IRV. But even if you think that IRV's
disadvantages versus plurality outweigh its advantages,

[endquote]

IRV is better than Plurality, but both methods have been shown to
share the tendency to forever keep electing two unliked parties at
Myerson-Weber equilibrium.

With the existing electorate, IRV wouldn't be good. If the Greens
enact IRV after being elected to Congress and the presidency, then, as
I said, the electorate that has elected a Green government would be
competent enough to make use of IRV, and IRV would then be fine.

Think of the election of Greens in Plurality as a test of the
electorate's competence to use IRV.

.Mike Ossipoff