[EM] Sociological issues of elections

[Vidar Wahlberg]

On Sun, Sep 01, 2013 at 07:05:12PM +0300, Juho Laatu wrote:
> I tried to outline some scenarios where the voters could more or less directly determine the composition of the coalition. I guess this is too "dynamic" for you, and you actually like the current Norwegian practice where there are two rather fixed government alternatives, and voters know exactly which coalition each candidate/party belongs to?

I apologize for answering so briefly on your message.
I find the idea that letting the voters vote for their preferred
coalition quite interesting, although I'm not certain if it will have
any significant impact on the "sociological issues". And I can't fully
visualize how such an election would work, and it seems to me that this
may quickly become a fairly complex system?

You're not off track, the basis of my question was that given a
democratic election, how should the government/election be formed to
reduce the incentive for candidates/parties to talk down other
candidates/parties, and encourage people to vote for candidates/parties
based on the their ability for the task and not their less relevant
traits?
There are no conditions on whether it should be a party-list system, voting
directly for candidates, how the vote is submitted or even what the
candidates/parties may or may not do in their campaign. The only
condition is that the election is democratic, that it is the people who
vote.

I don't know how common this is, but before elections in Norway most
media create tests where the user is presented with several questions
they answer with how much they agree with, and at the end they're
presented with which party they agree the most with. If this was how
people voted for parties then you would effectively eliminate much
fearmongering and "charisma"-votes, but you'll also introduce several
other issues (the ideology of the party is lost, and you'll greatly
simplify problems that may be very complex in nature).
I don't particularly care for such an election myself, it just serves as
an example.

I know the questions is vague and broad, but I hope the issues I'm
trying to point out is something the readers of this list can relate to.


-- 
Regards,
Vidar Wahlberg