By: Bryan

Bryan — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 17:02:03 +0000

Whether it’s the Tea-partiers or the Blue Dogs, the effects are the same in the US system, but in a proportional system you have hard numbers on how many voters are actually represented by those views, and you don’t have the current problem of voting for someone who shares none of your values because of the party label he chooses to wear.

Politics is already too ‘tribal’, we might as well have some truth in labeling.

I actually prefer the instant run-off system where you rank candidates for an office and if no one wins a majority of the votes, the second preference kicks in. We have people in Congress who only represent 40% of those who voted in their election. They do that in Australia.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 05:19:43 +0000

Someone at my office suggested proportional voting as a solution to the problem of 3rd parties being locked out of office by the tyranny of basic arithmetic in a 1st past the gate system (i.e., you need 50%+1 votes to be elected, thus the system will naturally settle down to two parties over time as smaller parties coalesce to guarantee themselves that 50%+1 votes). I merely smiled and said “Israel has that, and their politics are just as dysfunctional as ours.”

He then pointed out that yes, but at least in Israel the smaller parties have a voice. I then pointed out that no, in Israel the smaller parties were wagging the dog, and that it empowered smaller extremist parties far beyond their numbers because they could threaten to break the coalition by walking out. The end result is not better politics by any means. We have enough extremists in government already (you already mentioned three such induhviduals here), we don’t need to give them more power to go with their stupidity, the way the Israeli system has worked in practice.

Comments on: Israeli Elections

By: Bryan

By: Badtux