/leftistpol/ - Leftist Politics

The plurality/first-past-the-post system does tend to encourage two-party dominance. But Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) just makes the situation even worse. In every country where IRV is implemented (Australia and Malta off the top of my head but there are others), there is two-party dominant. Barely any third-party presence in government.

I think the United States, Canada, UK, Australia, Malta, etc. should consider mixed-member proportional representation (MMPR). You'd have your first-past-the-post local constituency districts just like you have now. But you'd also have a set aside of a certain amount of Proportional Representation seats in order to ensure that the final seat tally in Congress/Parliament is more proportional with the actual popular vote. On the ballot you'd have two votes. One for a candidate in your local constituency. And one for your preferred political party. So if you wanted to vote for a Democrat or an independent in your congressional district but you wanted to give your party vote to Socialist Alternative, you could do that.

It's also pretty dumb to give every US state an equal amount of senators. I think each state should have 1 senator minimum. But other than that it should be rep by pop. Bigger states like California should be able to have more than 2 senators. Just like in the house, you'd have your local constituency seats (state senators). And also PR seats to make the seat total more proportional to the popular vote.

As for the Presidency, I think range voting would be the best option. Give each candidate an approval rating of 0-10. The candidate who finishes with the most points gets the presidency. I would do away with the Electoral College completely. The electoral college allows rural red-state America to hijack democracy. Remember when Bush beat Gore in the electoral college but Gore beat Bush in the popular vote?

>>272

>But Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) just makes the situation even worse. In every country where IRV is implemented (Australia and Malta off the top of my head but there are others), there is two-party dominant. Barely any third-party presence in government.

I'm not sure there's any causation to this correlation.

>>282

It makes sense though that third parties lack much representation in parliament in every single country it's tried from a theoretical stand-point too. Instant run-off voting requires majority support from the electorate in order to get elected. Third parties by their very nature don't have mass appeal. They can't win over majority support from their electorate. And instant run-off voting doesn't get rid of strategic voting either. People will still vote Democrat instead of say Green or Socialist Alternative as first preference. Because the Democrats would do a lot better vs. the Republicans in the later run-off rounds than the Greens or Socialist Alternative would.

If you're a third-party, the easiest way to obtain power would be Proportional Representation. If the Greens got say 3% of the national vote, they'd get 3% of the seats. Instead of no seats like the system we have today.

I think this site explains the theoretical case against IRV better than I do admittedly.

http://rangevoting.org/rangeVirv.html

>>283

>And instant run-off voting doesn't get rid of strategic voting either. People will still vote Democrat instead of say Green or Socialist Alternative as first preference.

I fail to see how that's strategic. If your first pick doesn't pan out, your vote transfers entirely to the next one, does it not?

>>284

If Socialist Alternative or Green Party for eg was your first choice and Democrats were your second (the lesser of two evils option), your preferred choice (Socialist Alternative/Green) would be transferred over to your second choice (Democrats) in the second round if the Democrats had more votes than your preferred choice in the first round.

HOWEVER if your preferred choice had more votes than the Democrats in the first-round, it would be the Democrats who would get eliminated in the first-round. Leading to a run-off between your preferred candidate vs. the Republicans. In a head-to-head battle, the Democrats have a much better chance versus the Republicans than Green/Socialist Alternative would. Because the Democrats have more mass appeal than Green/Socialist Alternative. There are a lot of "moderate" voters who can swing either way (swing voters). Those kind of voters vote Democrat occasionally. But they would absolutely never vote for Socialist Alternative or Green.

So either way, as a third party voter, you lose. It doesn't make sense to me. In the first scenario where your preferred party got eliminated in the first round, the votes would transfer to the Democrat and so the Democrat might get elected.

In the second scenario, the Democrats get knocked out in the early rounds. And then the Republicans end up getting elected after crushing Socialist Alternative/Green in the final round.

Either way, you end up with no third party representative in Congress. The best way to ensure third party representation is Proportional Representation. If Socialist Alternative gets 3% of the vote, they'll get roughly 3% of the seats.

If you're not satisfied with that explanation, once again visit http://rangevoting.org/rangeVirv.html I don't know how I can be any more clear. Third-party voters think that IRV is a great for third-parties. But if it doesn't lead to third-party candidates getting elected, then what's the point? Proportional Representation has been proven time and time again to lead to third-party representation. Just look at continental Europe where PR is the dominant system. Look at the French regional elections which uses a 75% PR seats/25% winner-take-all bonus seats system.

Switching to a proportional system will shake up things more and allow more breathing space for new parties than replacing one sort of single-winner system with another one. That said, there is a place for single-winner elections (eg. voting for mayor and a group voting to select one proposal from a heap of competing ones), and for that I prefer Top-Flop Voting (TM):

For each candidate, you vote either for or against or stay neutral. The candidate with the highest score wins. How a candidate gets scored works a bit differently from range voting: the bigger side counts. If a candidate gets more votes for than against, only this number of votes for the candidate is the score, with a plus in front of it. If a candidate gets more votes against, this number of votes against is the score, with a minus in front of it.

Sounds weird, but the result of that shares many nice properties with range voting, while also respecting majority vote patterns: If there is a set of candidates with each member receiving a for-vote by the majority of voters, the winner will come from that set. If there is a strict subset of candidates with each member receiving a vote against by the majority of voters, the winner will not come from that set. See page 2 of this pdf.

>>265

Do away with democracy and embrace anarchy.

burn it to the ground