Archie Gemmill Goal
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UK General Election
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Amazer
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Well, maybe not quite as disenfranchised... but I get your point.
Archie Gemmill Goal
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If someone votes Monster Raving Loony and they don't get any representation for their view in Parliament then they are disenfranchised. Of course the question is to what level are you prepared to accept disenfranchisement? One person, a few dozen, thousands - no system is going to be perfect.
When half the votes in an election are wasted then you have a large group of people who are disenfranchised.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b77a0468-...tml?ft_site=falcon&desktop=true#axzz4gC08c3aj
http://www.independent.co.uk/studen...ration-to-build-a-better-britain-8626728.html
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA17...s-the-new-disenfranchised-silent-majority.htm
http://www.southwalesargus.co.uk/ne...CTIONS__Tories_take_control_of_Monmouthshire/
http://www.takoubasecurity.com/isis-radicalization-targeting-disenfranchised-youth/
Not one of those articles uses disenfranchised in the narrow term that the reactionary defenders of the status quo would have you believe.
Still they should probably all shut up because they aren't as badly off as black South Africans under apartheid.
Ian Osborne
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If the system uses the single transferrable vote, a vote placed for a party that's eliminated early would be transferred to one still in the race, so those who voted for the parties you mentioned aren't disenfranchised at all.
The point Archie is trying to make is in constituencies where one candidate is certain to win, unless you support that candidate, your vote is meaningless. Whether his use of the word 'disenfranchised' is metaphoric or a literal truth, the result is the same.
....and yet in the last election there were constituencies all across Scotland where one candidate (the Labour one) was bound to win and yet the SNP candidate got elected.
Heck in my constituency in 1997 the Tory was bound to win and yet the efforts of me and my fellow Labour party members, and the deep unpopularity of the conservative government meant that we got an excellent Labour MP. Indeed the legacy continues because it used to be a safe as houses Tory seat and now it's a three way marginal.
If people want to whine about being disenfranchised because their favoured candidate isn't elected then I suppose they're entitled to do so but I think that they are grossly misusing the word.
If you recall, there was a referendum about PR which unfortunately rejected it 2:1.
Is there any good reason to suppose that there is a significant difference in public opinion now ? Are you proposing that we should impose PR against the will of 2/3 of the electorate ?
angrysoba
Philosophile
Arguably, in FTFP systems even a person's vote for a candidate who is sure to win is meaningless. Hillary Clinton won California and had millions more voting for her than Trump. People who live in California know that one way or another their vote is not going to count for anything. This is certainly a problem with FTFP which could be remedied with a PR system.
But I would argue that it is still different from, say, a person in the United States who cannot vote because they are in prison, or because they had been to prison, or in another part of the United States where they cannot vote because the registration requirements cannot be met by certain members in society who have no driving license or passport, or in earlier decades had to pass a literacy test.
I think it also differs from the examples that Archie himself used to counter my own claims that I am disenfranchised because I have no vote being a long-term non-resident of the UK. What about long-term residents of the UK who are not citizens who get no vote? Indeed, what about them? Do they not better meet the definition of disenfranchised than Archie does? I would say yes.
angrysoba
Philosophile
If you recall, there was a referendum about PR which unfortunately rejected it 2:1.
Is there any good reason to suppose that there is a significant difference in public opinion now ? Are you proposing that we should impose PR against the will of 2/3 of the electorate ?
To be fair, The Don, the referendum was not about PR but the Alternative Vote.
Archie Gemmill Goal
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If you recall, there was a referendum about PR which unfortunately rejected it 2:1.
Is there any good reason to suppose that there is a significant difference in public opinion now ? Are you proposing that we should impose PR against the will of 2/3 of the electorate ?
Actually there wasn't. There was a referendum about one version of PR that nobody really understood properly. But you will note that I haven't actually proposed imposing anything. I'm allowed to continue to moan about the crappy system even if a referendum disagrees with me just as you do with Brexit for example.
Archie Gemmill Goal
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That's a bit like saying a guy with Measles doesn't meet the definition of sick b cause he doesn't have terminal cancer though. The word can perfectly well reflect multiple situations
All of these situations can be bad without needing to reduce the argument to a game of top trumps as some have.
A situation where half the votes cast are pointless is a bad thing whatever you particularly want to call it. Do you have a better word?
angrysoba
Philosophile
Not really. I disagree with your analogy. It's like saying that a guy who is sad must be sick because sick people are sad. Just because one of the manifestations of not having a vote is not having the person you want to vote for represent you, it doesn't follow that not having the person you vote for represent you means you don't have a vote.
I am not disagreeing with you that there are better electoral systems. The people who don't get what they want can be called disappointed, unsuccessful, maybe unrepresented, but not disenfranchised. To me this has a very specific meaning and an emotional impact that it is wrong to claim unless fulfills important criteria that your case does not.
Information Analyst
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Well, my apologies if I haven't been attentive enough to you, what with a 8-week old child at home who spent the first two (premature) weeks of it in intensive care. Silly *********** me for getting my priorities wrong.
Archie Gemmill Goal
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Not sure why you thought that was addressed towards yourself.
Actually, I think that one was aimed at me ;-)
(Hope your kid is doing better. The first weeks are the hardest - even without complications. Hang in there and sleep when you can!)
Archie Gemmill Goal
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I've never said I don't have a vote. I have said I have no power to influence the outcome of the election, that my vote is pointless, meaningless and useless. That me not voting would make no difference at all to the outcome and that when your vote is completely impotent it is functionally no different to not having a vote in the first place.
This situation I have referred to as being disenfranchised. You can object to the term but it's a perfectly common usage of the term and fits the situation described. You would prefer that people only use the term to refer to a specific situation where a person doesn't have the vote. I wish you all the best in your efforts there.
To you it has a specific meaning. To others it doesn't. I would imagine there are many terms that might throw up the same issue - slavery for example? I would suggest that arguing over terminology rather than the meat of the issue isn't particularly helpful however.
Information Analyst
Penultimate Amazing
Because you replied to Giz replying to a post of yours replying to me, and it didn't read like it was aimed at Giz.
Archie Gemmill Goal
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Well I will clarify then. It wasn't aimed at you.
Both direct representation and proportional representation have their advantages. Direct representation with a sensible electoral system (either two round system or STV) is no worse than proportional representation. While it is true your candidate may lose, but your area still has a representative, who may address some of your concerns, if only they don't stand directly opposed to his agenda. In a proportional system you need to get a political party interested in your plight, which is often difficult if not impossible. In a direct representation you have a person who is paid to do just that, so from the perspective of local politics, direct representation could be superior.
On a national level proportional system appears to have an advantage, although this is not as clear-cut as it may seem at a first glance. While it is true small parties can hope for more seats and that every vote in every election is important this also more readily gives voice and importance to retard parties, such as Syria, AfD, Five star movement and others. In direct representation they will struggle to get anywhere for a long while, it takes substantial shifts in the electorate for them to get anywhere and when it gets that far, they'd become important in the proportional system already.
I'll note again this is only true if the electoral system in direct representation uses either two rounds of voting or single transferable vote (or some other system which accomplishes the same that I'm not aware of). First past the post system makes direct representation an inferior form of democracy.
McHrozni
Archie Gemmill Goal
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I don't really have a problem with parties getting representation in parliament no matter what their views. I'd probably rather that than the festering indignance of being denied their voice or being able to spout off knowing full well they will never have to worry about actually being in government.
Of course if you give people power sometimes they are going to use it for things you wouldn't want them to do with it. But denying them that power seems like a sledgehammer to crack a nut
This is to an extent true. However giving them a small voice and a veil of legitimacy makes it possible for them to slowly gain more legitemacy.
Another problem is that the pool of seats for sane parties is smaller. If you need to form a government this notably reduces the possibilities for sensible coalitions. The end result could easily be that a flexible populist (but not outright retard) party to act as the kingmaker, deciding who gets to seat in the government and blackmailing the government that needs their support to remain in power.
This too is toxic for democracy and good governance.
Not if the denial is done in the right way. Denying them power by a high threshold (e.g. Turkey with 10%) is one thing, but denying them power because they can't win over a single constituency is a tad different, I think.
Overall no system is perfect and it's only a matter of personal opinion which downsides are less bad and which upsides are better. Direct representation can be competitive with a proportional representation if done right (it's not in UK or USA) on just about all terms. Proportional representation has fewer traps (the ones we mentioned aside there is also gerrymandering) but it has a much weaker connection of voters to the representatives. Having that is good for democracy.
I'm of the opinion that properly done direct representation is better than proportional representation by a small margin, but this is down to the importance I attribute to the upsides and downsides of each system and nothing more than an opinion.
McHrozni