Ed Electoral College

psionl0, I'd also like to point out that, a party in power from a plurality of votes can reach a majority by making coalitions with other parties, thus solving the problem of being "not democratic". Minority government usually don't govern for long before they're replaced (democratically, I might add).



I'm also waiting for your counter-definitions.
 
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psionl0 said:
Clearly. The greater the level of consensus, the more democratic a decision is. Similarly, if everybody votes against a decision and the decision is still made then that is the least democratic result.

These hypothetical extremes don't alter what you quoted.
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I didn't intend to alter what I quoted. I simply wanted to clarify your position.

The most democratic result is one in which there is no dissent at all. I'm not saying this is necessarily a contradiction. You're thinking of a situation in which well-informed people all agree about what is best for the nation (state, whatever). But it is unusual to think that democracy at its best consists of total agreement.
 
FPTP is only part of what reinforces the 2-party system. The other issue I see is the atomization of the electorate. Unlike a lot of other modern republics, we don't use a parliamentary model. We vote for exactly 1 of almost everything. 1 President, 1 Governor, 1 Lt. Gov/SoS, 1 Atty Gen, 1 U.S. Representative, 1 U.S. Senator (2 of each 3 cycles), 1 State Representative, etc.

I doubt we want to end the independent executive, so that's not going to change. We'd have to use a mixture of systems to address the 2-party problem. We would need larger districts which send multi-member delegations chosen through proportional voting. Primaries would be to establish pecking order of who gets any seats allocated to that party. One-per-district legislative representation seems to tend towards binary outcomes.

Executive offices would probably best be run under an instant runoff/single transferable vote type of system. Once a handful of healthy parties are operating in the legislatures, the new ones will eventually start to produce competent figureheads that can make a run at the executive posts.

But the number of seats in legislatures and how they are filled is probably where it has to start.
 
phiwum said:
But it is unusual to think that democracy at its best consists of total agreement.
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True. We don't think of unanimous votes in elections because that is extremely unlikely (although candidates sometimes get elected unopposed).

The fact remains that within normal ranges, some things can be more democratic than others.
 
Delphic Oracle said:
We'd have to use a mixture of systems to address the 2-party problem. We would need larger districts which send multi-member delegations chosen through proportional voting. Primaries would be to establish pecking order of who gets any seats allocated to that party. One-per-district legislative representation seems to tend towards binary outcomes.
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Larger states could certainly use PR or MMP for their HoR seats if they wanted each party to be represented in proportion to the votes received. This would tend to give minority parties the balance of power in the HoR which may or may not be a good thing. The Senate and POTUS as you point out, we can do nothing about.

However, you are assuming that 2 party houses are a bad thing. This is not necessarily so. Provided that there is no gerrymandering, single member electorates may represent an acceptable compromise between strong majorities and the will of the people.
 
Argumemnon said:
psionl0, I'd also like to point out that, a party in power from a plurality of votes can reach a majority by making coalitions with other parties, thus solving the problem of being "not democratic". Minority government usually don't govern for long before they're replaced (democratically, I might add).



I'm also waiting for your counter-definitions.
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Do you want to retract your accusation that I'm using a personalised definition now, psionl0?
 
psionl0 said:
True. We don't think of unanimous votes in elections because that is extremely unlikely (although candidates sometimes get elected unopposed).

The fact remains that within normal ranges, some things can be more democratic than others.
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So you keep saying. Far as I can tell, whether something is more or less democratic has to do with the process, not the outcome. Your intuitions are bizarre to me.
 
Argumemnon said:
Do you want to retract your accusation that I'm using a personalised definition now, psionl0?
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Why would I need to do that when the dictionary definitions you provided in post #277 don't support you?

The only definition that mentioned "majority" was Merriam-Webster and it certainly didn't include "qualifiers to show that it is not always so". None of the definitions even implied that getting elected on a minority of the vote is democratic.
 
phiwum said:
Far as I can tell, whether something is more or less democratic has to do with the process, not the outcome.
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That's a silly distinction. A different process (like distributing preferences) may or may not change the outcome but I am not focusing on the outcome, merely pointing out that FPTP is not as democratic as other processes.
 
psionl0 said:
Why would I need to do that when the dictionary definitions you provided in post #277 don't support you?

The only definition that mentioned "majority" was Merriam-Webster and it certainly didn't include "qualifiers to show that it is not always so". None of the definitions even implied that getting elected on a minority of the vote is democratic.
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The point of posting those definitions was that they didn't support YOUR interpretation that it could ONLY be the majority. It's YOUR claim that we're showing to be wrong. Webster's definition DID include the qualifiers, saying "especially" i.e. not always. Why are you continuing on this dishonest, deliberate trick? You know what we're discussing. You know what the definitions show. Stop playing games and admit to beign wrong.
 
I would consider how democratic a system is by:
- how directly a vote impacts the formation of a government
and
- how simple and fair it is to cast your vote

All modern democracy system are intentionally less democratic they could be: parties, just to name on, are a way to lesson the impact the voters have on the political process.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
PsionIO,

you presume that the major parties would survive the transition.
But if they fracture into, say, 3 parties each, a new incoming 3rd party would be able to compete.

In European countries without FPTP, we've seen many parties come and go.
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If you saw my earlier reply then you would know that it didn't happen in Australia and there is no reason to presume it would happen in the US either.

AFAIK the European countries that you mention tend to use some form of MMP in elections which guarantees that each party gets seats in proportion to the votes they got. This can't happen in single member electorates.
 
psionl0 said:
If you saw my earlier reply then you would know that it didn't happen in Australia and there is no reason to presume it would happen in the US either.

AFAIK the European countries that you mention tend to use some form of MMP in elections which guarantees that each party gets seats in proportion to the votes they got. This can't happen in single member electorates.
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I read all your posts: you obviously know your stuff.

I'm just not sure we can generalize from one country where things happened one way to assume that it always will.

But I guess the bigger question is: when does more democracy become a vice? Doesn't a real-life democracy need build-in frictions and disconnections from the voters to function?
 
The Great Zaganza said:
I read all your posts: you obviously know your stuff.
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:blush:

The Great Zaganza said:
I'm just not sure we can generalize from one country where things happened one way to assume that it always will.
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I can't speak for most countries but Australia, UK and US are similar in that they have a system dominated by two major parties.

Occasionally an upstart party gets enough support to throw a spanner in the works. In the US and UK this invariably means that although they can't get enough votes to win a seat, they can bleed votes away from one of the big two parties and hand victory by default to the other party. (This is what kept Margaret Thatcher in power long past her use by date).

Australia implemented the preferential system to specifically make it impossible for upstart parties to allow upset default victories to the other mob.

The Great Zaganza said:
But I guess the bigger question is: when does more democracy become a vice? Doesn't a real-life democracy need build-in frictions and disconnections from the voters to function?
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This goes far beyond the "fair elections" aspect of this thread. I would say that the "separation of powers" principle serves democracy well in the US but the US is already a strong democracy.
 
LTC8K6 said:
How would that have prevented Trump from winning the election?

How would it prevent a new popular Hitler from winning?

Where is the safety catch?
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300 million votes Hillary would have won by if not for the idiocy of letting midwesters and other punk states get more effect for their votes than the real places that aren't that big on religion and other pointless crap.
 
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