Dr. Ernie Prabhakar <drernie <at> radicalcentrism.org> writes: > However, the root of the split is, at the end of the day, the > polarized ideologies of conservatism and liberalism that anchor the > "hard-core" base of each party, and drives politics at the local level. > As long as both parties carry those boat anchors, I don't think either > will be able to overtake the other/reach out to the disenfranchised > middle.
Hi, I saw this and it inspired me to jump out of lurk mode. I very much disagree with this. I'm convinced that 99% of the reason for the polarizing into the two parties is because of plurality voting, which clusters people (typically into two parties, but sometimes more) because of the strategic advantage of eliminating vote splitting. With that effect gone, centrists would have more chance of being elected than people who were more one side or the other, and you wouldn't have the current battling of two sides to get their candidate elected as opposed to the other -- you would just have a subtle shifting of the middle. There would still be people on both extremes, but they would have far less power. If you were to fix this problem (by having a condorcet type election for all elections including for votes within congress), people's views and opinions and preferences are far more likely to fall along a bell curve, rather than the current curve which has two humps. I don't think you would need "philosophical reform" as you suggest, and frankly I don't see how that would ever happen anyway. That is almost like suggesting that human nature be changed. -rob ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info