On 10.2.2012, at 2.02, James Gilmour wrote: >> Juho Laatu > Sent: Wednesday, February 08, 2012 8:29 PM >> >> I think I agree when I say that the first decision (in the >> USA) is whether to make the current two-party system work >> better or whether to aim at a multi-party system. > > Juho > Don't you think you might just be starting in the wrong place? Asking the > wrong first question? > > In a representative democracy, surely the first requirement is to ensure that > any "representative assembly" (e.g. state or federal > legislature or city council) is properly representative of those who vote.
Sounds good - both with two parties and with multiple partes. > If when provided with the means to choose freely among > all significant viewpoints, the voters choose to cluster around two parties, > then a "two-party system" will properly and fairly > represent those voters. Or maybe "two parties" would represet them. It seems that the voters did not want to limit themselves in a two-party set-up, i.e. a "two-party system". > In other another jurisdiction, the voters may choose to cluster in > significant proportions around three or > more parties when one would hope the voting system would be sufficiently > sensitive for all the significant clusters to be > represented directly. This sounds like a proper multi-party environment. > > There are real examples from national and sub-national elections where > sensitive voting systems, responding to the voters' expressed > wishes, elect representatives from several parties, but also example of > where, despite the choice of several parties, the voters > elect representatives from only two parties. Yes, this sounds like a multi-party environment that uses some inappropriate method, maybe one taht would work better in a (not multi-party proportional) two-party environment. Based on this, I'll now answer to the question on if the starting place was wrong. I think I (or the people in question) made an assumption that I don't want to have all people to be represented proportonally. It seems that I want to have two parties that will alternate in power. Third parties are allowed to win single-winner elections only if the grow big enough. In multi-winner representative bodies proportionality is not a requirement, except that I want the growing third party to beat one of the current two leading parties when they grow larger than one of the current leading parties. This system that I tried to describe is some kind of an evolved version of the current two-party systems. I don't want to say that it would be my favourite. But it might be one option for people who want to keep their two-party system, but that want to make it more flexible with respect to third parties. Juho > > James > > > ---- > Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info