Political Parties Should Not Be Teams

Oh well. America is not a democracy, it is a democratic republic. The difference is democracy is basically mob rule, it will die once people notice they can vote them selfs gifts (too sad America is near that point now). A democratic republic is a democracy governed by constitution and laws, so it last a bit longer

Initially I thought the bigger the better, so the stronger the central (or federal) government, the stronger the country. Well, that is to a certain extent. The bigger the government, the further it is to the people and the lesser impact to them if they mess up. And that is when you see defense departments spend $10k on shipping $.2 screws to bases (and didn’t notice it for years), Big Government schools fiercely against school choices, New Orleans Governor run away from storms (the best he did was plea for help, other than that no action), and Bush sends Billions of dollars to him without thinking (that is enough for everyone in there to buy a house, yet New Orleans still have not fully recovered).

States and local government should take full responsibility of their people, simply because they know better. There should not be any federal grants to any local state. This way no one will be wasting one million to paint an airplane. When money is handled locally, they will try to conserve, because it is their money

Any organization, government or private, can’t be too big. At certain size they operate most efficient, and if bigger, it is just pure waste.

Does switching California to proportional representation really advance the cause of electoral reform? I’d argue it does not: other states would see the fallout, recognize the loss of national political power, and decide there’s no way they’d ever be as stupid as California.

Ironically, if Californians really are serious about electoral reform, they are the last people that should switch to proportional representation– because the switch will cost them the political power they need to enact the reforms.

The motivation behind breaking up California’s votes is partisan, not principled. Were it done for the sanctity of democracy, it would go into effect when enough other states sign on to swing the electoral college rather than just before the a presidential election that one party feels it can’t win.

If California were proportional, I don’t see candidates spending any more time here. Say they campaigned heavily and grabbed another 10%– that’s what, 3 electoral votes? I’d rather flip pretty much any other state in the union.

Or to look at it another way: in the last election, Democratic candidate electoral votes were slightly low, compared to the number of people who voted Democratic (correspondingly, Republican electoral votes were slightly high). Your proposal actually exacerbates this problem: the discrepancy between the % of Democratic candidate votes, vs. the % of Democratic candidate electoral votes, would be even worse. Practically speaking, isn’t that disenfranchising even more people than the old, crappy system?

I wholeheartedly agree. One vote should give the candidate one point, and the person with the most points wins. It’s all well and good that when the country was founded, state governments were very important, but on national matters such as the presidential election, the rules need to be exactly the same for every state.

Hmm, interesting– 5-6 votes instead of 3. I still don’t think that changes the math substantially, but maybe it does.

The net effect to me still seems: California gets ignored just as much; the Republicans get some free votes; and in practice if not in principle, you disenfranchise even more voters.

If your proposal would actually make the election outcome more closely mirror voter intent, I’d probably be for it– even if it made my favorite candidate lose. But I don’t see that. I see your proposal (well, the ballot initiative) actually pulling results further away from voter intent, and I don’t see that as a worthwhile sacrifice for the possibility that other states might follow suit down the line.

Matt, well, in a two-party system you get polarisation. In the UK, for example, while we only two big parties in Westminster the smaller parties still sit on commities, and have control of local councils in many areas and have members of the European parliament (which uses proportional representation over a few large areas of the country) and so on.

There are arguments several ways on the ideal system - afaik the ideal democratic system would use a partial list. You maintain the link between areas and “their” elected representative, and “top-up” the parliament using lists based on percentages of actual votes.

(i.e. A party gets 20% of the vote, and 5 areas. 20% of the vote is 20 members, and they then get 15 people from their list elected - you put the party leaders and suchlike on the list, so they can focus on their roles)

With a minimum vote share of a few percent to keep the cranks off the list, I should add.

Well, I like this idea. Given the current situation, where the voters and politicians are getting farther apart and non are interested to vote, there has to be a way to make the true local voice been heard.

I was thinking that we should apply the electoral votes to all parts of the system (mayors, governors, school boards etc), where let’s say every 1000 people will elect one electoral, and the electoral group will vote on voter’s behave.

The reason? I remember a local homeowners meeting, most of us don’t have time to show up, so a few of the homeowners just gets our signature and voted for us, that way, the head of the homeowners association don’t have the full power over those busy-usually-do-not-show-up votes.

“…spend time in the states that actually matter in terms of population and economic clout.”

Which is why places like, for example, Kansas aren’t likely to be thrilled with the sort of re-vamping you seem to favor. Are you also in favor of bagging the bicameral legislature and just keeping the House of Representives where states that actually matter in terms of population run things? I mean why have a Senate where Vermont has clout equal to California…

All that aside, if you did create a situation in which almost all the states “mattered” sort of, you’d no doubt see huge increases in election fund-raising and spending. It’s already pretty much ludicrous now, but if they suddenly had to start hitting up every single state, the numbers would skyrocket. As such, the impact of more money would be granted a much more likely affect on the outcome. So, I’d want to see reform on campaign finance and spending before something like this came about.

Never say never Although I agree with you about proportional representation vs. winner-take-all systems I’m not a big fan of direct democracy or ‘majoritarian’ systems.

Although this may seem like a digression….
In a world where California and Kansas have big differences in population and big differences in preferences a majoritarian system is going to have difficulty in keeping Kansas in the polity. This may have been settled in the mid 1800s in the US. But since I emigrated to Canada a decade ago I’ve learned that it hasn’t been settled here; whether or not Quebec will secede is still an open question.

The ballot measure to divide California’s 55 electoral votes by congressional district would magnify the worst features of our antiquated system of electing the President.

If the district approach were used nationally, it would less accurately reflect the will of the people than the current system. Although Bush lost the national popular vote in 2000, he won 55% of the country’s congressional districts. In 2004, Bush won 50.7% of the popular vote, but 59% of the districts. Obviously, if the district approach were installed in only one large state (such as California), it would greatly increase the chance that the winner of the presidential election would not have received the most votes nationwide.

The district approach would not, as claimed, make California relevant in presidential elections. Candidates have no reason to campaign in districts (or states) where they are comfortably ahead or hopelessly behind. Currently, candidates concentrate over two-thirds of their money and visits on just six closely divided “battleground” states, and 99% of their expenditures in just 16 states. Thus, two thirds of the states are ignored in presidential elections (including California). In California, the presidential race is a foregone conclusion in 50 of the state’s 53 congressional districts. Candidates would have no incentive than they do now to pay attention to California remaining 50 districts. Even if the district approach were used nationally, there are only 55 “battleground” districts that are competitive in presidential elections, so seven-eighths of the county would be left out of presidential elections. This is even worse than the current system, where two-thirds of the states are spectators.

A national popular vote is the way to guarantee that the candidate who gets the most votes in all 50 states becomes President. It is the way to make every person’s vote relevant, regardless of where that person lives.

The National Popular Vote bill would take effect only when enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes—that is, enough electoral votes to elect a President. When the legislation is in effect in that sized group of states, all of the electoral votes in the participating states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Thus, the National Popular Vote bill would guarantee that the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in all 50 states will win the Presidency.

The bill has 320 legislative sponsors in 47 states. It has been signed into law in Maryland. The bill has passed by 11 legislative houses since its introduction in February 2006 (one house in Colorado, Arkansas, and North Carolina, and two houses in Maryland, Illinois, Hawaii, and California).

See www.NationalPopularVote.com