What is your voting system?

[Chen]

I've been thinking about this for a while.

I know any democratic voting system is somewhat flawed unless you have only 2 candidates/parties to vote for.

So how exactly does the voting system in your country work? What's good about it and what do you think are it's flaws?

In Israel for example, we have a system similar to that of Britain. The parties we vote for represent the Parliament which is called the Knesset, and the government is made up of a coalition of these parties (i.e. 51% or more of Knesset members). While this means there is a variety of parties to choose from so you have a bigger chance of finding one that most fits your views, this also means that small parties with minority votes have much power in the government that is disproportionate to their size.

So please give your thoughts on this and your own systems.

Oh, and DFTBA!

[David Wetzell]

Whenever mainly single seat elections are used, there is a tendency to effective single party rule..., as illustrated in Egypt until recently, Mexico formerly and at the state level in most US states.

Now, which party is dominant can vary at the state level in the US, which is why things sortof have worked in the US, but we also benefited from the use of 3 seat state representative elections from 1870-1980 in Illinois.  This kept either major party from dominating IL politics so that other states that were economically dependent on IL could have more political autonomy, or scope for experimentation.

 

dlw 

[Fake Crowley]

Not sure what you're getting at. I'm just saying that parties and monarchies are stupid, even democratically elected ones with limited power. There should be a limit to how many people get into office, and each section of the government should be split up.

[Dayna Brooks Halls Lang]

in canada we have a constitutional monorchy, technically :P with the queen as our head of state (she has no power whatsoever, we just have a representitive of her in our house of commons and put her on our money)and we have a multi party system. 

we have what is called representation by poulation, the higher population an area has the more representitives they have.  this is done by seperating the country into ridings.  during an election each party has a candidate for each riding.  then, people vote for the canditate they want to represent their riding.  a winner of a riding becomes an MP (member of parliment) and has a seet in parliment.  the party with the most seats wins, and their leader in Prime Minister. 

there are two types of government,a monority government and a majority government.  if combined all the other parties have more seets than the governing party, its a minority government and the governing party needs votes from other parties members inorder to pass a bill.  if the governing party has the most seets overall, then its a majority.

[Beth]

Personally, I feel that many structures of the US voting system are extremely flawed. Particularly the electoral college. This was created so that people who were more intellectually sound than many of the uneducated public could make the more important decisions, a need that is now archaic. Most of the public possesses at least some amount of an education and the electoral college is not so much a group of people choosing the president as it is votes that a president tries to win. This often makes presidential candidates focus on only certain areas of the country with many electoral votes or a population that is not decidedly left or right, which is not the greatest way to go about things in a democracy. I also deeply detest the two-party system because it means basically that if I voted with the political party that actually represents my views, I would likely be doing a disservice to my entire ideology and causing people of the opposite ideology to gain power. Which is not what Rome is about!! (Sorry, the Gretchen Weiners inside of me was about to burst throughout that.)

[David Wetzell]

I disagree that the EC was based on elitism.

 

I believe that the idea was to have it be the second stage of an election.

 

And while the current EC rules are dysfunctional, we could revamp it to make it something special.

 

I'm also of the view that the problem isn't so much that there are two dominant major parties, but that their duopoly isn't contested and there isn't scope for what I call LTPs, local third parties that specialize in contesting "more local" elections and who vote strategically together in "less local" elections.

 

My thoughts on this are outlined as"The Tri-Election Triage".

 

I hope you and other nerd fighters will consider them.

dlw

[Chen]

I also deeply detest the two-party system because it means basically that if I voted with the political party that actually represents my views, I would likely be doing a disservice to my entire ideology and causing people of the opposite ideology to gain power.

 

THAT was exactly my point. That was what I was wondering about...it just seemed to me that voting for a third party or even creating one in the first place does more harm than good to the big party you're most closest to ideologically.

[Beth]

Yes, exactly. And while this can come in advantage if there is a semi-popular third party on the opposing side to take away votes, it can be extremely frustrating.

[David Wetzell]

It's bad, but if dissenters like us take advantage of it to push strategically for election rules that help third parties then our ability to decide the current elections can make it happen.  See Rob Richie's FairVote for more details on pragmatic ways to change the US's election rules.

 

And if you have questions, I'd love to answer them.

We shouldn't be against the two party system, we should be for a new kind of political system for the US!

dlw