Politics these days resembles an ugly debate competition more than a functioning governing system. What do you think about saying f you to the party system. Good article in Teh Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/07/how-to-turn-republicans-and-democrats-into-americans/8521/ Angry and frustrated, American voters went to the polls in November 2010 to “take back” their country. Just as they had done in 2008. And 2006. And repeatedly for decades, whether it was Republicans or Democrats from whom they were taking the country back. No matter who was put in charge, things didn’t get better. They won’t this time, either; spending levels may go down, taxes may go up, budgets will change, but American government will go on the way it has, not as a collective enterprise but as a battle between warring tribes. If we are truly a democracy—if voters get to size up candidates for a public office and choose the one they want—why don’t the elections seem to change anything? Because we elect our leaders, and they then govern, in a system that makes cooperation almost impossible and incivility nearly inevitable, a system in which the campaign season never ends and the struggle for party advantage trumps all other considerations. When Democrat Nancy Pelosi became speaker of the House, the leader of the lawmaking branch of government, she said her priority was to … elect more Democrats. After Republican victories in 2010, the Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said his goal was to … prevent the Democratic president’s reelection. With the country at war and the economy in recession, our government leaders’ first thoughts have been of party advantage. This is not an accident. Ours is a system focused not on collective problem-solving but on a struggle for power between two private organizations. Party activists control access to the ballot through closed party primaries and conventions; partisan leaders design congressional districts. Once elected to Congress, our representatives are divided into warring camps. Partisans decide what bills to take up, what witnesses to hear, what amendments to allow. Many Americans assume that’s just how democracy works, that this is how it’s always been, that it’s the system the Founders created. But what we have today is a far cry from what the Founders intended. George Washington and James Madison both warned of the dangers posed by political parties. Defenders of the party system argue that parties—including Madison’s own—arose almost immediately after the nation was founded. But those were not parties in the modern sense: they were factions uniting on a few major issues, not marching in lockstep on every issue, large and small. And while some defend the party system as a necessary provider of cues to voters who otherwise might not know how to vote, the Internet and mass media now make it possible for voters to educate themselves about candidates for office. What we have today is not a legacy of 1789 but an outdated relic of the late 1800s and early 1900s, when Progressives pushed for the adoption of primary elections. By 1916, all but a handful of states had instituted the “direct primary” system, under which a party candidate was selected by a public vote, rather than by party leaders in backroom deals. But the primaries, and the nominating conventions, were open only to party members. This reform was supposed to give citizens a bigger role in the election process. Instead, the influence of party leaders has been supplanted by that of a subset of party activists who are often highly ideological and largely uninterested in finding common ground. In Delaware in 2010, a mere 30,000 of that state’s nearly 1 million people kept Mike Castle, a popular congressman and former governor, off the general-election ballot. In Utah, 3,500 people meeting in a closed convention deprived the rest of the state’s 3 million residents of an opportunity to consider reelecting their longtime senator Robert Bennett. For most of the voters who go to the polls in November, the names on the ballot have been reduced to only those candidates the political parties will allow them to choose between. Americans demand a multiplicity of options in almost every other aspect of our lives. And yet we allow small bands of activists to limit our choices of people to represent us in making the nation’s laws. I am not calling for a magical political “center”: many of the most important steps forward in our history have not come from the center at all, including women’s suffrage and the civil-rights movement, and even our founding rebellion against the British crown. Nor am I pleading for consensus: consensus is not possible in a diverse nation of 300 million people (compromise is the essential ingredient in legislative decision-making). And I’m not pushing for harmony: democracy depends on vigorous debate among competing views. The problem is not division but partisanship—advantage-seeking by private clubs whose central goal is to win political power. There are different ways to conduct elections and manage our government—and strengthen the democratic process. Here are some suggestions designed to turn our political system on its head, so that people, not parties, control our government.
One of the first things that I’d suggest would be preference voting - that seems like a reasonable step in the right direction. For those who don’t know, preference voting is a form of voting wherein voters rank their choices from top to bottom, as opposed to simply selecting the candidate that they like best. It’s also known as ‘instant runoff voting’ - see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IRV_counting_flowchart.1.png. Australia uses it, and it’s a bit more complex, but it drastically cuts down on a few things: -Negative campaigning goes way down, since most attack ads reduce the ‘likeability’ of the person running them. Negative campaigning is only beneficial if you are confident that the result will be that you end up being “less dislike-able” than the person you’re attacking. -Elections tend to be cheaper (I believe I’ve read that attack ads are the most expensive part of american election campaigns) -There is less of an opportunity to ‘game’ the system. Current voting policy suggests that voters should vote for a combination of things - the person they like the most, combined with the person who they think stands the greatest chance of being elected. Preference voting makes this ‘gaming’ unnecessary. -Voters are offered more choice - it’s not an all or nothing decision. i.e. If I favor Nader or whatever fringe candidate, I really can say, “OK, I prefer Nader first, and then if I had to pick, I’d say I favor Gore second, and bush third.” You can make this kind of choice because you know that your opinions for all three candidates will be counted. Anyhow, the more I read about the system, the more I think it appears to be a pretty interesting idea. Anyone know more about it?
supersadface Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > One of the first things that I’d suggest would be > preference voting That sounds really interesting. I have been supportive of a fringe candidate but it almost seems counter-productive because you know everyone is thinking in this two party system mentality. If I could have preference I would vote how I want, but because of ‘the game’ it makes my vote useless. Really I think we need more than two parties. There are so many different levels of politics and people favor some arguments before others. I feel like we need parties that represent each of these. Civil Rights, Green, Labor, Economist Party?, Kick-Ass America Cop Party… whatever they are people need more choices and to think their vote will be heard. Also, it’s really just silly how liberal/democrat and republican/conservative have become almost synonymous. I think that’s why there is now the ‘Tea Party.’ Because, I would just consider them conservative, but to them the conservatives are really just regular republicans. Say what you want about them and their ideologies, but respect the movement they have started. We need more groups to splinter till people are being actually represented by what they believe in.
Some states in the US have use “Open Primaries” where all primary contenders are voted on at once and the top two from the Open Primary, regardless of party, go head to head in the regular election. This would help to mitigate the need to appeal to the party extremes during the primaries, which is a major reason today we end up with diametrically opposed extremes with no hope of compromise.