All political parties are filled with petty power seekers. From the article: "Though once a member of Australia’s Green Party, inspired by its commitment to grassroots democracy, he grew disenchanted with party politics." "he made his way into the activist circles of Occupy Wall Street after college but likewise became disillusioned." One of the biggest advantages of random selection is that you select people who are not actively seeking power.
And if you have election campaigns that cost money, you have built-in corruption.
Sure, but with more than two viable parties, you have more incentive to run on a positive message, because driving people away from one particular opponent or demobilizing their base, especially in a way that alienates your voters but to a lesser extent, is not as effective a campaign tactic when its not 1-on-1.
Because all this means is that minorities can not be stumbled upon.
The idea that FPTP must yield a two party system isn't right anyway. The UK uses FPTP and has quite a few different parties that routinely challenge the big two in major and impactful ways (SNP, Lib Dems, UKIP, Reform etc).
no
Not creating artificially exaggerated mandates is a feature, not a bug.
I don't see anything that is arbitrary about the process.
The result is that even in homogenous societies that have shared history and values have trouble reaching consensus.
Moreover even with the best intentions and actions one cannot predict unintended consequences or future events that are unaddressed by the past.
That’s true but there is also a very real constitutional problem here. My country has a system close to the US and sees the same issues.
A good constitution should foster a viable ecosystem of parties each representing the interests of a relatively homogenous group then force these parties to build coalitions through negotiations. That garanties than people feel that their opinions are represented, that there are a plurality of opinions in debates and the necessity to govern with people with different interests mean a consensus has to be reached and nothing to extreme should happen.
A system fostering two parties necessarily means the party will be caricatures. It’s obvious that both houses people with widely different opinions. It’s a travesty of democracy if you think about it.
Would you rather see politicians be elected with only a plurality of the votes?
My country uses a single transferable vote system - pretty much no representatives are elected with a majority of their constituency's vote - instead each constituency elects multiple representatives (3-5), and you vote with a ranked choice of all of the people running in your constituency. No one gets a majority of first preferences because there's no concept of a "wasted" vote if you vote for someone on the fringe - your vote will eventually end up transferred to your favourite candidate that can feasibly be elected.
The result is a legislature that is extremely representative of the population at large with a wide gamut of parties. Our politics is obviously still as dysfunctional as anywhere, but I don't think any of it can be chalked up to the electoral system.
Some would see this (having to build coalitions) as a feature.
(As a Canadian I can see pros and cons given our system.)
See Trump for example:
48% vote and a 1 in 2 turnout:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_president...
or Boris Johnsons landslide with 42% of a 67% turnout:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_general_...
First, that the group represented is as small as practically possible, so small numbers of people, small cultural subgroups, and a limited social distance between the elected official and the constituents.
Second, that the rules governing a group are as local as possible, large disagreements should be unusual, and ideally lead to splits in region. Issues on a state or federal level should be limited to interactions with other states or nations; weather or not you want to live in a group with legal abortion for example should be determined at the the smallest size that can make that decision; probably city by city, what people in other cities think should have no bearing.
Unfortunately the nature of government is to centralize and accumulate powers, things that were once the sole preview of a town or county are now federal issues. It seems impossible find a "fair" voting method, to reconcile how to weight two distant strangers opinion on what should be a local matter.
This is not in any way hidden.
In fact, they were often progressive steps away from even worse systems.
The smaller parties have little to lose playing "my way or the highway" during negotiations, so end up getting at least some top items from their program pushed through. This has led to some rather poor laws and regulations in recent times.
That said, while I've thought about this vs the US two-party model a bit, I think I prefer what we got over here.
The US also has that, the different is that its less visible, and the minor factions have more power because:
(1) the minor factions are esconced within major parties, so there is no public discussions about coalitions, and
(2) because of #1, and because such arrangements are stickier, the major factions have less choice as to which minor faction to make a majority with, making them more at the mercy of the minor and extreme factions theybare bound to.
This does not mean forcing you to vote for anyone in particular, but it does mean forcing people to turn up and indicate some type of preference - even if that preference is "no one here".
Mandatory voting is common elsewhere [1], and the sell is simple: voting is compulsory for all citizens unless a valid reason is provided (which isn't a high bar for most valid reasons) or a nominal fine is imposed (in Australia - $20 [2]). This fine isn't significant in anyway, it just has to exist because it does two things: asks people how much they seriously don't want to participate in the free thing which ensures their freedom, (2) forces the AEC to look into the matter - they have to try and collect the fine, and in turn ask why someone didn't vote, which means incidents are investigated, and (3) if a lot of people are getting fined the suddenly it's going to very much become a national issue as people make a fuss about it.
It's irrelevant to talk about anything else while substantial parts of the the American voting eligible public do not vote, and no one is responsible for investigating why and ensuring that it was a personal decision and not a problem of lack of access, time or intimidation. You can't run a democracy when the one defining characteristic of a democracy is handled so flippantly.
[1] https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joi...
Still regret it.
But is there some reason to think that it would tend to improve the decision making quality of the population? That when compulsary voters are included, there would be better choices made on laws and representatives? I can't think of one. On the contrary it would seem to compel the participation of a lot more people who don't care.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_Unite...
I'm not saying it's right, but it is what would happen.
you still end up with what amounts to an uninformed electorate. You've figured out how to count an uninformed opinion in a better way. And maybe eliminated number 2 and some of 1 from being a complete problem, but unpopular controversial people will still manage to drive the conversation.
Both of these are particularly incentivized in systems with FPTP and the duopoly it tends towards. So, electoral rules do matter here.
In the State elections law I have read, this is set up to happen like this.
For example, Illinois election law specifically mentions Ds and Rs.
Election law in other States often sets major/minor party donation limits and ballot name ordering based on things like prior off-year Governor results. This uses math to keep the "minor" party allowable donations low.
What State election law are you in and does it mention major/minor party?
This election law setup to move toward two parties is obviously known to your State legislators who team together to prevent fixing it. And the people eat it up and argue about side issues!
You can't prevent people in the US from ganging up, but there is no reason elections should be required to promote parties or ballots print party next to candidates. Some offices (most judicial races for instance) do not use party affiliation.
George Washington was right when he warned us about political parties.
The biggest problem in the US is the electorial system that leads to two parties with each close to 50%. Elections are so close that it is essentially meaningless. Is a party with 50.1% really more legitimized to rule than the one with 49.9%?
Step one to fix democracy would be to get rid of the winner-takes-all system. Not only would this make more than two parties viable. You would also fix that most of the country's vote doesn't contribute at all (since people live in "safe" counties where they have little influence on the outcome.)
Then, when elections are won with clear margins, yes, you could abolish elections, and replace them by representative polls! The benefit is that polls are much cheaper, you can do them much more frequently, and the people can change bad policy quicker. It might be controversial, but I like that you can also apply "reweighting" to polls to make them more representative.