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I lived in Italy for a number of years and am not enamored of proportional systems for several reasons: * Small parties sometimes have disproportionate power i
by davidw 7y ago
I lived in Italy for a number of years and am not enamored of proportional systems for several reasons:
* Small parties sometimes have disproportionate power in coalitions.
* Coalitions tend to not be real stable, leading to unstable governments that can't get much done (ok, for some this is a
feature, but for some things, I think it isn't).
* People matter, but with a proportional system, the party picks the candidates, and you vote for the party. In some cases, I think this leads to worse people being elected.
- sampo 7y ago> I lived in Italy I don't know, Italy might be chaotic under any system. What do you think of e.g. Germany, Denmark?
- davidw 7y agoThere's a certain amount of that in any system. I mean the US doesn't have a great system but still does....ok-ish. I don't know the details of politics in Germany or Denmark well enough to know whether there were elections, parties, issues or areas where things didn't work out very well and a different electoral system might have been an improvement. There are a lot of "what if's" to consider even in places I know well.
- archgoon 7y agoAs an American; I'd generally expect 'chaotic' to be a more likely outcome than the U.S. becoming more like Germany or Denmark.
- erikpukinskis 7y agoProportional is different from ranked choice. Ranked choice means you give your #1, #2, #3 pick etc. Then if your #1 loses, your vote goes to your #2. It prevents these "A vote for [minority candidate] is a vote for [enemy candidate]" situations. Proportional means each party can elect a number of representatives proportional to the number of votes the party got. They both empower third party candidates, but in a different way.
- davidw 7y agoI was responding to someone advocating proportional as better than RCV with my opinions about proportional voting.