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I don’t understand your example. Ross Perot was running for president without a party. How were house seats supposed to be awarded to him? It’s a totally differ

I don’t understand your example. Ross Perot was running for president without a party. How were house seats supposed to be awarded to him? It’s a totally different election, and multiple seats can’t be held by one person.

Ididntdothis 7y ago
You are right. However the point I tried to make is that the current system kills third parties. Let’s say you get 30% in every district but win none you will have no representation. That’s just unhealthy.
- thu2111 7y ago
  PR at first sounds like a great idea. I used to support it. Watching how it plays out in Europe is instructive. What you see in PR systems is many parties, all of whom enter Parliament and none of whom have a majority. This leads to: - Long delays whilst they try to form alliances with each other, often unsuccessfully. Belgium went without a government for 541 days. Having no government for three-six months is quite common. - Alliances that make no sense at all and make a mockery of the parties political manifestos, e.g. right wing and left wing parties forming an alliance then not being able to actually do anything because they fundamentally don't agree on much. Germany used to have one of these. Then they attempted to form an alliance between the Greens (hard left socialists) and their libertarian party! As you can imagine, that didn't last long. - A very similar issue is that parties can win a lot of votes and still get no influence, because the other parties hate them so much they refuse to ever form an alliance with them. This happens to conservative parties a lot. For instance in the Netherlands the PVV is the second biggest party by vote share, but every other party refused to enter an alliance with them so their voters have no influence on the government. The alliance required to achieve this took 208 days to put together and 225 to formally start work in the cabinet, so the Dutch people were without representation for more than half a year because their politicians refused to contemplate compromising with the second largest party. [Modified] first past the post as used by the USA and the UK isn't perfect, but it results in elections having a clear winner who can then (mostly) implement what they said they would implement. In PR countries end up being ruled by what are effectively new political parties which didn't actually exist when voters went to the ballot boxes, may have policies that were never discussed during the election and which may still exclude the preferences of large chunks of the voters, including even the largest chunk.

Ididntdothis 7y ago

You are right. However the point I tried to make is that the current system kills third parties. Let’s say you get 30% in every district but win none you will have no representation. That’s just unhealthy.

thu2111 7y ago
PR at first sounds like a great idea. I used to support it. Watching how it plays out in Europe is instructive. What you see in PR systems is many parties, all of whom enter Parliament and none of whom have a majority. This leads to: - Long delays whilst they try to form alliances with each other, often unsuccessfully. Belgium went without a government for 541 days. Having no government for three-six months is quite common. - Alliances that make no sense at all and make a mockery of the parties political manifestos, e.g. right wing and left wing parties forming an alliance then not being able to actually do anything because they fundamentally don't agree on much. Germany used to have one of these. Then they attempted to form an alliance between the Greens (hard left socialists) and their libertarian party! As you can imagine, that didn't last long. - A very similar issue is that parties can win a lot of votes and still get no influence, because the other parties hate them so much they refuse to ever form an alliance with them. This happens to conservative parties a lot. For instance in the Netherlands the PVV is the second biggest party by vote share, but every other party refused to enter an alliance with them so their voters have no influence on the government. The alliance required to achieve this took 208 days to put together and 225 to formally start work in the cabinet, so the Dutch people were without representation for more than half a year because their politicians refused to contemplate compromising with the second largest party. [Modified] first past the post as used by the USA and the UK isn't perfect, but it results in elections having a clear winner who can then (mostly) implement what they said they would implement. In PR countries end up being ruled by what are effectively new political parties which didn't actually exist when voters went to the ballot boxes, may have policies that were never discussed during the election and which may still exclude the preferences of large chunks of the voters, including even the largest chunk.