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It is tremendously difficult to get a broad-but-shallow movement like the Pirate movement into political office in a first-past-the-post system like the U.S.'s.
by jellicle 14y ago
It is tremendously difficult to get a broad-but-shallow movement like the Pirate movement into political office in a first-past-the-post system like the U.S.'s. Since the U.S.'s democracy is so weak and unrepresentative, a political movement can have 3%, 5%, 10%, even 20% of the U.S. population on its side and still get zero seats in the legislature. It will be almost impossible for the Pirates to elect even one congressperson until they're polling over 20% nationally, which obviously is a huge huge hurdle to overcome.
The knowledge of how large that hurdle is reduces the incentive to participate.
It's a shame that a country which wants to think of itself as the world's foremost democracy is so undemocratic in its electoral structure.
- chrischen 14y agoCan you give an example of an interest group with over 20% of the US population support but has no representation in government?
- mtgx 14y agoSome of them do have representation, but only under the flag of "Democrat" or "Republican", like the religious evangelists and the "Tea Party" are represented by Republicas, unions and Hollywood by Democrats, and so on. It's close to impossible to form a movement around a 3rd party, that can actually get in the Government.
- philwelch 14y agoIn some countries, several parties get elected to office and form a coalition to govern together. In America, the coalitions are formed before the election inside the party itself, and some factions can even switch parties. For instance, after LBJ signed civil rights legislation, the segregationists switched to the Republican Party.
- Androsynth 14y agoIn American politics, the goal of third parties is often not to get elected themselves (because as others have pointed out, thats hard) but to push the issue on the two main parties.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- jellicle 14y agoAnybody against copyright. Anybody against government torture. Anyone against war. Anyone against more bailouts for bankers. Anyone against maximizing executive power in the office of the Presidency. These are all positions supported firmly by both the Republican and Democratic Party that have a large percentage of the population opposed to them. In a proportional representation system, we would have people in government that supported the issues above. Not a majority, necessarily; but more than the 0% of support that exists now in government (well, Bernie Sanders). Suppose the Occupy movement was running a slate of candidates for Congress, and that Congress was elected proportionally - your party gets 22% of the votes, you get 22% of the seats. What percentage of seats do you think would be occupied by Republicans and Democrats after the next election?
- chrischen 14y agoReally, 0% of people in Congress support any of those issues? I think at least part of it can be explained away by the representation system. Only so many issues are important enough to have the representatives represent us for.
- davidw 14y agoYour logic is correct about the snowball's chance in hell most 3rd parties have in the US, but the editorializing weakens your comment, IMO. You're right in some ways, but there is no perfect electoral system. A representative democracy like here in Italy carries risks of its own: that a small party will hold the critical votes needed for a majority in parliament, and so hold a much larger party 'hostage'. That is quite undemocratic in its own way, and also leads to "weak" democracy because it's often difficult to hold fairly diverse coalitions together long enough to do anything coherent.
- Mvandenbergh 14y agoAgreed. PR has its own problems and allowing marginal parties a place in government also means that you're going to have fascist and nationalist parties represented in your legislature as many European countries do.
- dchest 14y agoyou're going to have fascist and nationalist parties represented in your legislature as many European countries do You mean, people with different opinions than yours (and mine) can be represented in government? Isn't that great?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- baddox 14y agoIt depends. If your opinion is that fascism is good, then it's a bad thing for you to have representation in the government where I live.
- alxtye 14y agoHaving fascist and nationalist parties is a demonstration of democracy working, is it not?
- 14y ago
- phon 14y agowget http://www.usconstitution.net/const.txt http://www.usconstitution.net/const.txt; grep "democracy" const.txt | wc -l The United States is a Federal Republic that has become progressively more democratic over time. As originally set out in the United States Constitution (ratified in 1788), the only part of the federal government that was to be directly elected was the House of Representatives. The direct election of Senators did not become the law of the land until the 20th century while the Supreme Court and, technically, the Presidency are still not directly elected. These controls were put in place to buffer the entire system from popular fads and hysterias.
- knewter 14y agoThis, a thousand times. Of course the US doesn't look as democratic as some would like. It was explicitly set out to NOT be democratic. The fact that we're now trying to "spread democracy" abroad is anathema.
- Androsynth 14y agoThats not entirely true. The first 70 years of US history is about half the country wanting a democracy (Jefferson, Madison, the Democratic party) and half wanting a more centralized govt (Washington, Hamilton, The Federalist party, The Republican party). In fact the US Civil War was a war between a republic government and a democratic government. The issue was decided fairly definitively when the republican country won the war. By the time the democrat party recovered from the war, they had changed significantly. By the early 20th century, both parties were de facto republicans, but they distinguished themselves along class barriers rather than government types.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- drcube 14y agoThe way third parties tend to work in the US is, once their ideas become somewhat popular, one of the main two parties absorbs it into their platform (with the other taking a stand against it). So I think it would be a success if, for example, the Democrats took a stand against copyright abuses, rather than both parties being in the pockets of Disney, Microsoft, MPAA, etc., as they are currently.
- ThomPete 14y agoThe republicans are actually many more times likely to be on the piratepartys side. The Democrats are in The pocket of Hollywood.
- drcube 14y agoDo you have any evidence of that? It's my understanding that both parties are in Hollywood's pocket. I feel like the odds are roughly 50-50 either way, which is why I picked a party at random for my example.
- J3L2404 14y agoNeither party is ever going to go for this. You would have an easier time getting file-sharing recognized as a religion.
- drcube 14y ago"Ever" is a long time. These parties are ultimately beholden to the electorate which keeps them employed. They'll stand by their corporate donors right up until the Pirate values seem lucrative enough or popular enough to affect their bottom line, at which point they'll consider revising their platform.
- J3L2404 14y agoThankfuly most citizens believe people deserve to be rewarded for their work. They may partake in illegal downloading but they don't pretend it is noble.