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> the government is corrupt, incompetent and beholden to interest groups Which in turn is because of the 2-party oligopoly. Instant run-off voting, to give 3rd
by genwin 12y ago
> the government is corrupt, incompetent and beholden to interest groups
Which in turn is because of the 2-party oligopoly. Instant run-off voting, to give 3rd parties a viable chance of winning, is part of the solution.
- hackuser 12y ago>> the government is corrupt, incompetent and beholden to interest groups > Which in turn is because of the 2-party oligopoly. We were able to accomplish a lot in the 20th century with that 2-party oligopoly. I don't support it, but it's no excuse for our inability to get things done.
- JoeAltmaier 12y agoThere are many ways to give '3rd parties' a chance. A simpler one is, let folks vote for ALL acceptable candidates, not just choose one. E.g. vote for your party AND for the compromise candidate. This could drive candidates toward the middle.
- genwin 12y agoYou're describing instant run-off voting.
- JoeAltmaier 12y agoSort of. That implies ranking, which is unnecessary.
- dragonwriter 12y agoNo, "vote for all acceptable candidates" is approval voting, a method that uses binary markings (like vote-for-one FPTP voting), but allows multiple marked candidates on each ballot, with (like FPTP) the candidate getting the highest number of marks elected. Its very different from IRV, which is a forced-ranking method which elects the candidate with the majority of first place rankings if one exists, and if not throws out all votes for the candidate with the lowest number of first place rankings (leaving the next-ranked candidate first on those ballots) and then tries again, repeating until some candidate has a majority of first place rankings. Neither is, IMO, a particularly good single winner election for candidates for political office (though there are some other uses of voting for which I think Approval is a good method -- for instance, in social situations where opting out of an activity is permissible and an approval vote has a crystalized meaning of "I opt out unless one of the alternatives I've marked is selected, and I commit not to opt out if one of those alternatives is selected"), but they are the most commonly recommended alternatives to the US's more common methods of plurality and majority-runoff vote-for-one elections, probably because they are the alternative mechanisms that are structurally most similar (AV can be viewed as a generalization of plurality -- he who gets the most # of votes wins -- without a vote-for-one restriction, and IRV is simply using a ranked ballot to allow a simple generalization of majority-runoff to be done off a single balloting.)
- ClayShentrup 12y agoApproval Voting is actually an extremely good voting method. http://ScoreVoting.net/BayRegsFig.html http://ScoreVoting.net/BayRegsFig.html http://ScoreVoting.net/AppCW.html http://ScoreVoting.net/AppCW.html
- HarryHirsch 12y agoAnother reason for corruption is pay-to-play. A full war chest doesn't guarantee winning the elections, but not having one guarantees that you won't get into parliament. And if you do get in your donors expect some kind of return. Campaign finance return is sorely needed, at the moment the system is plainly corrupt, and that doesn't help the legitimacy of whatever government is in power at the moment.
- genwin 12y agoYep. In the US, if we could get a viable 3rd party we could maybe get campaign finance reform. Until then there is no chance of it.
- AnimalMuppet 12y agoMulti-party (more than two) doesn't mean that the government is competent or not beholden to special interest groups. See, for example, Italy.