Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1999 18:07:03 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: eivind@FreeBSD.ORG (Eivind Eklund) Cc: brett@lariat.org, jkh@zippy.cdrom.com, chris@netmonger.net, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Guess we've lost the server market too...? Message-ID: <199903051807.LAA10136@usr06.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <19990305093653.B38288@bitbox.follo.net> from "Eivind Eklund" at Mar 5, 99 09:36:53 am
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> > Alas, as the American political system shows, the public actually > > resists having more than two choices. It's "one, two, too many." > > Wrong. The US political system is fu^H^Hrigged from the start to > create two parties. This is the effect of having a forced choice of > one representative from each area; "winner takes all". It also forces > the two parties to be very much like each other. I've always believed > that this was a deliberate choice by the founding fathers, choosing > stability over having the political system match what the people > actually believe. Actually, Jefferson said "beware the folly of party". Ben Franklin had a number of choice words on the subject, as well. > If you want an example of how you get a lot of parties, look at > Denmark. (At this point I left my computer with the window open and > hoped for some dane to jump in and finish off my mail by describing > the danish voting system, but it didn't happen). The Australians use a weighted polling process, with roll-over. > The country is divided into a number of counties. When there is a > national election, the representatives are choosen by county - with > each county sending about 12 (?) representatives (the actual number is > somewhat related to the number of people in the county) to the > equvalent of congress. These representatives are choosen according to > the number of votes they got inside the county; they do NOT come after > a vote in a smaller area. In addition to this, we have something > called 'adjustment mandates'. These are based on "vote overflow" in > the counties; they make up a total of about 10% of the mandates, I > think. They will (by the laws of mathematics) tend to favour the > large parties, but this is a rather small advantage. > > The result of the above system is a division similar to this (numbers > are from memory, so bear with me that they're not accurate): In the US, there are "electors" equal to the number of senators and representatives of a state. Electors are chosen based on proportional returns. That is, if a state has 2 sentors and 3 representatives, and so 5 electors, then if 21% of the popular vote is for one candidate, 42% for another, and 57% for another, then there is a 1:2:2 division of electors between each of these parties candidates. The electors can vote for whoever they want. Because the electors are not direct representatives of a constituency, there is a fear that small states would be overpowered by states with larger numbers of electors. As a result, it is a felony in most small states for the electors to not vote for the same candidate, regardless of their personal choice (e.g., they are there as warm bodies, not as instruments of a constituency's judgement). It is this law, enacted locally, that results in the bipartisan nature of the American system. In general, we can trace this law to (1) the existance of electors -- the US is technically a Republic, not a Democracy, for the highest offices, (2) the fact that early returns are reported, and (3) the fact that all polls do ont open and close at the same time, Zulu, regardless of timezone. My prescription, should anyone care to hear it, would be: 1) Open all polls at 8AM Eastern Standard time. Close them all the next day at 8AM Eastern Standard time. 2) Make exit polling illegal. 3) Make early return (e.g. all ballots in in Podunkville, Maine) reporting illegal. > ... with the governing power held by a coalition of Venstre, Kristelig > Folkeparti, and Senterpartiet. > > The reason that Arbeiderpartiet isn't governing (either in minority or > in coalition with somebody else) is that they refused to take the > responsibility unless they got some certain minimum number of votes. > > The reason Fremskrittspartiet (a populistic/liberal party, the one > that is most similar to the US parties) isn't in the governing > business is that nobody would cooperate with them. The problem with coalition governments is the problem with the U.N.; when it comes to requiring teeth of any kind, they fall apart. You could actually paint this as a strength, in that it allows the system to recover hysteresis quickly following preterbation. But if attacked by an external enemy, it is most frequently a weakness, in that it prevents uniform and decisive action. Actually, you have to look no further than John Major's government to see that a coalition tends to roll over under external presure. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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