On Wed, 6 Apr 2016 03:27:18 PM Rick Moen via luv-talk wrote:
I think it's unfortunate that the Australian parties never took the logical next step of offering multiple candidates for some seats. Instead of having back room deals to determine who is nominated for a "safe seat" they should have multiple candidates from that party contest the election. I live in a zone for a Labor safe seat, it would be nice if Labor offered me multiple candidates to choose from.
If the US had a similar system there could be candidates representing the Tea Party and the mainstream Republican party competing for a seat. That would save the Republicans from the candidate who wins a primary can't win an election problem.
Not an objection to your suggestion, but just as a point of clarification for anyone who doesn't know: Please remember that political parties are _not_ part of the US political system -- and I do mean that seriously -- at either the Federal or state (or local) level. They are private political associations.
I think that's mostly the case for Australia too apart from some issues related to election finance, registration, and listings on ballot papers. If the Australian population became too disgusted with the 2 major parties there's no reason why there couldn't be an independent candidate elected in every electorate and those MPs could then vote on who becomes PM. That situation is unlikely to such a degree that it's almost impossible but there's nothing in the constitution preventing it.
In consequence, to this day, US political parties basically govern themselves. You could speak of the 'US having a system' for political parties in the sense of the Federal government encouraging particular things and discouraging others, I guess, but that basically doesn't happen.
The fact that they have differences in the primary processes probably doesn't help the US political system. While it would be possible to debate the relative merits of the Republican and Democratic processes in that regard I think that it would be best if they both operated in the same way. When you have 2 main parties then it's best if they differ just on policies. In Australia the "primaries" are closed affairs that don't get much attention. The difference between the Labor and Liberal parties seems to be mainly based on the union involvement with Labor. I don't know any of the details of how the Greens select candidates for potentially winnable seats even though I vote for them. I haven't had any reason to think that they will do a bad job and I don't think that my input into the process would improve things.
There are few victories by other than the big two, because of Duverger's Law (First Past the Post voting in winner-take-all polities tend towards two parties).
Even without that we don't have many seats won by people who aren't representing the major parties in Australia. That's mainly due to publicity and financing. But unfortunately there are Australians who don't realise that the "wasted vote" thing applies to the US only.
California voters approved an interesting reform in 2012 to moderate the effect of Duverger's Law and specifically punish and discourage party extremism and politicians' maintenance of 'safe' district seats in the state Senate and Assembly, and resulting gridlock in the Legislature. It's called the 'top two primary', and seems to be working pretty well. Details here: http://ww2.kqed.org/lowdown/2014/06/03/a-last-minute-guide-to-californias-t op-two-primary-system/
I've just read that. How does it make things better? Instead of a first past the post with multiple candidates in the general election you have first 2 past the post in the primary. The web page says that you might have 2 candidates from 1 party, but unless I'm missing something that doesn't seem likely to happen often except in cases where an electorate reliably gets well in excess of 66% votes for one party. But I guess it makes sense to have this in those cases. How many electorates are dominated by one party to that extent? Taking only a single vote for the primary seems to have the same issue as only taking a single vote for the main election in the current system regarding "wasted votes". If the primary has 4 candidates (2 from each major party) then it should work quite well in terms of allowing candidates to choose the better option from each party. But it doesn't allow people to support their favorite major party while also expressing a preference for a candidate from the other major party. If a primary has more than 2 candidates from each major party then it becomes more complex. If party A has 4 candidates that all get about 15% of the votes and party B has 2 candidates that get about 20% each then party B would get both positions for the main election even though party A was possibly preferred by a 60:40 margin. It's an open issue as to whether that would be a good or a bad thing. If they had instant-runoff to determine the top 2 candidates to win the primary then it would be a good thing. While the result of a direct vote between those 2 candidates initially wouldn't be any different than that of a full instant-runoff election it does allow the possibility of political advertising and debates between the top 2 candidates which would change some results and might be a good thing.
Likewise, redistricting was taken out of the hands of the Legislature by a voter initiative in 2010 and assigned to a state commission of retired judges and other similar folk: http://wedrawthelines.ca.gov/ This was done to eliminate the gerrymandering formerly used to create 'safe' districts, which of course, was another foundation of partisan gridlock. This, too, appears to be working pretty well.
This is another issue where technology could change things. For example it would be possible to have the constitution require that the total length of electoral boundaries in the state be no greater than 30% more than the optimum fit determined by computer. Without computers it's probably not possible to get something close to an optimum fit. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/