On Tue, December 17, 2013 6:20 pm, Andrew McGlashan wrote:
There are too many issues to all share the ONE voice. Politicians need to be more independent -- party machines should not exist, period.
But they do, and unless you wish to make some pretty serious changes to the principle of freedom of association, they will continue to do so.
From the perspective of a political party, it is they who provide the name brand, the policy development, and spend an awful lot of money on campaigns and volunteer resources.
The other side of the deal is the person who is elected under their name should follow their policies. A candidate who does not may be sacked from the party and, of course, has the opportunity to stand again at the next election as an independent. This is usually a good gauge of many people voted for the party rather than the person. Typically if the independent candidate receives 10% of the vote, they've done well. I am not overly fond of binding caucuses (which is pretty much "democratic centralism", a la Lenin) and even less so of binding factional caucuses within a party ("a party within a party" approach). But I do recognise that they are a reality throughout the political life of most modern democracies. So, if one doesn't want to vote for a party that has binding caucuses, do remember that - except for the real cases of so-called "conscience votes" - all major political parties use them. You'd be restricting yourself to voting for independents - and who will you give preferences to? -- Lev Lafayette, BA (Hons), GradCertTerAdEd (Murdoch), GradCertPM, MBA (Tech Mngmnt) (Chifley) mobile: 0432 255 208 RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt