Politics Discussion Thread (Heated Arguing Warning)

[TheHumanHydra]

The main problem for FPTP system for me is that party members are just extensions of the party because you get deselected if you rebel. So your vote is just a vote for a party and the district system doesn't make any sense.

That's a big concern with proportional systems as well. For my own country, I hope that any reform, for which there is some level of popular support, will retain some form of voter selection of local representatives. This allows voters to have a greater say in the makeup of their parliament than leaving it to distant parties.

[Mardoc]

The key problem in winner takes all systems is the spoiler effect, smalller parties cannot exist for anything other than to take away votes from the parties that will win the election, or at least are expected to be the largest (just look at the third parties in the US, they never have a chance!).

Yes - sorta.  On the other hand, RINOs and DINOs (Republican/Democrat in Name Only) most definitely exist.  Which is one way of describing someone who is a Republican/Democrat who doesn't adhere to the party line, but instead does what their particular voters want.  Usually the subject of much condemnation from people in other districts, who would prefer unity (on their terms, of course).

What, in practice, is the difference between having a separate party to "work together to tackle the [95%] overlap in their party programs while also being able to have their more specific issues heard" and having individual Representatives who, um, "work together to tackle the overlap in their party programs while also being able to have their more specific issues heard"?  We end up with much less formal special purpose 'third parties' like the Tea Party, or the Freedom Caucus, or the Congressional Black Caucus...Wikipedia has an extensive list of these. But there's still a lot of room for things other than the official party platform of the two parties to take effect.

[AdrienIer]

The winner takes all has the big problem that with the right manipulaition of voting districts a small minority (in extremis just abit more than 25% in a 2-party-system even less the more parties there are) can gain absolute power. I prefer systems where the resulting goverment has at least 50% of the votes .

Well - that's basically assuming complete party/voter unity, and self-sacrificing MPs.  You could get the same thing with a coalition government in a proportional system, if you make similarly implausible assumptions, by proposing that the junior members of government don't get anything they want.

For gerrymandering to lead to minority control:

- You have to have power first, before you can gerrymander districts to keep power.  In addition, you have to persuade your MP's that they don't want safe seats, that it's better to be a member of a ruling coalition by a hairs-breadth than to be guaranteed a career as an opposition member with a chance of ruling later.
- You're assuming party unity.  That may be a valid assumption in a proportional system where the MPs all come from a party list controlled by leadership, but it's explicitly not true in a district-based (winner takes all) system.  A Democrat from New York and a Democrat from Virginia are going to have dramatically different priorities, and there is very little that the party chairman can do to force them to work together.  At most, the party can withhold funding toward reelection, but that usually won't matter, and it's cutting off your nose to spite your face.   If a representative votes more in line with the national party than with their constituents' preferences, they're not likely to stay a representative for long.

It's even more obvious in the Republican party today, as evidenced by the fairly anemic policy changes in the last year despite the Republicans having nominal control of all three of House, Senate, and Presidency.  A republican from Maine and a republican from Texas can find very little to agree on, so very little gets done.  A lot of the struggle is over the primaries and intra-party coalitions such as the Freedom Caucus.

When a party transforms a 47.6/48.8 % loss into a 54/46 % legislative win it's time to look at your electoral distribution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Sta...ions,_2012

And I'm aware that there are many reasons for such a weird result, one of which is the absence of challengers in several elections. But minority control is becoming more and more possible.

[Bacchus]

US will continue to have an ever-growing vote-seat split as a small number of counties continue to amass population. The question of who 'should' rule at federal level is far from obvious though — should 100.000 residents of LA county dominate politics over 10 different rural counties of 9k each, all from different geographies, with different industries, different religions? Giving all the power to a handful of large cities by majority rule seems like imperialism of the worst sort, especially as some of these rural counties have literally nothing to do with places like LA, or Cook County.

[AdrienIer]

So instead you'd like the 9k counties to dominate politics over the 100k people of LA county ?

Only in the US is this an argument. Does Siberia have half the seats in the Douma ? Are the Scottish highlands more important than London in the house of commons ?

Also, gerrymandering is not a question of rural vs urban (or not only). It's about R vs D, or rather of giving an unfair advantage to one side. It's done by democrats sometimes, and by republicans often. It needs to stop.

[MJW (ya that one)]

The vote-seat split is massively overated at the federal level. This is because the House should have around 2000 representatives not 435. The districts are far too big to represent a community--they're just arbitrary. The GOP gets only get a 5% boost which because the demographics are so bad for them would only give them 8 years more time. DEMs would need that time anyway to get cocky after Trump's victory and start ramming down legislation on party lines. Gerrymandering also won't help because people are greedy and overoptimistic so overextend. A good example is the recent Virginia elections were the GOP would have gotten around 60 seats on a neutral map but instead got only 50 seats.

Are you aware of how bad things are in other countries with FPTP Mardoc? For example only 19/227 of Australian politicians on the federal have ever rebelled and one was caused by a PM falling asleep. The most rebellious politician has rebelled less than 1% of the time.

[Mardoc]

When a party transforms a 47.6/48.8 % loss into a 54/46 % legislative win it's time to look at your electoral distribution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Sta...ions,_2012

And I'm aware that there are many reasons for such a weird result, one of which is the absence of challengers in several elections. But minority control is becoming more and more possible.

Looks like we already fixed it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Sta...ions,_2014
Majority vote getters won majority seats!



Seriously, you're still claiming that party unity is real and important, more important than local geographic representation or knowing your Congressman or clear results, or getting minority representatives into Congress, or any of the other benefits of FPTP district voting.

[darrelljs]

My impression with no hard data is that the Republicans maintain unity but the Democrats often don't.

Maybe three parties is the optimum number .

Darrell

[AdrienIer]

When a party transforms a 47.6/48.8 % loss into a 54/46 % legislative win it's time to look at your electoral distribution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Sta...ions,_2012

And I'm aware that there are many reasons for such a weird result, one of which is the absence of challengers in several elections. But minority control is becoming more and more possible.

Looks like we already fixed it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Sta...ions,_2014
Majority vote getters won majority seats!



Seriously, you're still claiming that party unity is real and important, more important than local geographic representation or knowing your Congressman or clear results, or getting minority representatives into Congress, or any of the other benefits of FPTP district voting.

I said minority control was becoming possible, not that it's happening.
Does it not bother you that republicans have controlled the house for the last 8 years regardless of the number of votes ?

How are any of those things benefits of FPTP ? The German system does that fine while being perfectly fair.

[MJW (ya that one)]

My impression with no hard data is that the Republicans maintain unity but the Democrats often don't.

Maybe three parties is the optimum number .

Darrell

After Obama lost the house bigtime inn 2010 no legislation could be passed without the mainstream GOPers help. This means a RINO shouldn't rebel in order to get brownie points. Your impression is based off of this. AHCA failing is an example of your impression being wrong.