A story to run in Friday’s edition of the National Catholic Reporter examines the role of third parties in U.S. politics. The piece offers a brief history of major third party movements, and basically endorses Instant Runoff Voting.
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Ross,
Proportional representation is used in by many countries in Europe and seems to work best in smaller constituencies. While the specifics vary by country, generally people vote for a party list of candidates. Primaries and conventions select not the nominee, but the position of various candidates on the party list.
Generally the party with a pluarality of votes must form a government by putting together a coalition of parties to reach 50% + 1 of the parliament. The result is that two large parties dominate but minor parties have a lot of influence because their votes are needed to form a governing coalition.
Its an interesting thought experienment to see what America might look like with such a system:
Imagine an O-bomb’em led Demorcrat list finishing in a tie with the McCain led R’s with 35 seats apiece in a 100 seat legislature. Stripped of the wasted vote argument, lets say the minor factions divide like so:
Ralph Nader list – 9 seats
Libertarian – 8
Green -5
Constitution -4
Boston Tea -2
Socialist – 2
Assuming there wasn’t a “grand coalition” of D and R, like runs things today, McCain and O-bomb’em would have to formulate a compromise agenda which could attract enough parties to reach 51 and elect McCain or O-bomb’em as Prime Minister. In this scenario, a “left” coaltion of Democrat-Nader-Green-Socialist can rule with 51 seats. If O-bomb’em wants to put together a broader (thus less likely to split) government, he brings in Libertarians and Constitutionalists on an anti-war, pro-civil liberties agenda. Then you get Secretary of State Ralph Nader, Attorney General Bob Barr, and Mary Ruwart takes a hatchet to large sections of the FDA from her position as head of that organization.
A voting method called Open List Proportional Representation allows voters to rank candidates in the order of their preference, but yield a proportional result.
Some pretty good animations of how this works are at:
http://www.citizensassembly.bc.ca/public/extra/animations.xml
And FairVote: The Center for Voting and Democracy is another great resource.
http://www.fairvote.org
I think rdupuy said party in his version.
So then wouldn’t that mean that you’re not actually voting for the person, but the party?
It means there would be no districts.
A state would have so many seats, all at large (assuming state representation was retained). They would be distributed to different parties or individuals based on the percentage of the vote they received.
Could someone explain to me what proportional representation is? I’ve heard of it, but I don’t exactly understand. It seems as though each Congressional district would have more than one representative.
I think it would be great to have a voting system that allowed for greater 3rd party representation in Congress. I don’t think instant runoff voting would do any such thing. I think it would allow some people to vote 3rd party, but it basically insures that only the major party will end up winning.
I’m sure there is some psychology to allowing people to vote 3rd party, do that long enough, maybe a 3rd party would win.
But what I like the most is proportional representation. If your party wins 5% of the vote, you get 5% of the seats.