Kelzie said:
A "first past the post system" breeds two-party systems. It's the only way it can be done. If the person who gets the most votes wins and only that person wins, they have a lot to gain by appealing to the most people possible. So they become as moderate as possible, hoping to attract the most voters. In this system, if you have four candidate, A, B, C, D who are ranked in order from liberal to conservative and who command 5, 35, 37, and 23 percent of the votes respectively and you vote for candidate A, what happens? They lose, your next best choice B loses and C wins. Now if all the people who voted for A shift their vote, they can at least be sure that C doesn't win. And that's what happens when the person with the highest votes wins everything.
Now if we had a proportional representation system, it would be to your benfit to vote for the party that best represents you, because that way they would have the most power in the government. However, without a revolution, I don't see that ever coming to America.
You have some good points but I believe they only hold to a certain extent.
For one, they hold up well if the next election were the last election, but there will be many more. As seemingly divided as our country is politically, the actions of the politicians are much more closely aligned. They appeal to different segments of society for votes, this is true, but their actions seem to be the same old status quo. They cling to failing beaurocracies and resist any meaningful change for fear of the next election cycle and for fear of losing their cash cows. Therefore, even if "your guy" lost the next election, not much would change from a policy standpoint. There really is not that much to lose if the other guy wins. There is however, much to lose if the two party system becomes so thoroughly entrenched that it cannot be broken.
Now if a few election cycles, where people voted for who represented them best were to take place, the percentage of support for the third party guy would begin to approach that of the Big Two. Now comes the big platform strategy question. Do you continue to strive for the middle or do you make a break in order to distinguish yourself ? Given the fact that the third party is likely further from the center than the other two, I would bet you would see some political distinctions begin to blossom.
You are right, this country is not likely to see proportional representation.
Also in a proportional system, wouldn't there need to be some weighted basis for decision making, with the guy with the most support holding the most authority ? In practicality, would this be much different than a system where the legislative, executive and judicial branches were composed of folks with multiple party/philosophical associations ?
Just wondering ? I feel this is a very important issue if there is to be a future for this country. One thing for sure, if we if we continually fail to risk
letting the "other guy" win, we will all lose. Something has to change.
We as a people need to find the starting spot, and quickly.