a new voting system

[Misodoctakleidist]

Voting for political parties is often an act of choosing the lesser evil for example many people vote for labour just to keep the conservatives out and people support the democrats becuase they are the only party with a realistic chance of getting bush out. Why don't we formalise this system and vote for the candidiate we least want in power?

This would even out the playing field since the ruling class would be forced to give media coverage to smaller parties becuase if nobody knew who they were then they'd recive the least votes and win the election. The public would be much better informed on all the candidates running and campaign funding would be much less significant.

[Hate Is Art]

haha that is weird, but America especially needs to rethink out its "democracy" smaller partys need more coverage, in America it is all about advertising and sponsorship. Candidates sling mud at each other in a tabloid war trying to discredit the other party leader rather than try and change the country.

[Don't Change Your Name]

GREAT IDEA!!! But it has problems:

1 - Parties will divide so that they create a puppet party, and while people vote them out they might lie (as they usually do anyway) with the other party's platform and then get into power anyway.
2 - Propaganda will be weird but interesting. Still the corporations will finance the "do NOT vote Conservatives", "vote liberal social-democrats OUT", "vote any party but the Capitalist", so the stupid masses will still vote what the main parties think.
3 - Things might be confusing
4 - Voting one party out won't really deny the other simmilar ones

[SittingBull47]

we could do that in conjunction with voting for the best. good idea.

[monkeydust]

It's an interesting idea, I've never actually heard it forwarded before.

One thing your theory doesn't cover however, is the problem of 'wasted' votes. Essentially, everyone who voted for the winning party, will be forgotten. This isn't always a problem, but suppose there were only two parties, one receiving 51%, the other 49%; amost half the electorate will not have it's opinion voiced.

Secondly, the system is not desirable when there are several parties, standing for one basic ideology. This issue is explained best through one of my bad examples.

Suppose there are 10 parties.

1 is the Socialist Party.

The other 9 are all slightly different, yet hold true to the general values of capitalism.

The socialist party could get the most votes, yet receive less votes than the cumulative number of votes for all 9 capitalist parties, e.g. there's more support for socialism than capitalism.

Yet, one of the capitalist parties will still get power. Is this fair?

[Hate Is Art]

we should stick to the way we have but just get better media for smaller partys.

[toastedmonkey]

Ive already told you but ill do it again, It doesnt work.

In the UK you have 2 main parties, labour and tories, and then the Lib Dems who dont have any realistic chance.

In your "system", you'll have all the labour supporters voting Tory, and all the tory supporters voting Labour. On top of that you'll have the Lib Dem supporters voting against either, and no one will of thought of voting Lib Dem... So they'll win. Even though the majority of voters will either support Labour or Tory, and will be completely unrepresented.

Very Democratic.

[toastedmonkey]

iloveatomickitten's idea was the best

She said if you rate all the candidates on a scale of 1-10 (10 eing best) the one with the highest score wins.

[monkeydust]

Originally posted by [email protected] 27 2004, 05:18 PM

In the UK you have 2 main parties, labour and tories, and then the Lib Dems who dont have any realistic chance.

In your "system", you'll have all the labour supporters voting Tory, and all the tory supporters voting Labour. On top of that you'll have the Lib Dem supporters voting against either, and no one will of thought of voting Lib Dem... So they'll win. Even though the majority of voters will either support Labour or Tory, and will be completely unrepresented.

Very Democratic.
Maybe there's an element of truth here, myself I disagree with the plurality system, but for different reasons to the ones you have given.

Firstly, whilst perhaps some traditional conservative voters may have been swayed to New Labour, I very much doubt that Old Labour voters now vote Conservative. In any case, rather than looking at the current situation of British politics, we should focus on our electoral system itself, irrespective of the times.

So what's good about First Past the Post? The three most valid reasons for me are:

-It's easy to understand, and to simple to operate.
-It offers geographical representation
-It delivers, strong decisve government.

Perhaps the most fundementally 'bad' points about the system are that it's undemocratic, and openly unrepresentative.

Apart from the obvious fact that most MP's tend to be from Upper class, Private schooled backgrounds, the plurality system delivers a huge number of 'wated' votes, the resulting representation is grossly different to what it would be under proportional democracy.

Perhaps the most startling example for this, is the fact that every Post War government has achieved more han 50% of the seats in commons, with less than 50% of the peoples votes. First Past the Post is a 'winner takes all' system; if 49% of people vote Labour, but 51% Conservative, 49% of those people are effectively 'forgotten'.

I could rant on about the faults of the system for ages, about how The second ballot, top up, Single Transferrable vote and Part list systems are much preferrable, frankly I can't be arsed right now.

quite simple, First Past the Post is outdated, unrepresentative and generally unfair.

[Don't Change Your Name]

Originally posted by [email protected] 27 2004, 05:21 PM
iloveatomickitten's idea was the best

She said if you rate all the candidates on a scale of 1-10 (10 eing best) the one with the highest score wins.
Sounds better, let's say there are 20 candidates, you order them by placing your favourite first, your enemies last. The first one gets 20 points, the last one 1. Still it's the same "winner takes all" pseudo-democratic system.

[Hate Is Art]

thats a good idea, but then there may be a candidate you haven't heard of and you put him higher, turns out the guy is fascist or something, if by some freak chance quite a few people do this he could get quite a few points and get some seats in parliment, so there should be an abstain bit where you can choose not give them any points.

[iloveatomickitten]

Wouldn't work - listing them in order mean giving more credit than you may want to, and giving them a score out of ten would mean that if my highest value was 10 and yours 5 then my vote is worth twice yours. :P

[Hate Is Art]

could you expand that a bit i dont get it.