Electoral Reform

[Chaerophon]

Kandrathe, given what I know of you (;)), I think you'd actually be interested in the procedure by which these decisions about electoral reform were made (maybe not). Regardless, if you find time and are interested, here's a link: http://www.citizensassembly.gov.on.ca/en...0page.aspx

I know what would happen in my locality if we had such an electoral system. Special interests on all sides and extremes would pack the local offices with people not interested in doing the job for which they are elected. That would vary from greens, to pro-lifers, to neo-nazis.

First of all, let's face it: electoral reform is never going to happen in the U.S. - at least not at the federal level.

All of the comparative politics literature on electoral reform has found that your fears are most likely unfounded. Even if they do get a little crazy for the first election: who cares, let them. Voters WILL make strategic decisions at the point of decision, the party system will quite rapidly adapt, and within 2-3 election cycles, the negative opportunity cost of "fringe" party formation will be quite evident. MMP is very unlikely to produce a high number of viable parties - in general, most systems with less than 35-40% of seats devoted to lists maintaining "full proportionality" have a low "effective number of parties" (ie, less than 5), two or three of which coalesce around the center and obtain the majority of votes.

EDIT: depending on where exactly you're at, I guess that I can see where some fear might arise re: racist parties. Imposing a threshold on the percentage of the vote required to obtain a seat (e.g. 5%) can go some way towards fixing that problem. If they're getting substantially more than that, then I'd say that the problem is pretty deep, and no electoral system is going to be able to "mask" it very well for long (ie, it's probably manifesting itself in local politics already - to the extent that the constitution/legal system allows, anyways)... Xenophophic parties in Austria are a bit scary, but don't forget, Le Pen got into the final Presidential runoff in France (due to a freakish turn of events) and they don't have proportional representation.

I am fully prepared to argue that most proportional systems in Europe are more stable than Anglo-American plurality systems, where a change in government leads to radical, wholesale changes in policy. You will, doubtless, raise Italy as a counterexample, to which I will respond:Pthat Italy's system is (1) actually far less proportional than most, and (2) influenced by sociological factors (and widespread corruption) which predispose the region to a certain amount of upheaval for which the electoral system cannot account. If there's a problem with proportional systems, it may be that not enough change is possible in a short time - it's harder to "throw the bums out" - but if the number of seats reflects the vote, the influence of such an "undesirable" party should, nonetheless, be significantly curtailed by a fall in public support.

I was also going to comment on your statement, "It's definitely helped to jar some preconceptions (among political scientists) about the ability of average citizens to reason about politics." It seems a bit pretentious to assume "Joe and Josephine Average" citizen are clueless about the functions of government.

Most people don't understand the effects of the electoral system on society. That's a statistical fact that has been proven time and again. Electoral systems can be quite a complex and nuanced subject, and researchers have been very impressed by the way that citizens have become "experts" within a matter of a few weekends worth of education.

I've definitely got some populist leanings, but I'm not naive about the level of Joe and Josephine Average's understanding of politics. Most people don't know much about how things actually work, and most people don't really care until election time. One need only look at the strategies employed by parties and candidates around election time to see that the name of the game is sound bytes and opinion manipulation, not "public reason". My hope is that some of these new democratic "experiments" might play some small role in partially mitigating this trend in politics as usual. Now THAT might be naive, but I'll stick with it for now (while I'm young;))