A Tale of Two Stores.

When I go to the store around the corner and place my money on the counter, I have a reasonable expectation to get the loaf of bread or bar of soap for which I have chosen to exchange my money. The choice of product is mine.

When I go to the ballot box, "the little store of democracy", and place my vote on the voting paper, I would like to have a reasonable expectation to get the representation for which I have chosen to exchange my vote. Even if my representative's party is a minority in the legislature he or she has the resources to study the issues that interest me, to argue my issues with other representatives, to reach acceptable compromises on issues, and the social authority to communicate through the mass media.

Under our single member district system the average chance of electing the representative of my choice is about fifty / fifty.

If the majority of the population is dissatisfied with the two major parties the problem gets worse. With 5 or 6 parties of equal popularity your chance of electing a representative is approximately 20%!

Most of the world democracies use some form of proportional representation with multi-member districts. Under most systems 5% of the vote will elect a representative.

Winner-take-all forms of representation cannot support more than two parties for long. If you ever wondered why most other countries have more than two parties, now you know why.

Is it any wonder that voter turnout in the USA is about half that of those places with Proportional voting systems where the expectation of getting representation is much nearer 100%?

Most people desire choice and our system insures - you'll only find it at the mall!

FOR MORE INFORMATION

At your library or book store: "Real Choices, New Voices". Douglas Amy 1993

On the WEB: Center for Voting and Democracy

Articles about Proportional Representation http://www.fairvote.org/pr/index.html

Main Page with links to other material including
"gerrymandering" and "single transferable vote" http://www.igc.apc.org/cvd


Author: Jack Stewart stewjack@ij.net

Reprinted on PoliticalForum.com with permission.

a thoughtful post from you DBG...are you willing to go so far as to acknowledge the obvious contribution of the preceding 8 year administration to that intelligence failure?

This is the main problem with the American democracy. I also believe that solving this problem would as well solve a whole lot of other problems as well. Problem is, how do you change the system if the two parties that are in power are also the ones that benefit from it?

__________________
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he doesn't become a monster.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Amazing how the contrarians want to change a system which has led a country to become the most powerful nation on earth with unparalleled wealth for its citizens. Let me simplify. Our system is based on an idea that our citizens generally follow a basic cultural structure, but are always offered two choices: One a bit to the left, and one a bit to the right. This ensures that radicalism is kept in check. Why change a system which institutionalizes americanism?

Change is a prerequisite to longevity because no matter the usefulness, time turns all "graven images" toxic.

Now may not be that time for such change but the need for such change is inevitable.

Understood. But when a country undergoes change too rapidly, the fabric of society starts to tear. We're seeing that now. I think its time to slow down: Consolidate the volumes of laws created over the last 10 years and simplify for the sake of the citizens, accountants, lawyers, and businesses. It's not time to continue a march toward chaos.

At this point, I think you are right .... slowing down is a good move but the whole atmosphere of "mass. com" seem to indicate that slowing down, may not be an option any longer without first being prompted by even greater tragedies than we have already see.

All the more reason though to keep looking up. ....have a good day

It seems to me we are arguing two levels of complex acaptive systems. There is usually a duality of structure which produces an emergent property that has unintended consequences. The system (if it is to survive) must deal with these unintended consequences appropriately.

The electronic media has adopted a model of twenty second stories that are homogenized and sharp around the edges (salient)--the channel itself requires that the messages flow unceasingly, thus they repeat and become toxic at the content level (homogeneity) and the relationship (emotionaql and ideological) level.

Print media has made the fatal mistake of adopting the electronic media model. They have adopted short stories that are blocked on one page (USA Today) and allow the user to become minimally engaged. Why turn the page if you dont have to? Thus we have trained and raised people to have short attention spans and move quickly from subject to subject.

THIS training has resulted in a population that is moving quickly through a series of problems, but the breadth they have gained has come at the expense of depth of understanding.

We now drug our children and claim they have attention deficit disorders--when in truth--they may be responding brilliantly to a hypermediated society.

Discusson boards, like this one, offer more individual depth on subjects (breadth) in this hypermediation. Even if someone responds shallowly, they arte still engaging, and that builds the capacity to engage, which studies show builds tolerance.

The problem is not going to go away until each medium follows its own bias. (and maybe not even then) Print has a character--as does voice, and television and the internet. Perhaps we need to use television as an index that simply headlines the news and demand that print get back into exposition.

If print refuses to get back to what it does best, it will die and those who have the capacity will gather and give exposition on the internet.

This approach (of the user using each medium according to its natural bias) would slow the system down at one level and speed it up on another (duality of structure again) but eventually the system would balance.

The real balance shows up in increased capacity of the individuals and the entities to engage at their best.

Thoughts?

__________________
Those who define have the power. http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/...heney.ssl.html

First, "world power?"

A cleric that no one had heard of during Saddam stood toe to toe with us in Najaf and he is still wielding considerable power.

We cannot seem to find a six foot arab on dialysis who suffered some sort of battle wound.

"Unparalled wealth"

The vast majority of people at those televised townhall meetings and an overwhelming majority of our senior citizens never seem to exude a sense of this wealth. They generally convey concern of their own finances.

Israel has myriad parties and yet pound for pound one of the best militaries on the planet.

England has many parties though two stronger ones. They are certainly not in the thrid world.

Germany is an economic world power, quite an accomplishment since most of the country was levelled in the 1940's. They have multi-party elections.

There are successful models for this, including 19th century America when Abraham Lincoln joined a young upstart party. Wanna guess which one that was? His party was certainly not a radical one. Was it?

Giving people real choices will empower them to participate. If we don't want the majority of people actively involved in our political system, then we should say that. If as some famous person said the voice of the people is the voice of the God and in this country the people are sovereign the political system should reflect that.

What's wrong with looking into a multi-party system?