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Let's Redirect Anti-Establishment Populism to Election Reform!
Wonks are already describing the next couple of years as the year of the third party and predicting that folks will show how discontented they are with both major parties by voting for third party candidates in major elections.
Now, I'm a believer in Duverger's law that there is a nexus between the party system and election system and so I see a surge of votes for third party candidates as of little long-term consequence. It may get folks riled up and make our politics get even uglier, which is possible...
And so the imperative for me is to get people to see that strategic state-level election reform that introduce the use of more winner-doesn't-take-all elections into our political system will have a trickle-up effect into national politics, making both major parties give more voice to more people on more issues.... But I could use some help in this regard, and yet it seems like 3rd party candidates for major offices may end up garnering way too much of the public attention instead.
dlw
Now, I'm a believer in Duverger's law that there is a nexus between the party system and election system and so I see a surge of votes for third party candidates as of little long-term consequence. It may get folks riled up and make our politics get even uglier, which is possible...
And so the imperative for me is to get people to see that strategic state-level election reform that introduce the use of more winner-doesn't-take-all elections into our political system will have a trickle-up effect into national politics, making both major parties give more voice to more people on more issues.... But I could use some help in this regard, and yet it seems like 3rd party candidates for major offices may end up garnering way too much of the public attention instead.
dlw
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Can anyone build a house starting at the roofline and working down to the foundation?
Third parties will need to make gains in local and state legislative elections, get mayors and governors once they have established a presence, and then and only then think about fielding national candidates.
A chief executive (governor or president) with no legislative base is marooned on an island of his own making.
I asked the Green candidate for Mayor of St. Paul (in the last, not the current, election cycle) about this and she had absolutely no response. Nothing whatever. She had not considered it, apparently. If a third party is to be anything other than another "vanity press" campaign by Ralph Nader wannabees, that will have to change.
Here in MN we ought to know that very well. Because of the Independence Party, we've been stuck with Pawlenty for two terms now.
October 30, 2009 3:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
OG, we agree on the need for t(hird) parties to focus on local/state elections. My diff is that I believe that it cd be advantageous to have t-parties that specialize in such and forgo trying to rival the two major parties.
I believe that the two major parties will get reincarnated as t-party activism and election reform act together to move the political center.
But, as it is, third parties waste too much time and money on major campaigns or attempts to be a contenduh... They then let their failures at such indict them as failures, when they can do so much in terms of issue advocacy and making our democracy as a whole work for more people on more issues...
dlw
October 31, 2009 5:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good blog. This is an important conversation given the awesomely ridiculous panaloply of "leaders" we have in Congress.
I think that a movement where real, ordinary people started participating in primary election in at least the same percentage as presidential generals would lead to the representation we seek.
When the only ones who vote before November are those most interested in maintaining the status quo, that is exactly what we get. Rather than fostering a third party movement, I would see liberals and conservatives alike look for more authentically progressive candidates in both parties to support in the primary.
There are always one or two who could benefit from even a modest increase in turnout. We must become the change we seek, which includes dragging every apathetic voter in your personal space to the polls well in advance of the general.
October 30, 2009 6:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hi Jason, thanks.
I am very much in favor of both renewal in the two major parties and a t(hird)-party movement of the sort of parties that specialize in contesting more local elections, voting strategically together in less local elections and ongoing civil issue advocacy with others.
This is the sort of political location that I find myself preferring at this point in my life, but I am not against those that want to work within the two major parties.
I don't worry so much about primary turnout. If we had open primaries on weekends that determined the final three or two candidates and the primaries were not long before the general elections, it wd increase turnout. But more fundamentally, we need to mix together winner-take-all and winner-doesn't-take all elections and to enable greater party discipline and curtail the extent of political entrepreneurship currently in our system. Why? The lack of effective legal (non-$peech) means of party discipline prevents the sort of collective action to get significant reforms made more often.
dlw
October 31, 2009 5:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Duverger's Law, Common Sense, and past practice clearly show the folly of third party politics within our present winner-take-all elections. After all, did anyone seriously think Nader would win the presidency in 2000? Not even Nader could think this to be a plausible outcome of his candidacy.
Nader's 2000 campaign shows the potential (I'd say inevitable) downside to any such third party candidacy. It can quite easily be argued that without Nader's involvement, Gore would have won and the world would have been spared the eight years of the Bush/Cheney criminal enterprise. No small consequence, that.
I was interested to read your other blog post you linked to here. It's obvious you've committed a great deal of work to the topic, and you have arrived at some interesting conclusions. My first impression, however, is to see it all as a Rube Goldberg invention that hopefully arrives at some degree of proportional representation.
Ultimately, is it not your argument that we should adopt a system that allows for proportional representation? I think this would improve upon the two-party (actually, one corporate-owned party) winner-take-all plurality system we have at present.
If it is your objective, however, to enhance democracy I suggest that no system can work for so long as bribery and extortion are allowed to drive the process in anything like the degree we see here in our present system. The Health Care Reform effort has highlighted for all just how pervasive is the influence of corporate cash on our "democratic voice."
No electoral system can effectively support democracy when it relies so heavily upon "campaign contributions" and other more direct bribes to purchase the votes of our so-called representatives. And it is this reason why I think we are better served to identify and promote effective campaign finance reform long before we attempt to reorder the system. After all, any attempt to change the system can only be expected to result in a further entrenchment of the corrupt "corporate demcocracy" we hope to avoid. After all, they are the ones who can afford to purchase the votes to make it all happen in accord with their interests.
October 30, 2009 8:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes indeed - what we really need is one thing and one thing only: Public campaign financing. Without it, nothing much will ever be accomplished, with it, and a flat ban on private contributions of any sort, voters have a chance.
Unfortunately, it might well require a constitutional amendment.
October 30, 2009 8:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
anything req a constit amendment that goes against the intere$t$ of both major parties is out of the feasible.
Likewise, exclusive public campaign financing is both very costly and impossible to enforce.
So perhaps we need to settle for a system more like what acutally existed in the past? Check out Eugene McCarthy's "No Fault Politics" for his views on how to reform the sytsem.
dlw
October 31, 2009 6:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
well, My vision is something that hasn't been tried out and I don't see the trajectory where it wd result in PR being predominant.
It's darn hard to go from a two-party dominated system to a system where there is more or less an even playingfield among many parites. I believe that any system with winner-take-all elections, even if voters get to rank their choices, will tend to favor two, or one, parties, simply because there are economies of scale in the development of institutions/party-machines that mobilize voters for elections.
So I have chosen to focus not on a specific election rule or the superiority of winner-doesn't-take-all elections over winner-take-all elections, but rather on the need to use both types of elections. (for more on this, read my other two editorials...) I believe the use of both will suffice to level the playing field between the two major parties at the state level and enable local t-parties to win some power and a lot more influence.
As far as $peech is concerned, I think our system prior to 1975 "worked", at least better than what we have riht now and that for us to have transparency, progressive taxes on all forms of $peech and more competitive elections shd suffice to turn the volume down on $peech.
But, and this I really believe, all modern democracies are in fact unstable mixes of kleptocracy/aristocracy and democracy and to bolster the import of democracy requires that one accomodate the former, via the constitutionally protected freedom of $peech. The influence of $peech doesn't corrupt the system, it's simply part of the system, a part that needs to be checked, but that serves its purpose as well...
dlw
October 31, 2009 6:07 PM | Reply | Permalink