with Enhydra Lutris in the comment-section of my previous post.
He asks a lot of hard questions and I think I give good answers... it is a wee bit repetitive, but I think my last reply to him is worth reposting below... It's titled, "No democracy is pure"
dlw
Enhydra Lutris:So you hope to further dilute peoples' votes by having elected representatives empowered to simply appoint others, non-elected legislators, by fiat. What an absolutely anti-democratic idea.
dlw:A sustainable democracy is a mix of systems...
If we are to tie ourselves to the mast to do a better job in the protection of ethnic/economic/ideological minority rights then we cannot use a 100% majority-based election rule. The tyranny of the majority cannot be absolute.
And it's not absolutely anti-democratic, inasmuch as in a left(right) leaning state they will generally elect left(right) leaning third party state reps who will tend to elect the more left(right)ward major party into power. It's not unlike how the electoral college was originally intended by the writers of the Constitution to work. You can read Eugene McCarthy's "No fault Politics" for an exposition on the intent of the writers of the Constitution for the electoral college and how it got abandoned early on. I think this is a realistic view of democracy that is honest about the low-info nature of many voters and how that requires limits on democracy.
As to the increase, you increase everything 3 times, or you clump and gerrymander districts instead which is yet another anti-democratic idea.
I'm basically making it so that the state districts already "gerrymandered" up for the state senators will suffice for the state representatives. This will reduce the amount of redistricting required. And the impact of gerrymandering is always much less when you have multi-seated elections because of the ability of those who are not in the majority to elect representatives. As such, it's an inherent check against gerrymandering. This is especially true if the state reps would then get to redistrict things every 10 years due to how three-seated elections would handicap the two major parties and help to elect third party reps with relatively little to gain or lose from redistricting.
I read your idea, diluting everybody's vote, solely to force a false "bipartisan" "centrism" by fostering horsetrading through forcing every elected representative to drag along a pair of antagonists or an antagonist and one unelected wildcard.
All three state reps would be duly elected. The only difference is the rule used to elect them. There's nothing sacred about first-past-the-post or single-seated election rules. It is necessary to use some single-seated elections, but not for legislatures. And, yes, this will handicap the rivalry so that neither party can dominate a state's politics and that is a good thing, since power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Plus, in a healthy democracy, both sides are equally good and bad. It's only in an unhealthy democracy like ours that one side clearly has abused its power much more than the other. This would make our democracy more healthy, by lowering the stakes of winning elections. If you can't dominate a state's politics then you have less of an incentive to game the system...
And so the antagonist would not behave like most congress-persons or state reps behave right now. They'd have a different set of incentives and their behavior would either change or they'd get replaced with kinder gentler partisans.
As it is, my representative, Mary, will vote single-payer, good for her.
, but you would saddle her with one anti-government buffoon
tea-partiers would not be the predominant third party per se. Fundamentalists of all flavors tend to fracture into competing sects easily and we are starting to see that happen with the tea-partiers.
and one pro single payer special interest rep who will form a coalition with the libertoon in order to block single payer unless the latter clown gets his/her special pork-barrel project, which will be achieved by granting the libertoon a weakened single payer tht doesn't cover pharmaceuticals and a few other things so that it is win-win-win except for the public, who loses by the inclusion of the two positions created solely to promote this type of bullshit horsetrading in the name of some feeble ideology about the putative benefits or "centrism".
Local third party reps are going to be more likely to support single-payer, simply because they won't need the funds from the insurance companies to be competitive. This won't be the case for most of the reps from the two major parties. The best chance for such a reform stem not from any specific election rule but rather through acts of MLKjr or Gandhi-like civil disobedience that move the political center in favor of more fundamental reforms. I myself would like a single payer Health Care crisis insurance and private insurance or informal insurance-like social bonds for the remainder of health care costs that can't be paid out of pocket.
So fundamentally I'm advocating for election rule change that would bring about a dynamic centrism. The center would be closer to where it ought to be, not whatever tends to get brokered by our political leaders. And, it'd be easier to move the center because of the greater voice given to smaller activist groups via local third parties(who won't be needing pork to sustain themselves due to their relatively small size and specialized nature). But only those third parties that speak and act to move the center would be influential. Extremists who want to impose their will on everyone might get elected but they'd have zip influence on their distinct issues.
dlw