[nige1]

johnu, on 2020-October-17, 18:25, said:

This has nothing to do with being more principled. If you decide to play by the Marquess of Queensberry rules of politics, while the other side is bringing brass knuckles and billy clubs to the fight, you are going to get your brains bashed in.

Due to the very considerable advantages of incumbency, if you've gained your office by gerrymandering, you've got an unnatural advantage to winning the next election even if the maps are redrawn. It could take decades for a natural equilibrium to return things to "normal". In essence, you are rewarding the side that did the gerrymandering.

Echoes of some Bridgewinners' exoneration of Bridge-cheats
I agree with Pilowsky that we should keep to the moral high-ground, especially when the alternative is disenfranchising legitimate voters. Anyway, long-term benefits are likely to overwhelm short term losses.

[Cyberyeti]

akwoo, on 2020-December-02, 04:33, said:

I think my preference is for multi-member (preferably 7 or 9 - arguments can be made for different numbers for different constituencies based on population density) constituencies with single-transferable-vote, Australian Senate style. It effectively has proportional representation while still tying representatives to specific constituencies.

I quite like the European election model, multi member constituencies, with a list system to top up and bring the overall representation closer to the share of the vote.

The reason I like this is that it allows 2 tiers of MPs, those responsible for constituency stuff, and the lists allow for some technical experts to be got into parliament without them being put off by the hurly burly of constituency campaigning which dissuades some talented people from standing.

[cherdano]

Zelandakh, on 2020-November-26, 08:32, said:

I think the 5% barrier is a useful improvement over pure PR to avoid Italian-style conditions with too many tiny parties to make for stable national politics. At the moment, the German model is the best compromise between democracy and stability that I have found anywhere.

Maybe one should combine the 5% barrier with some partial form of instant run-off?

Everybody ranks the parties in order of preference. You follow the instant-run off algorithm (eliminate the smallest party, assign their voters to their next choice) until there are no parties with less than 5% of the vote left.

By the way, if you judge the German model by its outcomes, I'd say it is weighed very heavily towards stability... Since I started primary school, the German head of government changed twice. It went from center-right (CDU) to center-left (SPD) back to center-right. It was the center-left coalition who implemented welfare state reforms, which it viewed as disincentivizing work too much...

[Or I could tell the story of how the Ladenschlussgesetz (law governing shop opening hours) got changed. It would be a loooooong story, over 17 years, with many years of discussions leading up to it beforehand...which eventually led to the dramatic change of extending shopping hours by...you won't believe it...90 minutes every evening, plus a little bit more for Saturday... before the authority then got delegated to the states. It'd be an overstatement to say that this topic dominated political discussions from when I started primary school until way after I finished my PhD - but not much of an overstatement! A revolutionExtending shopping hours by more than 90 minutes is done properly, orderly, and deliberately in Germany!]

[Elianna]

Cyberyeti, on 2020-December-02, 04:02, said:

The argument is to prevent the Israel scenario where a bunch of religious nutters hold the balance of power with tiny shares of the vote

But Israel has that 5% rule!

[Cyberyeti]

Elianna, on 2020-December-10, 06:53, said:

But Israel has that 5% rule!

Does it ? if so wikipedia hasn't caught up "The electoral threshold for a party to be allocated a Knesset seat was only 1% until 1988; it was then raised to 1.5% and remained at that level until 2003, when it was again raised to 2%. On 11 March 2014, the Knesset approved a new law to raise the threshold to 3.25% (approximately 4 seats)."

This is much more of a historical issue than it is now.

[Elianna]

I'm sure you're right on what the actual percentage is. I guess my point was that there IS a minimum percent, and it's more than the percent to elect a single seat, and yet there's still the mess.

[Cyberyeti]

Elianna, on 2020-December-10, 07:48, said:

I'm sure you're right on what the actual percentage is. I guess my point was that there IS a minimum percent, and it's more than the percent to elect a single seat, and yet there's still the mess.

The main problems were in the past when IIRC two parties with one representative each held the balance of power. There's always going to be a minimum percentage, if you have 100 members, it could be as low as 1% but it's much better if it's more.

[akwoo]

Part of the problem in Israel is the unwritten norm that the Arab parties don't get to participate in government. When you need 61 out of 105-110 members of the Knesset rather than 61 out of 120 to form a government, it's much harder.

[johnu]

Breaking News: Texas has filed a lawsuit challenging the results of the New Zealand elections.

[johnu]

nige1, on 2020-December-02, 07:31, said:

Echoes of some Bridgewinners' exoneration of Bridge-cheats
I agree with Pilowsky that we should keep to the moral high-ground, especially when the alternative is disenfranchising legitimate voters. Anyway, long-term benefits are likely to overwhelm short term losses.

That's a ridiculous comparison. If there are cheaters in bridge, they are flat out breaking the rules.

In politics, e.g. the Republican haven't really broken any laws because the writers of the law didn't foresee that future generations of lawmakers would act unethically or so highly partisan. Just like the Manchurian President has already severely misused the pardon powers, and is set to do all sorts of unethical and disgusting pardons, including possibly pardoning himself. But, all the pardons except for the self-pardon are legal, and even the self-pardon will go to the Supreme Court and who knows what will happen there. The framers of the Constitution didn't think they needed to limit pardon powers because they never envisioned having the head of a criminal enterprise elected as president.

In a few cases, the courts have rolled back some of the gerrymandering, but in the case of courts appointed by the party that was doing the gerrymandering, they are either going to do nothing, or leave most of the gerrymandering in place.

Politics are a zero sum game. As far as tilting the scales in the opposite direction to right past wrongs, feel free to take the high road as you look up from the gutter after being run over by your opponents.