Internet-Based Political Party Opens Doors

AlamedaStone writes "New York Times Op-Ed Columnist Thomas L. Friedman writes (edited for brevity): 'If [...] idiocy by elected officials [...] leaves you wishing that we had more options today [...] not only are you not alone, but help may be on the way. Thanks to a quiet political start-up that is now ready to show its hand, a viable, centrist, third presidential ticket, elected by an Internet convention, is going to emerge in 2012.' Currently it looks like more liberal-inclined individuals are registering, but it would make for a healthier system if more viewpoints were represented."

Comments

Yawn

[Opportunist]

Wake me when the US voting system actually gives a third party a chance to play any role.

Re:Yawn

[Compaqt]

Wake me up when /. posts a non-NYT ad prompting me to log in.

And when, if talking about a web-based political party, actually gives the hyperlink for it.

Re:Yawn

[tagno25]

As the group explains on its Web site, www.americanselect.org: “Americans Elect is the first-ever open nominating process. We’re using the Internet to give every single voter — Democrat, Republican or independent — the power to nominate a presidential ticket in 2012. The people will choose the issues. The people will choose the candidates. And in a secure, online convention next June, the people will make history by putting their choice on the ballot in every state.”

Re:Yawn

[desertrat_it]

that is a very US-centric view of politics. The US is not the world.

Most other countries have a functioning system of multiple parties that represent multiple viewpoints. The lack of options in the US is due entirely to the dysfunctional system in the US that locks any other choices out of the system by prohibitive costs.

To put it another way: the Dems are Miller, the Repubs are Bud.

Re:Yawn

[Nidi62]

There is. I vote third party whenever I see it and many times, they get a few percentage points of the vote. Throwing my vote away? That's not the way I see it because voting Democrat or Republican is a vote for big money.

Also, I can't tell you how many "Libertarians" I know who end up voting Republican because they're afraid the Democrats would win - which is retarded. For one, here in Georgia at least, a Democrat has very little chance in most districts.

I voted third party for the first time last gubernatorial election, because all Deal and the democratic candidate did was run attack ads against each other. I didn't know any of the candidates platforms, but at least the libertarian candidate didn't spend all his money attacking the others. And I was glad to see my county (Cobb), had some of the highest number of votes for the libertarian candidate than any other county in Georgia.

Re:Yawn

[unitron]

To put it another way: the Dems are Miller, the Repubs are Bud.

As someone smarter than I am put it here on Slashdot a few years ago, "The Republicans are the party of evil and the Democrats are the party of stupid".

My corollary to that is that bi-partisan is when they get together to do something that's both.

Re:Yawn

[JAlexoi]

"Republican party is the party of bad ideas and the democrat party is the part of no ideas" - Lewis Black

Re:Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

every single voter with easy access to an internet connection, that is.

Re:Yawn

[AlamedaStone]

Wake me up when /. posts a non-NYT ad prompting me to log in.

I don't know if it's a function of my NoScript or ABP, but I never get prompted for a login to NYT as long as I go in the "front door", so to speak.

http://www.nytimes.com/
"A Third Way" is the title, and it's on the right of the page.

Re:Yawn

[Penguinisto]

All that the internet has helped raise more money for the same old candidates pushing the same old agenda.

Actually, to be fair, w/o the Internet, Obama would not be president right now.

No, not because McCain would've won, but because w/o the Internet and its organizing power, Hillary Clinton would have likely won the convention, and Obama would have been a footnote. Sure, he had a strong press backing, but so did many other candidates in the field.

Now honestly? Not a democrat here, and I never supported Obama with a dollar or a vote. OTOH, I am rather impressed how a short-tenure (one or two term?) senator managed, in less than a year, to come out of nowhere and break the back of the strongest political machine in the US. IMHO, the Internet played a large part in that.

Re:Yawn

[demonlapin]

The US system relentlessly drags both parties to the center of the electorate. The parliamentary systems of much of the world allow disproportionate influence by the smaller parties that make up the ruling coalition. There are advantages and disadvantages to each. Don't forget that the people that wrote the Constitution knew exactly how Westminster worked and consciously rejected that model.

Re:Yawn

[michelcolman]

I disagree. Third parties have played a huge role in several elections in the past. By stealing votes from the democrats and thereby handing the victory to the republicans. Some might even say it was intentional.

Re:Yawn

[michelcolman]

And what exactly dd those few percentage points achieve in the American winner takes all system? All you managed to do, was take away votes for the major party that you would otherwise have voted for if only those two existed. So basically, you might as well have voted for the other major party that you want least.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for third parties, more choice, better ideas, etc... But in a system where the local winners are the only ones that count to the grand total, you are better off voting for the least of two evils rather than helping the other by voting for the third.

Re:Yawn

[michelcolman]

It's not the effort that's disgusting, it's the perverse result that will inevitably happen. People voting for a liberal thinking internet party are more likely to be democrats, ergo the republicans will win the election. Sad but true.

Re:Yawn

[Nursie]

Surely that depends on your judgement as to momentum?

What if enough vote for a third party that other folks take notice, and then a few more, a few more, and eventually in a two or three more election cycles it's possible that a third party could mount a decent challenge?

And the whole "take away votes" thing is a fallacy that assumes you are just deviating from the 'proper' behaviour in voting third party. Me, I have objections to that in electoral situations where I can't honestly give my mandate to either of the big two.

Re:Yawn

[FatdogHaiku]

I just use the provided summary link, but my user agent is set to Googlebot... also running NoScript and ABP.

Re:Yawn

[Hope Thelps]

Don't forget that the people that wrote the Constitution knew exactly how Westminster worked and consciously rejected that model.

Well, in this respect they didn't do a very good job then. Two main political parties alternating in power is pretty much how Westminster operates (originally Tories and Whigs, later Conservatives and Liberals - effectively the successor parties to the Tories and Whigs, not an example of one of them being pushed out - now Conservatives and Labour - the single instance of a new party managing to get into power and only by Labour effectively replacing the Liberals as a party of government, not joining them). If they meant to reject that then it looks as though they failed.

Re:Yawn

[Nursie]

More likely to "be" democrats?
Are you born with an affiliation stamped on your ass?

Besides which, allowing the mildly greater of two evils in while you try and actually change something, that seems like a good idea to me.

Re:Yawn

[sheetsda]

Run-off voting also deserves a mention in this context and combats the same problem described in the parent. It provides a ranking system for candidates rather than a simple binary approve/disapprove, at a cost of extra complexity that would probably confound the stupid 40% mentioned in the parent.

Re:Yawn

[mdf356]

And vice-versa; Clinton won in 1992 partly due to the (R) vote being split between Bush and Perot. Or, more accurately, more people who would have voted for Bush (or not voted) than people who would have voted for Clinton (or not voted) voted for Perot. Maybe. You see how complicated this is? Without Perot in the 1992 election it's impossible to say what would have happened -- would the Perot voters have stayed home, or voted for Clinton, or Bush? Even a survey at the polling locations couldn't tell for sure.

There have been other elections with "independents" where the vote was split in odd ways, like the 2006 gubernatorial election in Texas, where Rick Perry (the incumbent, on the (R) ticket) was up against Carole Keeton Strayhorn, a (R) who skipped the primaries since she couldn't win them, the (D) candidate Chris Bell, a libertarian candidate, the truly independent and famous (in Texas) Kinky Friedman, and a write-in campaign for someone forgettable. The vote broke down as:

39% Perry (R)
29.8% Bell (D)
18% Strayhon
12.6% Friedman
0.6% Libertarian

Now, whose votes did Kinky Friedman "steal"? And whose did Strayhorn? And what would have happened with an IRV system? And how many elections in the U.S. would be different (in ways good and bad) with an IRV election?

Re:Yawn

[michelcolman]

What if enough vote for a third party that other folks take notice, and then a few more, a few more, and eventually in a two or three more election cycles it's possible that a third party could mount a decent challenge?

The republicans would like nothing better than the situation where all former democratic votes would be split up fifty-fifty between democrats the third party. Of course they might lose a few too, but as long as they lose less than the democrats, they're basically sure of winning.

And the whole "take away votes" thing is a fallacy that assumes you are just deviating from the 'proper' behaviour in voting third party.

This is not about being "proper", it's about the objective result of your action. Basically you're saying "I voted for the right party, along with many thousands of others, so who cares if the worst one won as a direct result, I did the right thing". You are achieving the opposite of what you want, but at least you feel good about it. Not that any republicans will care about your "signal", they will just happily take power and do as they please.

Re:Yawn

[michelcolman]

More likely to "be" democrats?

More likely to have voted democrat if the big two had been the only options.

Besides which, allowing the mildly greater of two evils in while you try and actually change something, that seems like a good idea to me.

Good luck with that. By all means get the movement going, but don't actually participate in the elections just yet. Maybe if the movement gathered enough steam, you could push for a more honest election system. Until then, you're basically guaranteeing republican rule for decades to come if you do participate.

Re:Yawn

[kent_eh]

Here's the cahched version for those who can't get in for some reason.

Re:Yawn

[ajlisows]

I may not be remembering things correctly, but it really seems to me that candidates have really ramped up on the attack ads. I really don't remember the last time I saw a "My name is John Smith and I intend to do x, y, z." I think I would vote for any candidate that ran an ad actually stating his/her views instead of just blasting the opposing person. It makes me feel like even the politicians themselves are saying "I am incompetent but the other guy, he is MORE incompetent.

Re:Yawn

[Nursie]

You still don't get what I'm driving at - that it's increasingly irrelevant which of the two main parties get in.

In this situation whichever of the two gain power it's the opposite of what I want.

Re:Yawn

[Nursie]

So given the way you're arguing, I'm guessing that you're on of the ones that was tattooed with the democrat tat at birth?

Either way - so what, both parties screw the voter pretty evenly these days.

Re:Yawn

[Theolojin]

Wake me when the US voting system actually gives a third party a chance to play any role.

The problem is not the US voting system, but the US voter. I am told frequently that a vote for [insert-third-party-candidate] is really a vote for [first-or-second-party-candidate]. Many US voters vote against a candidate (by voting the other party most likely to defeat said candidate) rather than for a candidate. I decided two presidential elections ago that I would vote *for* the candidate of my choice, rather than against the candidate I liked least. If more voters would follow, we'd see the rise of third parties.

Re:Yawn

[michelcolman]

That's very nice, but you'll need a huge number of votes to make any difference whatsoever. Even 30% would not be nearly enough. It's just the way your electoral system works. If you think you can realistically approach 40% or so, by all means go for it. Otherwise, maybe think twice.

Re:Yawn

[shoehornjob]

Wake me when the US voting system actually gives a third party a chance to play any role.

The tea party (teabaggers) have fractured the Republican party to the extent that John Boehner (speaker of the house) can't get republican congressmen to vote the party line. I expect they will field a candidate for president and may well get some air time when debating other candidates.

Re:Yawn

[michelcolman]

I live in a country where the parliament consists of 12 different parties. I typically vote for more conservative, right wing parties, but even those would probably be considered libertarian or even socialist in the US.

Re:Yawn

[MightyYar]

Wake me when the US voting system actually gives a third party a chance to play any role.

There are usually several 3rd parties on our ballots... they just don't get any votes. For a while there was "United We Stand" or whatever that Ross Perot party was called. The Greens have been on for several elections. And the Libertarians usually seem to make it on.

There is a strong incumbency advantage in the US, but the sad fact is that something like 2/3 of voters feel some strong attachment to either the Repubs or the Dems. Unless we abandon our plurality system, it will be hard to convince people to dilute their vote by casting it for a 3rd party. In some governments, the "big tent" is at the legislative level. In the US it is at the party level. I see little difference, though the US seems to have a bit more stability in government than the average parliamentary system.

Re:Yawn

[Nursie]

It's just the way your electoral system works.

It's not my country. I'm British, living in Australia.
I've been very careful not to mention republicans or democrats in reference to my own voting habits, though I certainly let you think whatever you wanted....

Either way, I disagree. It's not a message that needs to be sent to a party by having a larger third party vote, it's a message that needs to be sent to all the trapped voters, showing them that there is another possibility.

The US system is held to ransom as much by psychology as the system itself.

Re:Yawn

[tnk1]

Most people wouldn't be able to understand a program even if the candidates ran on it. At this point in time, the voters only understand whether the politicians are trying to give them money or they are trying to kill babies/be socialist/pollute/raise taxes. Don't pretend for a second that your average voter understand the scientific and/or philosophical basis for things like global warming or abortion or government finance and monetary policy.

The people want this:
a) to do whatever they want to do
b) to not have to pay for anything
c) to have the government give them free shit
d) to make sure that other people can't do stuff to them and their kids

oh and...

e) to make sure the government promotes their own beliefs as mainstream

In that sort of environment, its no surprise that there are attack ads.

Its one reason that I would vote for anyone with a program that responsibly puts the government on a course to be much, much smaller. And I am not talking about Republican "only cut the socialist stuff" reductions. I mean all of it and I mean responsibly, which is to say slowly and with consideration for making sure we maintain our global position as well as the promises that were made to voters before (insofar as they are possible).

But good luck with that program. It would take a lot more than four years to have that show any progress, and in the meantime some bread and circuses fool would come in and call that president a "do nothing".

As much as I fear what a dictatorship would be like, I wish there was a way we could ensure that long term programs could be completed without ADHD election politics.

Re:Yawn

[MightyYar]

I wouldn't go so far as demonlapin and say that they "rejected" it... they basically stuck to two houses of legislature. But they definitely tweaked it. Remember that they had a trial run with the Articles of Confederation.

But yeah, they definitely were trying to improve upon the parliamentary system.

Re:Yawn

[sco08y]

The major parties and the US culture in general are pretty good at preventing outright dictatorship.

This new party is more likely to be a step towards fascism; it has several hallmarks of it: youth-oriented, "third-way", etc.

And the main problem is not lack of third parties. It's the incumbents creating campaign finance reform laws that are really incumbent protection laws.

Maybe you saw Colbert's recent stunt where he tried to start his own PAC? These guys are going to want to start their own PAC, and they won't have Viacom's army of lawyers to help them. The GOP and Dems, on the other hand, have extensive fundraising networks set up to help them navigate campaign finance laws.

Re:Yawn

[Killall -9 Bash]

The republicans would like nothing better than the situation where all former democratic votes would be split up fifty-fifty between democrats the third party. Of course they might lose a few too, but as long as they lose less than the democrats, they're basically sure of winning.

...And then the republican party fractures. Do you think the Jesus Camp republicans like the Wall Street republicans? Or that the pseudo-libertarian republicans like the other two?

The only thing keeping the republican party together is the democratic party.

Re:Yawn

[Appolonius of Perge]

This absolutely is a problem with the US voting system. In first-past-the-post voting like we have, you have to make all these horrible strategic voting choices, and third parties can damage the people they would otherwise partially support.

There are lots of other voting systems that would reduce this problem. My favorite is approval voting for its simplicity and good qualities, but lots of other methods would be leagues ahead of what we use today, from Instant Runoff, to the suite of Condorcet methods to range voting.

There was a bill in NH in January to introduce approval voting (the motivation was probably to strengthen tea party candidates without hurting republicans), but it was voted "inexpedient to legislate," which a brief investigation tells me means "not going to be brought to the floor."

Re:Yawn

[luke923]

I may not be remembering things correctly, but it really seems to me that candidates have really ramped up on the attack ads.

I don't think that attack ads are anything new. Hell, what politicians used to say about each other back in 1800 make the political ads of today look tame (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_zTN4BXvYI). It may be more prevalent now, but I highly doubt that it's more visceral or slanderous.

Re:Yawn

[tnk1]

I think the best way to create third parties and give them momentum is *not* to challenge in national elections. It is to do the work and take all of the local constituencies that they can. Third parties can have an effect in smaller districts and municipalities. Maybe not the size of New York City, but in towns and counties and state legislative races, they could.

You concentrate on your party getting as many local constituencies as possible, actually challenge the big two parties locally, and then you can leave the national races open to the "least of two possible evils". The idea is to build name recognition and local comfort levels. Also, your party can start making political capital by deal making at local levels as well. You also work hard to make sure that while your party is not national in elections, it is well organized and has a consistent message that can be taken up to the state and national level when the time comes.

The idea is to make the party national one town or city at a time. It could take a very long time, but I think barring a split in a major party or some huge backers, an immediate national third party will simply be a distraction at best.

Re:Yawn

[tycoex]

Mod this gentleman up. The problem IS the US voting system. We need some other system such as Instant Runoff as Perge stated in order to make more than two parties viable.

Re:Yawn

[MakinBacon]

I don't have any sorts of plugins or extensions on Firefox right now, and I have also never been prompted to log in to view an NYT article linked by /.

Re:Yawn

[kvezach]

Instant runoff voting is so strange that moving a candidate higher on your ranked ballot can actually make him lose, whereas if you had kept him lower when you voted, he would have won. It could also neglect to choose the candidate that would win a hypothetical top-two runoff against every other candidate. Give me actual runoffs any day, or for ranked ballots, the method Wikimedia itself uses.

Re:Yawn

[speederaser]

Every single voter with easy access to an internet connection, that is.

Plus every botnet that 'decides' to participate. Since they get more than one vote they might just lend a helping hand to some of those folks without access to the internet. It would be great if they helped my grandparents vote. They've been dead a long time so that would really pick up their spirits.

Re:Yawn

[sjames]

It won't ever happen if everyone sleeps through the election!

But if you were planning to sleep through the election, consider sleepwalking to the polling place and voting for any 3rd party at all. It's not a wasted vote because you were going to sleep through it anyway.

Or, if you prefer, it's not a wasted vote because it hardly changes things if an R or a D gets elected anyway. Your vote was wasted before the primaries even started.

Re:Yawn

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

"If you want the government to intervene domestically you're a liberal, if you want the government to intervene abroad you're a conservative, if you want the government to intervene both domestically and abroad you're a moderate, and if you don't want the government to intervene either domestically or abroad you're an extremist." - Joe Sobran

Re:Yawn

[CrimsonAvenger]

but even those would probably be considered libertarian or even socialist in the US.

Oddly, libertarians and socialists are considered to be opposite ends of the political spectrum, not slightly-left-of-far-right.

Re:Yawn

[dpilot]

I disagree. Neither party is very palatable, but I'll have to fall back on what someone else said... The Republicans are Evil and the Democrats are Stupid - as a first approximation. As the next layer down, the Republicans are Stupid, because they believe in the special interests they're selling their votes to, in spite of the terrible short-sightedness - and the Democrats are Evil because they're selling their votes to special interests, too.

Re:Yawn

[Opportunist]

I could also go and jack off. Essentially, it's the same but at least I got something to show after I've done it.

Re:Yawn

[Dhalka226]

The only realistic process I can see to start reforming the US political system--and it may take years or decades even if everything is going to plan--is something like the following:

1. Eliminate closed primaries. Closed primaries are how the fringes continues to exert so much political power and how the centrists get squeezed out. It's how the Tea Party is swinging the Republicans even more conservative than its own leadership is comfortable with. It's how people like Joe Lieberman loses his primary yet still wins the election. They simply do not represent the will of the people. The represent the "base," code for the extremes, and even though the centrist voters have their say in the general election they are left with extreme right or extreme left*. It's a bad choice for them because they are, by their very nature, not on the political extremes. It's also a major factor into disenfranchising so many centrist voters, making them feel like they're voting for the lesser of two evils. It's because they are. To them, both are evil.

You may even get some party support on this one. I think both sides recognize that the fringes paint them into corners and make their entire party less palatable to centrist voters. It reminds me of a political issue during the last election for a senate seat (sorry, can't remember which state). All the pollsters and analysts had the republican candidate winning the election -- right up until that candidate lost the primary to a Tea Pary'er, at which point they immediately changed their prediction to the democrat -- who ultimately won.

1b. Eliminate primaries. Potentially unnecessary, but an intermediate step might be to then remove primaries entirely. They still favor the die-hard party people, and even without strictly party primaries I don't think them exercising undue influence helps the reform process.

2. Eliminate political parties. So long as the parties have the candidates by the balls, and can threaten to easily defeat them in the primary next cycle if they don't follow along, this is impossible -- thus it is step #2. With some government houses filled with more centrists, less beholden to a political party and hopefully more interested in actually solving America's problems, there is at least a chance. It may be years or decades from step 1 to step 2 in order to get enough of the "old guard" out and the new in, and even then it's a long-shot. It might require a constitutional amendment on the federal level and possibly the state levels as well. There would clearly be somebody filing suit claiming it is infringing his right to free association -- and it very well might. But political parties are polarizing by their nature. Politicians should compete on their ideas, not the parenthetical letter by their name, and parties actively work against that goal. We even have concepts throughout our history like RINO--Republican In Name Only--the rallying cry of the Tea Party to remove from office Republicans they didn't feel were conservative enough.

3. Change the voting system. As you state, one problem with voting for a "third party" right now is that if they don't win--and that's a really good possibility--you may very well help the person you want to win the least. There are problems with all voting systems, but some form of preferential voting is probably a required third step to reforming the political process. It will definitely take a constitutional amendment, so it is a no-go as long as political parties or strong remnants of political parties remain in power. Still, I don't see how "give the people the person they want or the person they would want if that person doesn't win" is a negative compared to "fall in line! Your guy lost, shut the hell up until next election!" These people may be the representative of all the people of their state or district, but they clearly and obviously do not represent them.

And of course we need to get the voters more tuned in and m

Re:Yawn

[manwargi]

The republicans would like nothing better than the situation where all former democratic votes would be split up fifty-fifty between democrats the third party. Of course they might lose a few too, but as long as they lose less than the democrats, they're basically sure of winning.

Or so they did until the Tea Party thing started catching. Now in a smashing irony it is Republicans interested in Approval Voting.

Re:Yawn

[sootman]

Funny, I read that domain as "American select" which also makes sense. :-)

Re:Yawn

[bogjobber]

While a third party candidate is most likely never going to win a US presidential election, that doesn't necessarily mean that they don't play an important role. Once a third party reaches a certain level of public support, their ideas (and even their politicians) are co-opted by the mainstream parties.

Most famously the 1992 presidential campaign by Ross Perot caused major changes in both the Republican and Democratic platforms for the rest of the 90's. Not many mainstream Republicans were making a big deal about budget deficits before then, now it's the defining economic issue for the party (although most Republicans conveniently ignored that for the 8 years of GW Bush).

The Green party has had huge influence on the policies of the Democratic party, especially regarding global warming, climate change, and environmental issues. The 2000 election was a major wake up call for them that they couldn't simply ignore the progressive/environmentalist wing of their party. Also in 1992, Vermont elected a Socialist Senator in Bernie Sanders and he has a considerable deal of power. So there is third party representation in Congress (although he's technically independent and caucuses with the Democrats).

So is a third party going to win the Presidency? Almost definitely not. But third parties and independents do play an important role in US politics.

Re:Yawn

[AmiMoJo]

I just hope it is anonymous. The biggest problem with current political systems is that it becomes a personality contest rather than an ideological or policy one. By making the discussion anonymous each argument can only be judged on its merits and not on who is proposing it.

Re:Yawn

[Phoghat]

I don't know what you're smoking, but I think the statistics put you to shame

Re:Yawn

[silentcoder]

Only in America. Libertarianism was an invention of socialists (as an alternative to state-socialism) and in most of the world outside the USA the word libertarian is automatically associated with non-state-based socialism as well.
To put it differently - in Europe "libertarian socialist" would be a tautology. Libertarian Capitalism was a much more recent philosophical movement and is almost entirely limited to the United States.
Even there Libertarian Socialism still thrives (though it needs to be spelled out), for example one of the most prominent Libertarian Socialists of our time is an American you may have heard of. Fellow by the name of Noam Chomsky ?

Re:Yawn

[coinreturn]

Baloney. I have always voted Democrat, but I voted for Perot.

Re:Yawn

[coinreturn]

The tea party (teabaggers) have fractured the Republican party to the extent that John Boehner (speaker of the house) can't get republican congressmen to vote the party line. I expect they will field a candidate for president and may well get some air time when debating other candidates.

I sure hope you're right. Obama will get a second term if the Republicans split.

Re:Yawn

[tbannist]

As a wise man once said "the Democrats are selling out to a slightly less scary group of special interests", of course he also said "in troubled times, the Democrats have moved to the right and the Republicans have moved to the crazy house".

Re:Yawn

[tehcyder]

I just hope it is anonymous. The biggest problem with current political systems is that it becomes a personality contest rather than an ideological or policy one. By making the discussion anonymous each argument can only be judged on its merits and not on who is proposing it.

In that case the candidate would have to be anonymous as well, and I don't think that's going to happen.

Re:Yawn

[tbannist]

Any ranked or run-off voting system should meet the Condorcet Criterion to avoid the wonky results that can occur under IRV.

Re:Yawn

[tehcyder]

The US system relentlessly drags both parties to the center of the electorate. The parliamentary systems of much of the world allow disproportionate influence by the smaller parties that make up the ruling coalition. There are advantages and disadvantages to each. Don't forget that the people that wrote the Constitution knew exactly how Westminster worked and consciously rejected that model.

As the UK still operates a first past the post electoral system, the influence of smaller parties in Parliament is minimal, mainly because there are so few of them. Coalitions are very rare here, the current one is the first since WW2.
It's European countries that have proportional representation, resulting in more parties winning seats, and coalitions being an inevitable result of this.

Re:Yawn

[tehcyder]

. The internet was supposed to transform politics and so far it hasn't really happened

The internet was supposed to transform everything and so far it hasn't really happened, although it's certainly made shopping easier.

Re:Yawn

[tehcyder]

Isxn't "non-state-based socialism" just another way of saying anarchism? Again, outside the US anarchists are almost exclusively left wing.

Re:Yawn

[demonlapin]

Yeah, I should have been clearer about that. Thanks for straightening it out.

Re:Yawn

[JimFive]

Of course they might lose a few too, but as long as they lose less than the democrats, they're basically sure of winning.

That's not quite accurate. The constitution requires that a candidate get a majority (not plurality) in the Electoral College. The electors are not legally bound to vote for any specific candidate. If the Electoral College cannot get to a majority then the House of Representatives chooses the president using a 1 vote per state model, which, I believe, also requires a majority vote.

Thus, If a 3rd party can take one state in a close election they can force a crisis, especially if they can get control of a congressional delegation at the same time.
--
JimFive

Re:Yawn

[michelcolman]

Yes, but the hard part is taking a state. That requires a majority/plurality/whatever in that state. That's precisely what I think a third party cannot achieve.

Re:Yawn

[bill_mcgonigle]

All that the internet has helped raise more money for the same old candidates pushing the same old agenda.

Many people have been woken up to the ideas of Liberty though Ron Paul's campaigns. He's run before, but it didn't have much effect because of the media preferences. In 2007, there was the Internet, and his supporters spread his message using the Internet. I can't say he used the Internet, because he really didn't, it was organic groundswell by ordinary folks.

Re:Yawn

[JimFive]

I disagree that attacking primary system is the way to accomplish these changes. I do think that the states need to stop participating in the primary process since primaries are, technically at least, a private act of a private club.

I think that "Eliminate political parties" is actually the key step here. But to do that, you have to get rid of corporate personhood. As long as organizations can have the right to speech (i.e. spend money on politics) then there will be de facto political parties.

3. Change the voting system. [...] It will definitely take a constitutional amendment,

No it doesn't. Voting (for president) is actually a State run process. Any state can choose their electors pretty much however they want as long as it meets equal protection requirements. So a state could implement e.g. Range Voting on its own.
--
JimFive

Re:Yawn

[JimFive]

In 1968 the electoral vote split was: Republicans: 301, Democrats: 191, Independent: 46.

That's the first one I found, but I'm sure there are others. Yes, it is a high hurdle for a 3rd party candidate and I would prefer a system like Range Voting to alleviate that. But, it isn't impossible.
--
JimFive

Re:Yawn

[mattack2]

Teddy Roosevelt (along with others) created a third party, and got more votes in the 1912 election than the Republican candidate (Taft).

Perot got a lot of votes in 1992 (but no electoral votes). From Wikipedia:

In the 1992 election, he received 18.9% of the popular vote, approximately 19,741,065 votes (but no electoral college votes), making him the most successful third-party presidential candidate in terms of the popular vote since Theodore Roosevelt in the 1912 election. Unlike Perot, however, some other third party candidates since Roosevelt have won electoral college votes. (Strom Thurmond had 39 in 1948, George Wallace had 46 in 1968 and John Hospers won one in 1972). Compared with Thurmond and Wallace, who polled very strongly in a small number of states, Perot's vote was more evenly spread across the country. Perot managed to finish second in two states: In Maine, Perot received 30.44% of the vote to Bush's 30.39% (Clinton won Maine with 38.77%); in Utah, Perot received 27.34% of the vote to Clinton's 24.65% (Bush won Utah with 43.36%). Although Perot won no state, he received the most votes in some counties, including Trinity County, California.

Re:Yawn

[Monsuco]

Wake me when the US voting system actually gives a third party a chance to play any role.

Wake me up when 3rd parties aren't run by crazy people more concerned with ideology than governing. The wonderful thing about our plurality based system is that it pretty much guarantees there will be two parties that have to spend most of their efforts appealing to moderate voters while radicals are shut out. The electoral college reinforces this since the most moderate voters in the most moderate states can make or break an election. I'd much rather have two centrist parties fight for a majority than see a moderate party end up with a plurality and having to enter into a coalition government with a communist or neofascist party. Multiparty systems can leave radical parties that have relatively few seats with far more power than is healthy simply because they have enough to sway the balance of power.

America's governing system was established with a bias towards moderation and divided in a way that promotes gridlock. A party that has the House may not have the Senate or Presidency. A party that has all three might be obstructed if they don't have 60/100 votes in the Senate by a minority party's filibuster. The Supreme Court can reign in Congressional overstep and is largely immune to sudden shifts in public opinion. Even if a party has all of the federal government under its thumb it still is limited by Constitutional protections and in addition to the horizontal division of power our government has vertical divisions of power (that is the 10th Amendment and other provisions divide power between the federal and state governments). Most states have similar checks and balances and have to have cooperation with local and regional governments on some matters.

This gridlock gets criticized because it makes it hard to get something done by the mere whims of a majority but that is why America has done so well. Radical changes are impossible and our government is more evolutionary than revolutionary. In parliamentary systems a Prime Minister will seldom have any trouble getting whatever he wants through parliament since he has a majority or at least a majority coalition and party discipline is strict because breaking with your party can lead to a disillusion of parliament. In America, members of congress will periodically break with their party and having a majority may procedurally ensure a party can block whatever it doesn't want (for example, the House Rules Committee is always dominated by the majority and can put procedural limits on an unwanted bill to make it impossible to pass), but a majority cannot always get everything it wants.

In my view the lack of 3rd parties is probably a plus since it promotes stability. If we could fix anything about our electoral system, I'd want US House and State Legislative seats to be drawn by independent bodies with strict rules and for term limits to be applied to members of Congress. Gerrymandering means most members of congress are in seats virtually guaranteed to be "safe" and can only be defeated by being primaried by a member of their own party who claims they aren't representing the party accurately enough. It also makes many members of Congress and state legislatures virtually immune to public scrutiny since most of them simply cannot be defeated and it can leave elected officials without clear communities of interest to represent. Term limits would guarantee someone won't be endlessly re-elected simply by virtue of name recognition and will ensure seniority doesn't grant uncompetitive parts of the country such ridiculous amounts of power. We are one of the few countries in the world that uses a winner take all system and still allows for politicians to pick their own voters. Reform is slowly emerging though. Arizona, Iowa, New Jersey and a few other states put independent commissions in charge though many are still prone to partisan agendas. In 2008 California, a state that is perhaps one of the least competitive in the nation due

Re:Yawn

[Opportunist]

And in 1860, Lincoln created a new party and actually won! Huzzah, the third party can even win!

I just doubt it was worth the price.

Once or twice a century isn't what I'd call "playing a major role in politics".

Re:Yawn

[silentcoder]

Not quite but very close. Socialist Libertarian is very similar to anarcho-socialism, but not quite identical. For example most SL philosophers believe not in the destruction business or profit as a concept but in restructuring all businesses into worker-owned cooperations without managerial hierarchy.
Instead of wages - every worker would earn a percentage of the companies nett income - that percentage is determined by his contribution to that income. So you still reward hard-work and learning, but you don't have a "boss" in charge - the company is run by concensus vote.
The biggest manufacturer of fabrics in the USA is run that way right now.

Most SL's also don't favor a system without any authority but believes in massive decentralization and authority by the people themselves in the form of community based direct-democracy.

So very similar to socialist-anarchism, but not identical.

unfair

[alphatel]

Any presidential nominee must conform to all the Constitutional requirements, as well as be considered someone of similar stature to our previous presidents. That means no Lady Gaga allowed.

Where would we be without movie star politicians?

Re:unfair

[Opportunist]

That doesn't have anything to do with movie star politics. More that Lady Gaga has supporters, is well liked, seems to know how to make a lot of money and have a positive cash flow and how to generate a flock of followers of all trades and areas, aside maybe the die hard ultraconservatives.

This is by no means in any way "of similar stature" than any previous president I could think of right now.

Re:unfair

[msauve]

You have to be 35 years old to be president. Lady Gaga has 10 years to go before she can be eligible.

Re:unfair

[Penguinisto]

You have to be 35 years old to be president. Lady Gaga has 10 years to go before she can be eligible.

...and by then the music industry will have been long-since done with her, and aside from DJs and a few die-hard fanboy types, most folks will forget she ever existed.

Re:unfair

[MimeticLie]

You're interpreting his comment as a slight against Lady Gaga. I saw it as a dig at our recent presidents.

Re:unfair

[Hatta]

Reagan was Governor of California for nearly a decade before entering national politics.

Re:unfair

[AuMatar]

No Reagan? In a much better place.

But I think they're mostly afraid of Stephen Colbert deciding he wants to be their nominee.

of course

[PhreakOfTime]

Currently it looks like more liberal-inclined individuals are registering

Yes, and I wouldn't expect that to change, any more than I expect AM radio to not be dominated by conservatives.

Granted, this story is written by the guy who was able to bless the world with a unit of time measurement that has since been named after him; Friedman Unit He doesn't exactly have a good track record in predicting future events, much less future political events.

This will work incredibly well

[jayhawk88]

"We have 87 million members in our party, based on people having to do the equivalent of signing a Facebook petition!"
"Great! How many of them are going to vote for our candidate?"
"10. No wait, 11, I forgot our candidate can vote for himself."

Sounds nice, but...

[martyros]

This isn't very promising:

Kahlil Byrd, the C.E.O. of Americans Elect, speaking from its swank offices, financed with some serious hedge-fund money, a stone’s throw from the White House.

[Emphasis mine]

Re:Sounds nice, but...

[Whatsmynickname]

In following with the usual Slashdot fact checking reaction to anything political, this website seems to at least dig a little more into the people behind the web site and what they are about. I smell something fishy about this web site...

Geography Problem

[Thunderstruck]

This is a neat idea, but it would suffer from a lack of geographic unity.

How exactly will an Internet-based political party handle issues like where to build the school in my neighborhood, how high the bridges should be, or what the penalty should be for selling small quantities of marijuana? Wouldn't joining such a party actually harm my ability to influence the laws that actually affect me on a daily basis?

Also, why is it every new political party seems to charge right for the presidency? Why not state legislatures or even Congress first?

Re:Geography Problem

[sakdoctor]

How is "the penalty for selling small quantities of marijuana", a local issue, give that it should be universally legal, and yet most governments fail on this point?

Re:Geography Problem

[Ritchie70]

They seem to be solely after the president, so the local stuff doesn't really matter.

In a lot of places in the US, there aren't Republicans and Democrats running in the most local races anyhow - it's the "North Haverbrook First" and the "North Haverbrook United" parties.

They probably charge for the presidency because it's a big target but it's just one target. One race, one candidate. A lot easier to manage than enough to take Congress. And if they take the presidency it gives them the legitimacy they need to win other campaigns two years later. In fact, just having a presidential candidate who is taken seriously is a help with that.

Re:Geography Problem

[MischaNix]

Well, in America, our provinces have rights--so much so, we call them states.

Re:Geography Problem

[Hatta]

what the penalty should be for selling small quantities of marijuana?

That is not a local issue but one of essential liberty.

Re:Geography Problem

[Penguinisto]

How is "the penalty for selling small quantities of marijuana", a local issue, give that it should be universally legal, and yet most governments fail on this point?

I live in Oregon, where it is perfectly legal to grow and sell the stuff to medically-licensed individuals in small quantities (the sale price can only be to cover costs, however, and not for profit). There is no penalty for doing so here. This is an example of states doing what they feel best for their population, and is actually protected by the US Constitution.

Now in New York OTOH, selling small quantities of marijuana would likely get you a ticket to Rikers Island.

That's why it is currently a 'local' issue.

Re:Geography Problem

[demonlapin]

Because your local cops are the ones who actually arrest people for possessing small quantities of pot - it's usually not the state police or the FBI.

Re:Geography Problem

[hedwards]

It shouldn't be legal until it is demonstrated to be safe through rigorous research. Things like that are dangerous until proven safe. Same goes for anything else that you put in your body.

As for this regardless of ones viewpoints, this is definitely a federal issue as that's where the current law banning it was passed.

Re:Geography Problem

[Penguinisto]

Depends - what if he replaced the word "marijuana" with "heroin" ?

Personally, I believe that the government has no right at all to ban drugs as a chattel item, but I do believe they have the right to intervene and regulate when the use/manufacture of it interferes with public safety (e.g. driving while under influence, creating a demonstrably toxic chemical environment, etc). OTOH, I can at least recognize that the issues are a lot more subtle than calling the sale/consumption of drugs an essential liberty.

Re:Geography Problem

[AlamedaStone]

It shouldn't be legal until it is demonstrated to be safe through rigorous research.

Wait... what? It is irrefutable that pot is not only less toxic than alcohol, it is effectively impossible to die from it. In fact, it's even less toxic and less addictive than coffee, the American drug of choice. I wouldn't dispute that it can have deleterious mid- to long-term effects, but the only correlation of violent crime related to marijuana seems to be drug cartel behavior (and jackbooted Feds, although I suppose that doesn't qualify as "crime" under the literal definition) which would be reduced, if not outright eliminated, by an end to prohibition.

Certainly, with such a ubiquitous drug, and the grossly disproportionate amount of Federal money spent on pot enforcement (not to mention costs of privately imprisonment), an end to prohibition and simple pot tax would take an enormous chunk out of the federal budget. In addition, there are enough thousands of local growers across the nation that a cottage industry would spring up literally overnight, creating both businesses and jobs. And (lest it go unsaid) the medical applications are exceptionally diverse; fantastically safer, and with infinitesimally fewer side effects, than even over-the-counter medications (aspirin kills hundreds of people every year), let alone prescription pharmaceuticals.

There's no shortage of legitimate studies on the effects of pot. Grabbing a link out of Google, I see one with 73 peer-reviewed studies.

Wow, that turned into a hell of an off-topic rant, sorry. Guess I had to get that off my chest.

Re:Geography Problem

[AlamedaStone]

I can at least recognize that the issues are a lot more subtle than calling the sale/consumption of drugs an essential liberty.

They sure didn't seem to agree with you in 1933 when the 21st Amendment made it into the Constitution. I don't think all drugs should be legal, but one which is demonstrably safer than alcohol (let alone coffee or aspirin) seems like a pretty damn good candidate.

Re:Geography Problem

[Penguinisto]

Does that liberty of the mouth (for lack of better term) permit fraud, slander, and similar as essential liberties?

Re:Geography Problem

[Hatta]

Of course not. But in making that comparison you've admitted my basic point. Biochemical self determination is a right, one that comes with responsibilities and problems, like all rights. It's not an absolute right, but what is?

Re:Geography Problem

[MakinBacon]

This is a neat idea, but it would suffer from a lack of geographic unity.

How exactly will an Internet-based political party handle issues like where to build the school in my neighborhood, how high the bridges should be, or what the penalty should be for selling small quantities of marijuana? Wouldn't joining such a party actually harm my ability to influence the laws that actually affect me on a daily basis?

That's why there are separate governments at the state and county/city levels.

Re:Geography Problem

[c0lo]

Things like that are dangerous until proven safe. Same goes for anything else that you put in your body.

Finally, somebody with common sense. First target suggestion: fast-food joints - ubiquitous and demonstratable toxic.

Re:Geography Problem

[tehcyder]

How is "the penalty for selling small quantities of marijuana", a local issue, give that it should be universally legal, and yet most governments fail on this point?

It's not even an issue at all to most people.

Thomas Friedman = moron

[Scareduck]

It is really difficult to have enough contempt for this man; Glenn Greenwald's "The Tom Friedman Disease" is a good example of the kind of half-digested pap he routinely emits. Instead of looking at this gimmick and calling it a gimmick, he pats himself on the back with this unbearably asinine summary:

What Amazon.com did to books, what the blogosphere did to newspapers, what the iPod did to music, what drugstore.com did to pharmacies, Americans Elect plans to do to the two-party duopoly that has dominated American political life — remove the barriers to real competition, flatten the incumbents and let the people in. Watch out.

So, um, Tom, shall we ask a few slightly important questions, such as, how does this party hope to get candidates on the ballot when they aren't even registered as a party in the many states? Politics are nothing like distributing books or drugs. The fact that he glosses over this entirely is why I hold the man in such low esteem.

He is a thirteenth-rate thinker who, for reasons that are entirely unclear, has been drastically wrong about a very great deal and yet continues to hold his position on the New York Times' opinion pages.

Re:Thomas Friedman = moron

[funkatron]

Presumably registering a party is just paperwork? Hardly seems like an insurmountable hurdle. A greater concern should be getting funding and recruiting members, figuring out what this party is going to offer and how to promote those ideas is the real challenge here.

Re:Thomas Friedman = moron

[Ritchie70]

It isn't "just paperwork" or the ballots would look like encyclopedias.

It takes something different from state to state, but typically it's a large number of signatures, or, in those states where political party is tracked for registered voters, possibly a number of real members.

In California, for example, you need 1% of the people who voted in the last gubernatorial election as members, or 10% as signatures.

It's an intriguing idea, but their web site leaves out the very important facts of who is behind it, and other online sources seem to indicate it may be shady.

I would recommend everyone go and take their full positions quiz, though - it made me stop and think about my position on various issues. My only problem with it is that there are very few answer of "it's OK now."

Based on the "country's" answers, the "country" is on average a good bit more liberal than I am.

Re:Thomas Friedman = moron

[PhreakOfTime]

No, he is a moron for other reasons.

He has been around for awhile, and is most notably known for his constant claiming that the war in Iraq would be over in 'another six months'... for a period of almost a year and a half. Among many other asinine proclamations, that he then would proceed to announce how awesome he was because his insights would be coming true and 'then you will all see how smart I am'. You go right ahead and google the phrase 'Friedman Unit', and then come back and tell us he is not a moron with references why that would be true in any way.

Credibility is not something Friedman has much of. He is most certainly not 'challenging the norm'. He is an arrogant gasbag, and has been for over a decade.

Re:Thomas Friedman = moron

[MischaNix]

Yeah, I totally didn't read enough of the background.

I now agree with the 'moron' bit. Just, the OP's wording didn't do him quite justice. That, and it's no grounds to dismiss this third party of credibility.

Re:Thomas Friedman = moron

[demonlapin]

Given that Friedman's article is probably the first major press this has had, I'd say that it just means that the NY Times' readership is a good bit more liberal than you are. I tried to take their quiz, but it wanted me to sign up, so the hell with it.

Re:Thomas Friedman = moron

[hedwards]

Around here it's just paperwork. We've more or less abolished political parties for all intents and purposes following the Democrats and the GOP throwing out our at large primary system. Ultimately, it's gotten to the point where for state elections the candidates can choose whatever party they like and the voters can continue to vote for whomever they like.

The main issue is one of funding, but that's less about paperwork and more about getting enough votes to get funding.

Re:Thomas Friedman = moron

[f16c]

It's hard to overstate this. Most people seem to think that if a new party runs for the Presidency it puts them into the game. In order to consistently have a new party in a position to win anything of import that party has to be able to get the signatures to have a candidate enter a race but more important have candidates with local records, decent verified backgrounds, consistent funding and a history of winning at least some races. Without local support there will be no national support without massive astro-turfing which seems an awful lot like what this effort is. It sounds possible in the abstract but, from a practical standpoint, that is not how politics actually works. If you can't run and win dog-catcher then don't expect to have any reach at the national level because it won't happen. For a President, even if this group had one elected to office, to effectively govern would have to have at least a reasonable block of it's own party in Congress and the Senate. Considering how the current parties treat each other do you really think they'd give an independent a break?

In Europe there are groups of parties that vote together after lots of haggling over individual laws that then vote as a block. I find this to be fine in practice and their multiparty setup seems to work great. Over here there seems to be too many egos in the way of making progress and too many special interests that are able to take advantage of the current broken system. The loons run the asylum. It's unfortunate that these folks seems to want to take advantage of that fact to trick us into voting for those who are likely no different than the ones currently in office. This is especially true considering that they are being held up by yet another moneyed special interest in the financial industry.

What my Dad once called "the best system" has turned into a has-been free-for-all of idiotic showmanship trumping the combined social and societal interest by the clods in Congress. I am a Democrat but I owe nothing to extremists on either side. The worst that will happen during the next election cycle may be that I won't vote since I really don't have anyone to vote for this time around. Both parties have become way too extreme.

Re:Thomas Friedman = moron

[PhreakOfTime]

Props to you for admitting that.

Personally, I do not trust Friedmans intentions here. He would be happier than ever to see a fragmented political party on the progressive side. With this editorial of his, he is is appearing to be goading conservatives to get involved in this 'new party'. However, what I seem him doing is more along the lines of indirectly goading the liberal/progressive side by saying 'more conservatives need to be involved in this', therefore directing the attention of the progressives into this sham to counter the perceived possibility of an influx of conservatives because that is what he says needs to happen, and attempting to fragment their attention to more easily allow a conservative victory in other areas.

I also do not believe in the labels I am using above, but he does, and this is what I see him attempting to do here.

Re:Thomas Friedman = moron

[sco08y]

He is a thirteenth-rate thinker who, for reasons that are entirely unclear, has been drastically wrong about a very great deal and yet continues to hold his position on the New York Times' opinion pages.

Yes, it must be embarrassing to be pulling up the rear behind all the 12th rate thinkers.

Centrist?

[jo7hs2]

Let me get this straight...a party where mostly liberals are signing up so far is centrist...because they say so? And they are viable...because TFA says so? Anybody else see the problem here?

Re:Centrist?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not Romney and the GOP... they would love to see the liberals split.

Re:Centrist?

[haggus71]

How about, instead of everyone crying about the leaning of the site, you REGISTER and GIVE your opinion. They are very good at setting the questions in a way that reflects left, right AND center. Its percentages reflect those opinions of those who register.

Right now, this is the best "third option." Do you think you will affect things just by sitting at home and crying like a 3 year old, not doing anything to change what's been going on the past hundred and fifty years, with two sides basically flipping a coin for control while we suffer? Is sitting on your ass working out well with this default looming over our heads?

At the least, this offers, if enough people get motivated in the REAL American center, a way to let politicians know their time is limited. The internet is the one place where opinion can still be heard, unfiltered by a talking head or a PAC. It's about time we organized it ourselves according to our true beliefs and ideals.

Re:Centrist?

[Ritchie70]

I took their full positions survey - dozens of multiple choice questions. After each question they give the answers thus far (percentage who selected for each multiple choice answer.)

If I recall correctly (there doesn't seem to be a way to go back and review it) the people who have done the positions survey definitely want government-run health care, are very concerned about the environment, and think abortion should be legal. They don't necessarily want to make every illegal immigrant a citizen, don't like school vouchers, and do like teacher tenure.

So yes, basically typical American liberal.

But if you want to express your views, go take the survey too. I don't think I'd give them any money at this point, but the survey seems harmless. And if enough people who are more conservative take the survey, if they're honest they'll act accordingly.

Re:Centrist?

[MischaNix]

Yeah, I took the survey with my own fiscal conservative stance and laughed at some of the results.

Is it okay to not be jingoistic, short-sighted, and Christian, though? I feel like I can't call myself a conservative on some topics, but maybe that's just what post-Cold War politics does to one's identity...

Re:Centrist?

[taiwanjohn]

Over 70% of the electorate supported the public option. About 2/3rds are pro-choice. Over 3/4ths support environmental conservation. (I don't the breakdown for immigration, school vouchers or teacher tenure.) But a majority also self-identify as moderate-to-conservative. Go figure.

Re:Centrist?

[rpillala]

The truth appears much worse. Here's an article at Capitol Weekly about this group: http://www.capitolweekly.net/article.php?xid=znc6uo0z1a56ld. Of note:

“They’re very secretive,” said Richard Winger, the long-time publisher of Ballot Access News. “I found out about their petition drive independent of them.”

Why be secretive? I went to the official website and looked at the "about" page trying to see who the founders were and what political positions they might have taken in the past. I don't see any of that kind of info there, and usually that's where you find it.

Consider also:

At a recent visit to the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-Op and the neighborhood Savemart, paid signature-gathers sought support for a petition they said would grant ballot access to more political parties.

“Do you want just people on the ballot you believe in?” one signature-gatherer asked.

What these signature-gathers – paid by Arno Political Consultants of Carlsbad – are trying to accomplish is to place Americans Elect, a new political party that says it isn’t one, on the ballot in 2012.

I looked up Arno Political Consultants and they have a pretty spotty history, having been accused several times of fraud. The main accomplishment of America Elects so far has been a large number of petition signatures, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arno_Political_Consultants shows a petition the company prepared in 2009 whose overall signature validity was rated at 51%. 800k is a lot less impressive than 1.6 mil.

Now, obviously, accusations aren't guilt, but why would Americans Elect hire an organization with this kind of troubled history with petitions to gather their signatures for petitions? I'm making a number of assumptions here about the scale of their operation. None of this proves any sinister intent on their part nor does it prove good intent.

Just be skeptical is my advice - make them earn trust.

Re:Centrist?

[rpillala]

Sorry to self-reply but I see I got the group name wrong towards the end there. I thought I checked for that!

Re:Centrist?

[demonlapin]

The "public option" polled well because it was ill-defined. Many people think that abortion shouldn't be totally illegal but also don't think that late-second-trimester abortions should be legal. And "environmental conservation" is such a nebulous phrase that people will say "sure, yeah, I like that." IOW, if you choose your phrasing well, you can make it seem like your side's opinions are mom and apple pie, but when it comes down to the actual specifics the electorate may not agree with you. Works for both parties.

Re:Centrist?

[Kjella]

Over 3/4ths support environmental conservation. But a majority also self-identify as moderate-to-conservative. Go figure.

If you ask "Do you want to conserve or destroy the environment?" then very few people will go for "destroy". The question is when it comes to concrete things like are you willing to support measures that'll be a public expense and implicitly lead to higher taxes, lead to higher prices on certain goods, ban environmentally harmful products even though this leads to lower quality or worse products or reduce your own consumption and environmental footprint. Most people will accept some small sacrifices and say "I'm doing my part" and that's the 75%+, then you have the real environmentalists who'd possibly vote for the Green party which are maybe 5%. That's just a figure out of thin air, but for example in the EU parliament there's 6.3% Greens. It's very hard to say if that 75%+ number says anything meaningful at all.

Re:Centrist?

[Attila Dimedici]

You forgot to mention that they are supported by Thomas Friedman of the NYT. That's sort of like an "opposition" party being formed in the old Soviet Union and being promoted by a columnist for Pravda.

Re:Centrist?

[AlamedaStone]

The "public option" polled well because it was ill-defined.

Actually, iirc, the only polls which resulted in support for single-payer were the ones which laid out specific policy positions and not broad terms like "public option". The majority of Americans supported the components of universal healthcare.

Herm, here's one by ABC http://abcnews.go.com/sections/living/US/healthcare031020_poll.html

Re:Centrist?

[taiwanjohn]

Sure, the wording makes a big difference. Support for the "public option" drops significantly when you call it the "government" option. But "definition" is not the problem. For example, "Medicare buy-in" polled at the same level as "public option."

Or to take a more recent example, more than 70% support raising taxes on the rich to help address the debt/deficit crisis, including around 90% of Democrats and 50% of Republicans.

Re:Centrist?

[demonlapin]

That page doesn't link to the actual questions, but it does pretty clearly state

That support, however, is conditional: It falls to fewer than four in 10 if it means a limited choice of doctors, or waiting lists for non-emergency treatments.

If it limited Americans' choice of doctors, support drops sharply, from 62 percent to 35 percent. Likewise, if it meant waiting lists for some non-emergency treatments, support falls to 39 percent.

Any public process that doesn't do at least one of those things isn't going to save any money. Like I said, when you start putting actual, firm policies that have a chance of working to the question, people's opinions diverge. Happens to both liberal and conservative views.

Re:Centrist?

[Majik Sheff]

[citation needed]

Re:Centrist?

[sco08y]

Let me get this straight. We actually need yet another party claiming to be the center?

Last time I looked, the Democrats are simply recyclying Republican policy from the past. If it actually became a viable leftist party that would actually make politcs possible again.

I wish they'd recycle one of those budgets. The Democrat controlled Senate hasn't passed a budget in 800 days, which includes over a year in which they controlled the Presidency, the House and the Senate. Okay, granted, Obama did pass a budget that was voted down 99-0, but seriously, how can they bitch about the country being on the brink of default when they don't have an actual budget?

Compromise, to recall the grade-school concept, is when two parties make two separate propositions and then resolve their differences to find a course of action somewhere between. When one side won't propose anything, they're being uncompromising.

(If you want to play, any mention of a Democratic budget must contain a link to the actual text, and a link to a CBO analysis of it. For example, here's the Ryan budget, and the CBO's analysis.)

Re:Centrist?

[IICV]

Let me get this straight...a party where mostly liberals are signing up so far is centrist...because they say so? And they are viable...because TFA says so? Anybody else see the problem here?

Hey, if they split the liberal vote and get a conservative elected, that's like being centrist, isn't it?

Re:Centrist?

[m0nkyman]

Seeing as how the Democrats are Centre-Right, and most liberals are pretty centrist compared to politics in the rest of the world, I'd say, yes, they would be centrist.

Re:Centrist?

[Boronx]

That's scare tactics. There's no reason to restrict choice of doctors and every single health care system rations care. The US already has terrible wait times for non-emergency procedures and if you're like me and don't have insurance the wait time is as an additional "until I save enough money".

Re:Centrist?

[sjames]

Yeah, I don't see how that can work. If they're going to be centrist, they'll need some people from the left as well.

Re:Centrist?

[AlamedaStone]

That's scare tactics. There's no reason to restrict choice of doctors and every single health care system rations care. The US already has terrible wait times for non-emergency procedures and if you're like me and don't have insurance the wait time is as an additional "until I save enough money".

Until you save enough money, OR until it's such a big problem you have to go to the ER - and then it's FAR more expensive, with a worse overall outcome, and the very poor get saddled with unpayable debt. For reasons which still elude me.

Re:Centrist?

[Ritchie70]

The "environmental" questions that I recall were really about weighing energy against environment - more domestic drilling v. renewable sources and nuclear energy. I think there were one or two more strictly environmental but I don't recall.

Re:Centrist?

[taiwanjohn]

Public option; abortion; environment.
[laziness indulged]

Re:Centrist?

[tehcyder]

Is it okay to not be jingoistic, short-sighted, and Christian, though? I feel like I can't call myself a conservative on some topics, but maybe that's just what post-Cold War politics does to one's identity...

You cannot sum up anyone's entire set of beliefs in one word.

The real Internet Party, liquid democracy,in Spain

[Anonymous Coward]

Full disclosure: I work in the Agora Ciudadana Voting System.

In Spain we have created a "tool" political party which doesn't have and will never have any any ideals called Partido de Internet. The idea behind it is that its elected representatives will always vote in the representative chambers proportionally to what the people previously voted via Internet, with support for vote delegation so that you don't need to vote in all votings (6600 only in spanish congress per year or about one per hour). This is what is called liquid democracy = direct democracy + delegation. Using this together With legislative initiative, the people can execute 100% their legislative power through this liquid democracy setting.

The vote will be secret and secure, we will use our electronic national identity cards for authentication (hey, they are good for some things =), and the votings will be universally verifiable, we're using elgamal encryption based anonymization mixnets via Verificatum. The software is not finished yet, mind you. We're in contact with security researchers to make it as secure as possible, the secret of the vote is subject to a set of athorities in charge of the votings, who create a combined ElGamal encryption key for the votations. There's a good overview in a well known spanish security web site, Security by Default, but unfortunately it's in spanish, maybe you can read it translated with Google Translate.

I'll tell the people in PDI (Partido de Internet) contact with this other USA party, because AFAIK spanish Internet Party was the first such as a party in the world. It'll be nice if the idea spreads out through all the world. Will it work? I don't know, but we'll never know we don't try.

Re:The real Internet Party, liquid democracy,in Sp

[Edulix]

Sorry, it was me who posted that, I forgot to login =)

Translation ...

[Boona]

"Currently it looks like more liberal-inclined individuals are registering, but it would make for a healthier system if more viewpoints were represented." Translation: Currently we only have 20 some year olds who know nothing about economics or the world. It would be nice to get some older people in here because currently we are so far left we might as well just rename ourselves to "the communist party".

Re:Translation ...

[__aagujc9792]

Did Tina Fey tell you that she could see stupid and ignorant from the Tea Party?

Looting has been tried before, Skippy. Sooner or later you run out of other people's money, and then there's hell to pay. There's more to macroeconomics than "you've got it, I want it, hand it over" class warfare. Read some Bastiat.

Re:Translation ...

[Mindcontrolled]

How about you learn about politics and history, take a long break from posting, and come back when you finally realize that "communism" is not a synonym for "things I do not like but lack the brains to properly categorize"?

Re:Translation ...

[hedwards]

Not really, I take it you haven't been paying attention lately. We had nearly 30 years of conservative economic policy over which time we've had several bubbles and the working class has lost more and more ground to the rich.

You'd have to be some sort of a grade A moron to suggest that the conservatives know anything about economics when the solution to our current economic woes is more of the same policies that got us here in the first place.

Re:Translation ...

[visualight]

Great, someone who knows something about economics! While you're here, please explain how the supply-side economics policies of every administration elected since Reagan have improved the standard of living for the average American. I'm particularly interested in the growth of Real Wages.

Re:Translation ...

[visualight]

Would you call the progressive tax policies in place from the 30's through the seventies looting? Or are you saying there's a viable political force in the U.S. that advocates literal looting? Just asking, because I think the average American was doing pretty good until we started making the wage earners pay for *everything*.

Also, Bastiat would clearly be against all the tax breaks and subsidies reserved for the wealthy. I don't think conservatives would like him.

Re:Translation ...

[TheRaven64]

You seem to misunderstand. You're using the legacy Marx definition of communism. The modern definition of a communist is 'anyone who is opposed to redistribution of wealth to those that already have most of it.'

Re:Translation ...

[Doc Ruby]

You Teabaggers read too much corporate anarchist porn, and don't do enough thinking about what its characters actually do in real life. The class war has been victorious for the upper classes forever, with sporadic rollbacks over time favoring balance towards the middle class. All of which the Teabaggers are burning down, to their own peril - except for the rich people who fund and equip them.

Re:Translation ...

[AlamedaStone]

Looting has been tried before, Skippy

Sure has. It's happening right now, in fact. How's that pension working out? What about those prudently-invested savings?

I take it that by "looting" you are referring to higher taxes on millionaires, but when people with vast quantities of money are just using that money to game the system rather than invest in infrastructure or job creation, we wind up with a Herbert Hoover policy. Yep, that dude was into tax cuts to stimulate the economy. I can't remember how that turned out...

Re:Sounds nice, but... horrible idea indeed

[openfrog]

Check where this initiative originates from, indeed, and observe how it follows a pattern. This is something that we are seeing more and more, like in UK with the creation of the Lib Dems. The creation of new parties, so-called centrists but mostly taking votes on the left, ensuring the election of conservatives, or at least of a coalition government dominated by the conservatives.

The usual response to this observation is that the targeted party, here the Democrats, is anywhere but on the left. Well, considering where are the Conservatives in your country, way out to lunch, and considering how they are actively taking hostage and destroying the democratic institutions, I would pay some attention before voting for a third party...

First things first.

Re:liberal

[taiwanjohn]

When polled on individual issues, about 60% of the electorate tends to support the "liberal" position. But when asked about their political orientation, about half claim to be moderates, while the other half splits about 30/20 between conservatives and liberals. So a solid majority tends to self identify as conservative-leaning moderates, despite holding "liberal" views on most issues.

My point is that the people registering on the site may "look" more liberal simply because they answer the individual issue questions that way.

These guys already lost my trust

[cultiv8]

How am I supposed to trust Americans Elect 2012 when they illegally embed fonts onto their website (eg. this page, this font)? I'm not trying to be a troll, but if they're not doing their homework for a freaking website (or hiring the right web design firm to do it for them), how do I know they're going to succeed in the political landscape?

Re:These guys already lost my trust

[MischaNix]

Instead of losing your trust in them from the get-go, why not just inform them of the infringement and see how quickly they change it? Their reaction time can be your judge, and you've saved them some Adobe in the process.

[Adobe is its own gerundive.]

Re:These guys already lost my trust

[cultiv8]

Good point: http://getsatisfaction.com/americanselect/topics/font_infringement

Re:These guys already lost my trust

[ebs16]

the adobe website states that the font is available with a "print & preview" license, which seems to allow web embedding. why would you jump to the conclusion that the party has not purchased this license?

Re:These guys already lost my trust

[cultiv8]

In the EULA it says: 2.3 Server Use. [] No other network use is permitted, including, but not limited to use of the Software, either directly or through commands, data or instructions, from or to a Computer not part of your Internal Network, for Internet or web hosting services or by any user not licensed to use this copy of the Software under a valid license from Adobe [...]

Re:These guys already lost my trust

[ebs16]

...forgot to log in there.

Re:These guys already lost my trust

[sjames]

Perhaps part of their platform includes significant copyright reform?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Sounds nice, but... horrible idea indeed

[martyros]

This is something that we are seeing more and more, like in UK with the creation of the Lib Dems. The creation of new parties, so-called centrists but mostly taking votes on the left, ensuring the election of conservatives, or at least of a coalition government dominated by the conservatives.

Ah, fascinating sir. Thank you for that bit of insight.

Re:Sounds nice, but... horrible idea indeed

[MischaNix]

Well then, we need a Left equivalent of the horrific Tea Party. I can see the signs of protest now: We're not pussies! Fight the right! ... What to name it? Perhaps something stately: The New American Left.

Ah, free demonstration and facebook. Volatile combination, those.

Another PROBLEM party!

[SirAstral]

This will turn out to be just another problem party.

Go and read George Washington's farewell address. He predicted the civil war and basically said that everyone should consider that they are Americans first and stop dividing themselves according to geography and party lines.

How about instead, we create a law that legally prevents the formation of any political party of any kind. Lets make people actually have to learn about who they are voting for instead of just looking for the D or the R on the ballot. At the rate things are going, we will probably choose the better candidate on accident than we ever will intentionally!

Re:Another PROBLEM party!

[visualight]

I (I'm sure a lot of people) have considered this too, but I didn't see a way to outlaw political parties without outlawing the right to assemble, free speech, etc. Do you have any ideas?

Re:Another PROBLEM party!

[Hatta]

You can't outlaw parties, but you don't have to offer them official recognition either. Why are parties listed on ballots?

Re:Another PROBLEM party!

[stinerman]

In fact that's exactly what Nebraska does. The parties are not shown on the ballots. They even have a unicamerial legislature. They've got it figured out.

Re:Another PROBLEM party!

[westlake]

Go and read George Washington's farewell address.

In Thomas Jefferson (State) and Alexander Hamilton (Treasury) you have the American two party system in embryo. One man provincial and agrarian, the other nationalist and commercial - the prototypical New Yorker.

Jefferson, like all our Presidents, was driven by contingencies.

The Louisana Purchase was something he thought he had to do even though he had no illusions about its political and economic consequences.

He would live long enough to see the birth of an American industrial revolution ---

a revolution driven in no small part by this new comtinental American empire, and a world that is essentially modern and Hamiltonian.

Parties form around very real political divides.

In the American political system coalitions are forged within the two major parties.

Now and again an decaying force like the Whigs will fade out and be replaced by something younger, more vigorous and more willing to compromise.

Re:Another PROBLEM party!

[sco08y]

How about instead, we create a law that legally prevents the formation of any political party of any kind.

You'd have to completely gut the first amendment. You'd also have to outlaw caucuses within Congress.

And who would be your most enthusiastic supporters, as have been with all political "reforms"? The major parties. Because they'd write the rules, and they'd write them so that business as usual would continue with a new set of hats.

You want people to think? You're going to have to come up with a message that will make them think. And right now, you can't. Just try it. You will run afoul of the FEC, and they will politely tell you what laws you need to comply with, and you won't be able to do so.

The real way to get people thinking is to end all campaign finance restrictions aka incumbent protection laws. These are harmful to everyone involved because they crush the marketplace for ideas and the established, moneyed players know how to walk around them at will.

Lets make people actually have to learn about who they are voting for instead of just looking for the D or the R on the ballot.

You've obviously never done this yourself. Go to a candidate's website. You can usually guess a candidate's affiliation based on two minutes inspecting their issues page. And their issues page is usually 80 - 90% in line with the party platform.

The notion that the parties are the same is probably due to years of politicians pandering to their base by saying, "all those other guys are fakes but *I'm* the real deal!" And then, ten years down the road, even if their voting record is quite consistent with their ideology, a new guy is going to make the same accusation.

Though they need constant pressure from outsiders, all in all the political machines work: they put together a platform that represents what voters want, they really do find fairly good candidates (given the pool of talent and the fairly lousy rewards) and they get these folks elected. Where the little parties are important is that they are idea factories. You need that process of continually generating new ideas, talking to people to understand their needs, etc. because the big parties will, when those ideas gain critical mass, incorporate them. That helps them to remain relevant and it grounds them to the needs of their constituents.

People often think that the metaphysical framework is somehow terribly broken and that we just need to all look past the left-right divide. It's bullshit. There is a fair amount of complexity within politics, but, even in a parliamentary system, you generally have two major parties and a host of also-rans. During certain national crises you'll get a viable third-party briefly, but the marketplace of ideas is dominated by the liberal / conservative dichotomy. My best (brief) explanation as to why is that the left and right map to two fundamental aspects of the human condition. There are lots of viewpoints and such, there are lots of ways to slice and dice any particular issue, there are layers of metaphysical complexity, but when you get down to integrating your ideas with the needs of actual constituents, you wind up with something that is left-wing or right-wing.

Sure, there are moderates. They get a disproportionate amount of media coverage because they get the "swing" vote and because the left and the right try to sell their plans to them. But the reality is that the left and the right only do that after they framed the debate, and the center has to pick between the choices they're given. What's most important is that the centrists still caucus with the left or the right. So they may be voting for the other side on most issues but they're still voting for your speaker (or leader) to give your side control of the House (or Senate).

Re:Another PROBLEM party!

[dotancohen]

How about instead, we create a law that legally prevents the formation of any political party of any kind. Lets make people actually have to learn about who they are voting for instead of just looking for the D or the R on the ballot. At the rate things are going, we will probably choose the better candidate on accident than we ever will intentionally!

My kingdom for modpoints.

Political Party

[DaMattster]

As a political party (for lack of a better word), I think Americans Elect is doomed to failure. I took the survey that was offered upon sign-up and I found the answers to the questions to be very limiting and, in some cases, black and white when few issues are as such. For example, the immigration issue had no answer that really matched my feelings so I had to answer Unsure. Also, when it came to renewable energy, the survey used the fad buzzwords like wind and solar. Wind and solar are, at best, inefficient. I would sooner put money into hydrogen fuel cell technologies. Another example: Education. Not one question asked whether politics should be totally left out of education. Politics should play no role in education whatsoever considering that I question the value of the education many of our politicians have recieved. The survey was worded almost so that it would "trap" the same kinds of candidates: red or blue/democratic or republican. Based on these survey questions, I fail to see how Americans Elect will effect any real change.

Re:Political Party

[yacwroy]

While semantically correct, hydrogen fuel cells are not what is meant by the colloquial "renewable energy"... That's always about generation.
Alternative power storage is an important issue but there's a very large number of important issues and they can only pick a subset.

One question did ask precisely what role government should play in setting school curricula. (From none to complete control).

I agree a finer scale and more options would be beneficial to their attempts to find the best candidate.

However, I agree that it's doomed to fail - unless they can guarantee 1 USAian 1 vote. I could create thousands of profiles here and I'm not even in the US.

Although I would say allowing foreigners in democratic nations to vote in US elections would be a plus :)

Fix the system first

[Moof123]

Our current system will not ever have more than 2 viable parties. We have a winner take all system that will never result in a proportional representation of the views of the populous.

The best we can do with a third party is weaken an existing one temporarily, or replace it entirely. But everything will still end up with two parties with a huge swath of the population having nobody in congress coming close to sharing their views.

We would need a fresh constitution based on proportional representation in at least one branch of government. Never going to happen in pre-collapse USA.

Re:Fix the system first

[Theolojin]

We would need a fresh constitution based on proportional representation in at least one branch of government. Never going to happen in pre-collapse USA.

You mean like the House of Representatives?

Re:Fix the system first

[RebelWithoutAClue]

This is a bad idea. See for example Australia where the Greens won 5 seats out of 25, Labor and Liberals won 10 seats each. Now Greens have a lot of power because they can break a government simply by witholding support. How is that a better representation?

Follow the money

[HangingChad]

The last effort I remember seeing like this was the genesis of the Tea Party and we discovered later it was funded by the Koch family through FreedomWorks (they are no longer aligned).

I'm looking over their site, not seeing any information on where the money comes from. I like the idea, but I'm vaguely concerned this is an effort to split the Democrats vote.

We need something like this, even at the risk of aiding the scumbag Republicans.

Re:Follow the money

[Doc Ruby]

it was funded by the Koch family through FreedomWorks (they are no longer aligned).

Who's no longer aligned? Tea Party / Kochs? Kochs / Freedomworks? Tea Party / Kochs? What makes you think that any of them aren't still "aligned" (mutually coordinated)?

Re:Follow the money

[HangingChad]

What makes you think that any of them aren't still "aligned" (mutually coordinated)?

Both organizations have indicated they no longer are affiliated with one another. There were rumors there were divisions over priorities. Still loosely aligned, certainly. Mutually coordinated, likely only to the extent they're getting talking points and messaging from the same core group.

Doesn't the Pirate party already do this ?

[Anon8---)]

The Pirate Party allegedly already has a similar system in place, where any party member can vote on current issues or bring up new ones for discussion. The idea is full disclosure and - I call it - radical democracy, a system which I btw fully support. Outside of the U.S I know it's working pretty well, because there's a different political system.

Re:Doesn't the Pirate party already do this ?

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

I actually first THOUGHT they were referring to the Pirate Party when the headline said "Internet-Based Political Party".

So, let's see, candidates chosen by the internet?..."Steve Wozniak/Ron Paul 2012!"

Re:liberal

[Mindcontrolled]

No offense, but considering "liberal" not to be "moderate" pretty much sums up the problem you got with your political system over there. Not to put a slant on it - you can exchange "conservative" for "liberal", and the point is still valid.

None of the Above

[ChucktheMan]

What I want to see is "None of the above" added to any elected office. If "None of the above" is selected the office is filled by selecting at random from the pool of qualified jurors already maintained by every jurisdiction in the US. The principal is the same: someone drafted at random to a public service. I am sure that we would occasionally be represented by a person who was an idiot, poorly informed, or an unconvicted criminal. Oh. Wait. We already are.

Re:None of the Above

[unitron]

I'd settle for being able to vote "Yes" or "No" (or abstain) on each candidate.

Subract all of a candidates "No" votes from their "Yes" votes. The candidate who has the largest total above zero wins.

If none of them net above zero, you hold another election, but none of them are eligible to run again.

That way you can vote for Carter *and* Anderson or GHW Bush *and* Perot or Gore *and* Nader or GW Bush *and* Pat Buchanan, and not feel that you "threw away" your vote for Anderson or Perot or Buchanan or Nader.

Re:None of the Above

[Doc Ruby]

Have you ever been on a jury? Only because the jury is governed rigorously by laws and an authority in the judge, with both sides of an accusation defended by a professional with interests conflicting with the other's, and an actual person at stake who can go to media with their story, does the drafting of random people from the community work at all.

But the "none of the above" vote is important. AFAIK it's already part of every ballot: just don't answer that question. But what should change is that those "abstain" answers should be counted, and the total including them should require someone get a majority to win. Otherwise a runoff election excluding the lowest vote getters. Or just "Instant-Runoff Voting", where voters pick their top choices in order, and the winner is chosen by the mutually agreed most popular, even if not simply the most common #1 pick.

Re:None of the Above

[ChucktheMan]

Not voting is the same as validating the choice of the remaining voters. I have been a juror many times, and am facing more selections this fall. Congress is also governed rigorously by laws and an authority; the constitution. It seems like almost any question congress faces has a set of lobbies that serve as defenders/accusers the same as any court room. My point is that we could hardly do worse than the political parties, even selecting at random.

Re:None of the Above

[ChucktheMan]

But I cannot veto all candidates if I feel that none of them are suitable for office, such as in the last Presidential election. In the end you have to vote for either bigger government @10% per year (Republican) or bigger government @ 20% per year (Democrat). What if I want smaller government?

Re:None of the Above

[unitron]

I'm confused.

I proposed a new way of voting.

You seem to have replied to complain about the way things are now.

Did you actually find what you considered a fault in my idea?

If so, what was it?

Re:None of the Above

[Doc Ruby]

Not voting does have the effect of validating the choice of the other voters, but that's not what most nonvoters (who are a very large minority of all eligible voters) think they're saying by not voting.

Congress is not governed rigorously by laws, starting with the fact that Congress can change those laws, and continuing with the fact that Congress sets exceptions to most laws for Congress when it sets laws. The Constitution is an abstract authority, not a person in a black robe at an elevated desk who speaks and controls when others speak, gives spoken instructions and interacts with everyone as an obvious authority. It is perfectly clear that the way laws govern Congress, and the way the Constitution governs it, are not at all like the ways that laws govern juries and judges are authorities in courts.

You know it, too. But you're saying something else to stick to a point that you want to belive, despite plain sense. So I'm not wasting any more of my time on you.

I pity whoever's future hangs in the balance determined by a jury you're on.

Re:None of the Above

[spitzak]

You are talking about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting which I agree would be an excellent way to get an actual measure of how popular third party candidates are, and may even allow one to win.

It is possible your idea is to have 3 states for each candidate on the ballot: yes, no, and abstain. However this will not work, as it is obvious strategic voting to write no for everybody other than the ones you like, as it will improve the chances of the ones you like winning (conversely if you really hate somebody then the logic is to write yes for everybody other than that person). Therefore only two states, yes and no, are needed, and this is what approval voting does.

Re:None of the Above

[spitzak]

I think you explained what I was trying to say more clearly. Since strategic voting requires everybody not marked "yes" to be marked "no" then there is no reason for any third state, as voters will not choose it.

The only way a write-in candidate will win is if more people vote yes for that person than the most popular person on the ballot. It does not matter whether the people not writing the candidate count as "no" or "abstain", as there are fewer of these than the ones writing "no" for the popular candidate.

I do agree that it would help a lot if there were two bubble marked yes and no. However I would require the voter to fill one or the other. This makes it easy to check if a ballot is incorrectly filled out, and makes it impossible to add more marks to a ballot after it is submitted to change the vote.

Re:None of the Above

[ChucktheMan]

Sorry to have offended you. Contribute to the political party of your choice, and be content with the results.

Re:None of the Above

[ChucktheMan]

I have no complaint with your new way. Please do not construe my post as a criticism of your idea. I just think we have a built in flaw that removes one legitimate choice from the equation: that none of the presented candidates should be elected. Add "None of the above" to each ballot and I am content, Online, paper, or plastic.

Re:None of the Above

[unitron]

The way you vote "None of the Above" in my scheme is to vote "No" on all of them.

Your "No" vote is like a negative 1.

Someone else's "Yes" vote for the same candidate is like a positive 1.

Add them algebraically.

If none of the candidates get a net total greater than zero, nobody wins the election, a new election is scheduled, and no one who was a candidate in the first one is eligible to run in the second one.

Batch job voting, like "None of the above" or straight ticket voting, would not be allowed.

Re:None of the Above

[unitron]

Approval voting lets you assign a 1 or a 0 to each candidate. (Voting for them = 1, leaving their check box blank = 0)

My plan lets you assign a 1, a 0, or a -1 to each candidate, and requires at least one candidate to have a net total greater than 0 for anybody to win, and bans all candidates from the first election from running in the second election, should a second election be required because no candidate in the first election got a net total greater than 0.

You cannot have a right to vote if you do not have a right to not vote, therefore a 2 state method (Yes = 1, abstain = 0) is not the same as a 3 state method (Yes =1, abstain =0, No = -1). 0 is not equal to -1, mathematically or morally.

My plan allows you to actively vote against someone, which is a form of expression that differs from a passive abstention, and it requires the winning candidate to have gotten more approvals than disapprovals.

Re:None of the Above

[spitzak]

I think it is pretty clear that strategic voting means that nobody will vote 0. They can *always* make their vote "stronger" by voting -1 for everybody they did not vote 1 for. (or conversely, if they "hate" somebody they can vote -1 on that person, but their hate becomes "stronger" by voting 1 for everybody else).

Your other idea of the requiring a positive sum to the same as requiring the winning candidate to get a yes vote from more than 50% of the voters. Perhaps that should require a revote, however there is no reason to kick out the current candidates, if they don't change they will still get less than 50%, and a changed version may be the strongest candidate.

Hoping

[DaMattster]

I was hoping that Americans Elect would be more for issue-dependent voters like myself. The questions on the survey were still geared towards Blue and Red. I believe that the rug should be pulled out from under the Health Insurance companies, abolishing pre-existing conditions clauses and lifetime caps. I believe in the right to own firearms. I believe the government has no business regulating natural drugs like marijuana. I believe in deporting illegal immigrants (with notable exception of political asylum) because our country was founded on legal immigration. Political asylum is something that should be announced upon arrival on our borders. I don't fall into the typical voter category.

Re:Hoping

[darkwing_bmf]

our country was founded on legal immigration.

Our country was founded on the backs of colonial empires who wanted the resources of the new world and weren't afraid to take them from the natives.

Re:Sounds nice, but... horrible idea indeed

[Archangel Michael]

Yeah, because there has never been a case of centrists skewing the vote left (Perot etc). /SARCASM

The left always acts like shit only happens to them.

Re:liberal

[D'Sphitz]

Or maybe it's that conservatism has become so extreme that moderates now look like flaming liberals.

Re:liberal

[Penguinisto]

The problem is, politics is more than one dimensional. It is even more than two dimensional.

In fact, it is (at least) fully cartesian: The X axis is one's desire/tolerance for state control over individuals in general (order vs individualism), the Y axis is one's fiscal ideological inclination (spending/taxation tolerance), and the Z axis is one's social ideological inclination (charity vs non-involvement).

Most folks only think in one-dimensional left-right terms, which is IMHO stupid and dangerous.

Re:liberal

[demonlapin]

about 60% of the electorate tends to support the "liberal" position

I'd love to see that poll. I think self-identification is a lot more accurate: there are more conservatives than liberals, although there are roughly equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats, because the Democratic party contains numerous conservative groups (in the past, these were often blue-collar whites, but today the most notable such group is black Americans).

Re:Good job!

[Thing 1]

Well, in Iran they're killing scientists, so just be glad you're not over there! :(

Re:Sounds nice, but... horrible idea indeed

[Nursie]

Wait....

Are you trying to say that the creation of the Liberal Democrat party in the UK was created as an attempt to destroy the labour vote? The Lib Dem party is a grand COnservative conspiracy to split the 'left' and let the 'right' in?

You might want to start taking the medication again.

I know a lot of people that vote lib dem because they could not in good conscience vote for the incompetent and useless labour party and it's race to the bottom politics, nor do they think the conservative way is best.

Your theory is ridiculous and presupposes that, so long as there are two adversarial parties, it's your job as a voter to sign up with one, however much you think they both suck balls.

Poisoning The Well

[phantomcircuit]

The questions they ask and the available answers are fucking bullshit.

When you think about America’s energy needs, which of the following solutions come closest to your opinion?

• Strong investment in renewable energy like wind and solar
• More drilling than investment in renewables (mix of both solutions)
• More investment in renewable than drilling (mix of both solutions)
• Strong focus on offshore drilling and allowing drilling in federal lands including wildlife reserves
• Unsure

Re:Poisoning The Well

[AlamedaStone]

They have separate questions addressing nuclear energy, but I'm not sure I understand your concern about those options. Broad, certainly - but they're only intended to match you broadly with other individuals who might fall into your sub-caucus (or whatever you'd call it). At that level, the debate becomes more specific.

I think many of the questions could have been crafted more carefully, but this place seems to be new; there likely is (or can be) a mechanism for creating additional questions which may have more nuance. Not, of course, if you throw up your hands and declare the idea "fucking bullshit" though, I grant you that.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:I Vote for

[krisbrowne42]

NO!!!! Chuck Norris is so far to the right that he makes Colbert's persona look left of socialist.

Conservative Teabagger Friedman Party

[Doc Ruby]

Friedman's already got his "third party": the "Tea Party" that's not a party. It's just the most extreme Republicans - still voting Republican.

Now he's demanding a new third (not really) party also be Republican.

Thomas Friedman is the guy who spent the first 5+ years of the Iraq Jr War seeing victory "within the next 6 months", for all those years, until he just stopped begging for it. He's never right about anything except the obvious. Why listen to him?

Re:Conservative Teabagger Friedman Party

[AlamedaStone]

Why listen to him?

The only reason I can see is my increasing frustration with the current state of affairs, and my growing sense that a new political movement is the only method to accomplish change. I saw this and thought, 'Yes! Let's do this!', but if not these people then someone else needs to step up and rally some true popular support. A single candidate probably isn't sufficient in themselves, but if the Tea Party has taught us anything, it's that a popular movement can significantly alter discourse.

By which they mean:

[Chris Mattern]

"Internet-based political party can only find jobs as doormen"

Re:Sounds nice, but... horrible idea indeed

[mjwalshe]

er the lib dems are a fairly old political party the liberals predate the labour party

Why third-party candidacies don't work

[john.r.strohm]

Obligatory pointer to Arrow's Theorem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow's_impossibility_theorem

Oversimplification: Arrow formally proved that you can't build an election system that works for three or more candidates.

Re:Why third-party candidacies don't work

[kvezach]

Arrow proved that you can't make a perfect election system for more than two candidates. That doesn't mean every voting system that does exist is equally worthless.

Consider France, for instance. They use top-two runoffs, and they have more than two parties. While top-two doesn't really fit Arrow (as it's not a ranked ballot method), it probably doesn't pass the independence of irrelevant alternatives criterion, and so isn't a perfect method by Arrow's yardstick. Yet it works: it does permit multiple parties. That in itself means that some methods, while not perfect, are good enough.

Re:liberal

[taiwanjohn]

Here ya go... Abortion, Public Option, Environment.

The environment vs. economy numbers have slipped in the last couple of years, as the economy fell off a cliff. But before that, they were just as I said.

Re:liberal

[demonlapin]

Thanks for replying. Abortion polls at 64-35 in favor, but the question asked isn't about the Democratic party's position on abortion, which was (in 2008) "The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right." Roe and its followers have gone well beyond what the majority of Americans believe - as the polls you look at show, "always legal" outpolls "always illegal" by a few points, but most people stand for "usually legal". I'll skip the healthcare because it doesn't tell us any of the questions. On the environment, when you get down to specifics, it looks like you're dead right. I suppose the lesson to be learned there is that people don't choose their votes based on environmental policy.

if more viewpoints were represented?

[therealkevinkretz]

They are! There are libertarians, tax protest parties, the green party, socialist, liberal, etc. They're all technically "represented", but the two "main" parties control the ballot. This will be another unfairly dismissed voice.

And a quick skim of the above ("Arrow's Impossibility Theorem") leads me to say that he might have a point in a 3-candidate election. But no so much in a 5- or 6-way election.

Re:Centrism IS the problem

[f16c]

Exactly!. If the parties become exclusive enough none of us will fit in. Who do you expect us to vote for then? Likely none of the above. We're already at the point where we vote for the least distasteful choices. How far away from fascism or communism do you think that really is for a given side? Read the history of the Third Reich and you will see that the pendulum just swung too far and stayed there for long enough for the system to disintegrate. It's so simple that it should scare the crap out of you.

The moneyed interests have control and the question then becomes what do they want to do with that control? Hopefully it's simple profit but in practice profit can cost lots of lives. This isn't conspiracy. It's just the way the world works. It works for the rich at the cost of everyone else as it always has. The difference is the comfort level that the middle and lower classes are allowed to achieve. In class warfare the rich, everywhere, always win.

Call it the Friedman Party

[sco08y]

You have to understand that Thomas Friedman is an avatar of ineptitude. I can't possibly outdo Matt Taibbi's take on his recent book, so I'll link it.

But let's look at why this effort is doomed to failure. Friedman recommends it, so that's strikes one, two and three already. If Friedman said pants were convenient and comfortable, you'd be best advised to buy a kilt. He has such an incredible track record of being utterly wrong about everything imaginable.

Serious reason: It's centrist. According to voting records meticulously compiled by the right and the left, the voters will elect, at any given time, virtually no moderates whatsoever. If you're a liberal Democrat or a conservative Republican, your legislators tend to vote, contrary to popular griping, 80% to 90% in line with your views. What people are really bitching about when they claim the parties are the same is that they're not getting their way, which is the whole point of the system.

The only reason we have moderate legislators is because some states happen to be evenly split. There is no centrist "base" for a centrist party to draw from, not in the US, not anywhere. There is no base because there's no ideology for them to get fired up about. An ideology can rest on a vision (e.g. progressivism) or principles (e.g. conservatism), neither of which centrism has.

The major parties duke it out to try to win the best compromise they can get for their base and centrism is a reaction to this. It is effectively saying that, somehow, they can arrive at a better compromise without the uncivilized process of duking it out. But to believe that you can arrive at that compromise without the fighting, you have to believe that people with passionate beliefs don't really mean it or you have greater insight than pretty much everyone or, as proof that establishment types can be conspiracy theorists too, shadowy figures are stirring them up to further their evil ends.

And, as the parent avers, it's already not terribly centrist. Most of these "non-partisan" organizations drift towards liberalism over time, the exact reasons for this dynamic are hard to pin down, but it happens all over the place.

The ground game

[westlake]

"All politics is local."

No one takes you seriously in American politics if you are not willing to begin by taking on the grunt work of winning state and local elections.

Re:The real Internet Party, liquid democracy,in Sp

[sco08y]

That's pretty interesting that they're doing that, but flipping through the sites, I can't see any attempt to explain why it's a remotely good idea. Criticisms of direct democracy go all the way back to Plato, do they attempt to answer them?

Also, isn't there an issue with people supporting a traditional party and then voting in the "liquid democracy" anyway?

"Third Parties" in a 1.125 party system!

[Paracelcus]

It's a sham, a distraction, there's no "there" there, we are drowning in well established "third" parties none of which can get on a non local (city/county) ballot! The REAL power in the USofA will never allow a "third" party to succeed!

Remember, the US is NOT a democracy, it's an oligarchy, the biggest corporations are calling the shots, The Shrub, Obombemall, are (regardless of foolish rhetoric) the same extension of the real goals and policies of their masters.

Waste of TIme

[Relic of the Future]

Centrist can't win, not unless over 83% of voters think the "left" option is too far left and 83% think the "right" option is too far right. And current polling suggest we're about 75% for those (assuming that, when pressed, half of "about right" responses would be "too far"), so any centrist party will just be a spoiler for whichever major party they're closer too.

You would need a consensus-seeking election method, like approval voting; then centrists are practically guaranteed to win.

Re:liberal

[SteveFoerster]

Y and Z sound like the Nolan Chart. What does X add that isn't represented by the others?

Mod Up Please

[cultiv8]

That genuinely made me laugh out loud.

US needs complete gov't overhaul

[theshibboleth]

I don't really think any attempt to govern better still using the same underlying system (at all levels) will succeed, and even if it did things would just end up back the way they started. I think what we actually need is a system that disincentivizes people to playing to the crowds, etc. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and it seems that there's a systematic effort to inculcate the idea in all of our minds from an early age that American Democracy is the best possible form of government, but if you think about it, our supposed democratic traditions are responsible for a lot of the problems in our society. For instance, it makes large yet relatively easily won over groups like corporations and unions able to have disproportionate influence. So once elected, politicians rarely do more than what is required for them to get re-elected by appeasing those groups. If on the other hand we took jobs like mayor, governor, senator, president, etc. and made them true civil service jobs (i.e. no different than being an engineer for the city's sewer lines) than we would probably be living in a much more efficient and less corrupt society. There would of course be problems with this approach--mainly that it could easily become a dictatorship--but the "checks and balances" system provides a template for possible countermeasures to that problem. In addition to that system, the U.S. judicial system (at least below the level of the Supreme Court, which is far more politicized) provides evidence that relatively dictatorial systems can nevertheless be fair.

In Australia

[c0lo]

Senator online - registered as a party, entered the 2010 election and got... 17000+ votes (a bit over 0.1%)

Re:liberal

[Penguinisto]

There is actually a difference between each.

X axis (state control over the individual): This involves things like speed limits, banned substances or items, zoning laws, things like that... that is, how much state control over individual action is one willing to tolerate or desire?

Y axis (fiscal ideology): How much money is one willing to have government spend and levy? Should money be no object to achieve governmental goals (and taxation not a bother), or should it be done with as little spending as possible, with as little taxation as possible?

Z axis (charity): How much charity should government participate in? This covers things like foreign aid, welfare/public assistance, health care, etc.

Re:liberal

[SteveFoerster]

Sorry, to me, Z still just seems either like Y restated or perhaps a subset of Y. But I do agree that one could divide social freedom and economic freedom into sections, and have each on its own axis.

Re:liberal

[sco08y]

The problem is, politics is more than one dimensional. It is even more than two dimensional.

In fact, it is (at least) fully cartesian: The X axis is one's desire/tolerance for state control over individuals in general (order vs individualism), the Y axis is one's fiscal ideological inclination (spending/taxation tolerance), and the Z axis is one's social ideological inclination (charity vs non-involvement).

Most folks only think in one-dimensional left-right terms, which is IMHO stupid and dangerous.

You can describe politics with any number of axes, but when you count actual people and what they believe and who they want to live with, you'll find they're clustered around the two poles of politics: left and right.

Sure, there are plenty of flavors of each side, interventionist / isolationist, establishment / populist, etc. But these aren't related to substantial philosophical differences. This can be surprising, but the interventionist argument is we need to act aggressively to prevent threats, whereas the isolationist argument is that our actions are what create the threat. The stated goal of both is peace.

Your basic formula for the left is a developed, uniform state that provides comprehensive social services and welfare, polices your neighbors, actively regulates business and promotes social development. Your basic formula for the right is a federation of smaller states that provide minimal services, rely on you to resolve disputes with your neighbors, provides standards for businesses to operate in, and doesn't meddle with society.

People have come up with other formulas and... they either don't work or are more refinements of the big two. That's why people don't pay attention to them, it's not that people think that left and right are the only options. They've read history and seen that countless people have proposed a third way or other plans, have tried them, and they came up short.

Internet Voting

[More Trouble]

How exactly are they going to do "Internet Voting" in a non-bogus way?

My platform: Social Security and Medicare for all

[Paul Fernhout]

With no age limits. That's it. Everything else flows from that.

Here is a post from today by me with lots of links to pages with more links as to why this makes sense and would eventually restructure the USA in a healthy, joyful, abundant, and more intrinsically/mutually secure way:
    http://groups.google.com/group/postscarcity/msg/cc6c635340b394e6

Parent post is paranoid trash

[Xest]

"Check where this initiative originates from, indeed, and observe how it follows a pattern. This is something that we are seeing more and more, like in UK with the creation of the Lib Dems. The creation of new parties, so-called centrists but mostly taking votes on the left, ensuring the election of conservatives, or at least of a coalition government dominated by the conservatives."

What a complete and utter load of tosh. Seriously. I suggest you have a look at the history of the Lib Dems, they weren't merely just a party that appeared out of nowhere, but grew from the liberal party of old, having a history that goes back over a hundred years.

Further, you appear to have swallowed the MurdochMedia line of how the Lib Dems are just letting the Tories run the country and so forth but this is further a crock of shit. Tuition fees is the most common stick that is waved, a raise to £9,000! how could the Lib Dems do this! Well, it's quite obvious- the Tories were actually gunning for £12,000 fees, but the Lib Dems were able to at least pull it to £9,000, which, given their share of the vote, is a fairly fair proportional decrease. Their biggest mistake though is not advertising this fact more widely, and not standing up for themselves a bit more.

They would have gone into coalition with Labour - and even tried - but it was a spent force, even at that point, even at the edge of losing all power, they wouldn't agree to drop the likes of the ID card programme and so forth. What were the Lib Dems to do? allow an unstable government when our country was near bankrupt? allow the Tories to try and get away with doing things fully their own way? have a weak non-majority coalition with a party that had so far lost it's way, it was more right wing then than even the Lib Dems are now, whilst not knowing who that parties new leader would be - hoping for David and ending up with Ed as is the case now? No thank you.

Look I hate the Tories too, I hate much of what Clegg has done since being elected, but it's hard to look back and think that any of the alternatives would've been better. Clegg should be more vocal about where they're swaying the Tories, but to suggest they're helping them because they're a secret bunch of underground right wing sleepers is utterly absurd.

An interesting thing came out of the whole News of the World scandal and that was party leaders publcations of meetings with press leaders. It was rather interesting to see that Clegg had actually still had more meetings with Left leaning press leaders than anyone else including union puppet Miliband. It was interesting that Cameron hadn't met up with some left wing press such as The Guardian, at all.

If the Lib Dems are so right wing, why have they been out to destroy Murdoch for so long rather than courting him? Why have they been courting the left wing press?

The fact is, your conspiracy theory utterly ignores the real full history of Liberals in Britain, and makes even less sense in the face of important fundamental facts.

Re:Parent post is paranoid trash

[tehcyder]

. Tuition fees is the most common stick that is waved, a raise to £9,000! how could the Lib Dems do this! Well, it's quite obvious- the Tories were actually gunning for £12,000 fees, but the Lib Dems were able to at least pull it to £9,000,

Big deal, they should be zero.

And the Lib Dems have quite brilliantly shot themselves in the foot with this coalition. No one I know who switched from Labour to Lib Dem at the last election will ever do so again (I live in a solidly Tory area, so a lot of people see voting for the Labour candidate as pointless).

If I'd wanted a bunch of rich right wing bastards backin control I'd have voted Tory in the first place.

Re:Parent post is paranoid trash

[Xest]

"Big deal, they should be zero."

Not zero, because those of us who were around when they were zero remember a generation of people who really just used the tax payer funded 3 year stay away from their parents as an excuse not to work, not because they have an inherent interest in further education. However I agree they should be much lower- the old style fees were more reasonable, £5000 max perhaps. But my point is that I don't really see how the Lib Dems are to blame here, Labour in 97 promised continuation of no fees, then introduced them, the Lib Dems this time round said they didn't want them, but weren't given enough support from the electorate to achieve that goal- the electorate gave the highest vote count to the Tories who wanted £12k fees, they got a decrease by £3k, not brilliant, but better than nothing.

I agree the Lib dems have shot themselves in the foot but I think it's more that they haven't stood up to their partners- they've let their partners blame them for all the bad decisions whilst their partners take the credit for the better stuff themselves. Clegg is acting like a love sick puppy rather than standing up when he thinks something is wrong. He's finally started to show at least some balls over the whole Murdoch thing but hardly enough, he still defended Cameron the other day which was stupid.

However, looking back despite all the stupidity of the current government it still is at least better than the previous Brown led government by a longshot. Would it be better than an Ed Milliband led government? Time will tell I guess. Personally I'm certainly swaying towards Labour now but the idea of it still sickens me because to this day they've STILL not dropped the painfully expensive, fundamentally flawed, and grossly intrusive ID card database, so what can one do? The minor parties are stupid- I'd vote Green but it's become an over the top feminist rights party rather than a party with better environment policies so I can't back that. Most of the rest of them are just a bunch of racists and the likes of The Pirate Party will likely never run in my constituency. The only alternative is of course to just not vote, which despite always being told you must vote blah blah looks like the only sensible option- I want my say, but I also don't want to back a party that's going to infringe my rights, or shit on me in some other way, but those are the only choices now.

Of course it's not like I have a real vote anyway seeing as the electorate was brainwashed by the Tory lobby into keeping the "lol I only have to satisfy around 25% of my constituents to win 100% of the power in my seat" voting system and live in a safe seat area such that if I don't vote Labour my vote is meaningless.

Re:The real Internet Party, liquid democracy,in Sp

[Edulix]

The criticism to direct democracy does not apply to PDI. Partido de Internet is NOT about direct democracy - it's about both direct and representative democracy. You get what you want when you want. The most probable use-case is you stablish a voting delegate, and then once in a while you check that your delegate is doing right. If there's an important voting you can always check the vote your delegate will proxy as yours, and if you don't agree you can emit a direct vote for a specific voting and continue delegating in the rest. And of course if that happens a lot, then you can change your delegate.

Oh and you cannot stablish a voting delegate and forget about it for years: the authorities in charge of the secrecy of the vote need to be many and will have a period of renewal, which could be say 2-4 years. When they change, the votes (including the delegations, which are treated as a special kind of vote, where the options are not YES/NO/ABSTENTION but DELEGATE 1,DELEGATE 2,etc) need to be re-emitted too. So in the end it can function as regular representative democracy where you vote (i.e. delegate) every 4 years, BUT you can change your vote at any time, and you can emit a direct vote if needed for important matters, working as direct democracy when the user wants only (which can be always, never, or anything in between). This is useful because some people always want to vote for X party, but in reality they don't agree 100% with it. For exmaple in spain 50+% voted for Partido Popular, but ~97% was against irak war promoted by Partido Popular. All of them could have voted NO had liquid democracy been in place. People voting to a traditional party and then also voting in Ágora "virtual parliament" is a non-issue for us: we want more users, and those must naturally come from those voting traditional parties, so that's a "transitional" stage, and as marketing. If lots of people from another party try our system, we believe we will gain lots of people that otherwise wouldn't have known our system and wouldn't have a chance to vote to our party.

Re:liberal

[tehcyder]

As you clearly need more than 3 axes (e.g. I personally would want to see axes for approval/disapproval of torture, religious or other irrational beliefs, level of economic equality desirable, level of sexual equality desirable, and so on) you might just as well write an essay.

Re:Sounds nice, but... horrible idea indeed

[tehcyder]

er the lib dems are a fairly old political party the liberals predate the labour party

Yes, but the Lib Dems arose from the merging of Liberals and Social Democrats, and the SDs were ex-labour who decided they didn't like being associated with nasty socialists (Roy Jenkins, David Owen et al).
Broiadly speaking, the Lib Dems are more likely to pick up disaffected labour rather than tory supporters.

"viable"?

[vanyel]

I'll believe it when they manage to get even 20% of the vote...

So then, Elizabeth Warren, 2012?...

[GeddyT]

Can I get an "Amen"?

Re:The real Internet Party, liquid democracy,in Sp

[sco08y]

The criticism to direct democracy does not apply to PDI. Partido de Internet is NOT about direct democracy - it's about both direct and representative democracy. You get what you want when you want.

That sounds like a great selling point, but I think you're glossing over the fundamental criticism of democracy expressed by people since Plato, which is, basically, that it's mob rule.

If I'm an artist insulting some religious icon and the mob is screaming for my head, the whole point of limiting democracy is that the mob doesn't get what it wants. They have no right to censor my speech, ergo one person can tell millions to go fuck themselves. Enumerated powers, checks and balances, representative democracy, confederation, all of these are tools to limit mob rule.

But your system puts no bar on the tyranny of the majority. Worse still, no one will care who represents them since they can overrule them any time they want, so with no purpose and guidance from voters, those representatives are really just there to enrich themselves through corruption.

This is useful because some people always want to vote for X party, but in reality they don't agree 100% with it. For exmaple in spain 50+% voted for Partido Popular, but ~97% was against irak war promoted by Partido Popular. All of them could have voted NO had liquid democracy been in place.

But the problem is that what people want doesn't work. A political party will put together a platform that they have to defend in debates. That means, for instance, that they'll say, "I want to spend more on schools." And so their opponents will say, "but how will you pay for them?" So they answer, "I'll raise taxes." In a direct democracy, people will vote for more schools and vote to keep taxes down.

In fact, in the US we had a long history of living pretty carefully within our means, but in 1913 when we enacted the 17th amendment, which introduced popular elections of the Senate. (In the US, the House writes the budget, but it has to concur with the Senate. Before, the Senators were appointed by the States and represented their interests, but now they're effectively no different than the House.) Ever since 1913, we have steadily increased our debt and are now at a breaking point.

Re:The real Internet Party, liquid democracy,in Sp

[Edulix]

That sounds like a great selling point, but I think you're glossing over the fundamental criticism of democracy expressed by people since Plato, which is, basically, that it's mob rule.

If I'm an artist insulting some religious icon and the mob is screaming for my head, the whole point of limiting democracy is that the mob doesn't get what it wants. They have no right to censor my speech, ergo one person can tell millions to go fuck themselves. Enumerated powers, checks and balances, representative democracy, confederation, all of these are tools to limit mob rule.

We have a constitution, and it must be obeyed. The mob cannot censor speech because any law would be against it and the Supreme Court would go against such law.

But your system puts no bar on the tyranny of the majority. Worse still, no one will care who represents them since they can overrule them any time they want, so with no purpose and guidance from voters, those representatives are really just there to enrich themselves through corruption.

The executive power represents the country and within the law they can do whatever they want, so yeah people should care about them. The proxy representatives in the legislative chamber have no power because they always have to vote what people tell them to, so they cannot be corrupted in that way, and the delegates in which people delegate via internet voting are the ones with real power, but their vote is public and if they corrupt, people can instantly change their delegation, which acts as a check and balance system.

You talk about the tyranny of the mob, but the real tyranny I know of is that of the rich and powerful minority, the one we have been suffering in this "democracy". Surely any democratic system is far from perfect, but a liquid democracy puts a bar on the current biggest problem, the rich and powerful minority. They won't be able to convince as easily the mob to do whatever they want as a few congressmen and senators, and anyway at any time the mob realizes they have been tricked it will never be too late to change back the law, something really really difficult with other systems.

Will the "mob" enact stupid laws? Sure, but as Former Google CIO suggest, doing dumb things might not be that bad. And really, can it get much worse than the current system? The current check and balances does not work, and I think liquid democracy will work much better and transparently.

Re:The real Internet Party, liquid democracy,in Sp

[sco08y]

The executive power represents the country and within the law they can do whatever they want, so yeah people should care about them. The proxy representatives in the legislative chamber have no power because they always have to vote what people tell them to, so they cannot be corrupted in that way, and the delegates in which people delegate via internet voting are the ones with real power, but their vote is public and if they corrupt, people can instantly change their delegation, which acts as a check and balance system.

C'mon now, this is civics 101. Who introduces bills? Who debates them in committees? Who adds amendments, earmarks, etc.? Legislation is far more than just voting on the finished bill. Representatives have plenty of power even if they're not voting. Unless they have a very good explanation for why they didn't mention this, it really seems like you need to ask them some tough questions. Just what are these guys doing behind closed doors?

You talk about the tyranny of the mob, but the real tyranny I know of is that of the rich and powerful minority, the one we have been suffering in this "democracy". Surely any democratic system is far from perfect, but a liquid democracy puts a bar on the current biggest problem, the rich and powerful minority. They won't be able to convince as easily the mob to do whatever they want as a few congressmen and senators, and anyway at any time the mob realizes they have been tricked it will never be too late to change back the law, something really really difficult with other systems.

The "rich" are a shibboleth used by people who need a conveniently vague villain to direct your attention away from the fact that they're about to fuck you. The super mega rich really don't need the government to make them wealthy. After the first billion, it's all a game to them. No, most people sell out their neighbors for a pittance. You look at spies who sold out their country, it's usually not for very much, often just to pay off gambling debts.

Political operatives have been doing this for decades, and there is a real art to fucking people. If you look at the laws that screw us, they are carefully crafted to be very popular, and they benefit very specific groups, not "the rich."

The oldest scam is "soak the rich." Hey, guess what happens when you get older? You make more money, and usually you wind up in the top tax bracket. But unlike Bill Gates, you don't have an expensive accountant to hide all your money. So you wind up being the one who got soaked!

Do you agree that we need campaign finance laws to keep money out of politics? If you do, you fell for the old incumbent protection racket, in which arcane regulations muzzle ordinary citizens. Try running a political ad yourself, some time. You'll get a polite letter explaining that you need to follow the regulations or be fined or go to jail, and you'll find they're impossible to abide by without expensive lawyers.

Do you think your plumber ought to be licensed to ensure that you get quality service? Then you fell for the cartel racket, in which licensing fees and exams are used to constrain the supply of labor and drive up prices.

Do you think there ought to be a minimum wage or, better, a "living" wage? That's a scam used to prevent immigrants and young people from getting jobs.

How about gun control? It's just common sense regulations, right? That's what the Klu Klux Klan called for, after all, it's hard to lynch black people if they can shoot back at you.

Are big corporations in on it? You bet: they champion tons of regulations, like worker's compensation, safety regulations, benefits, building codes, business practices, etc. When you have a whole department to take care of regulations, it's easy to comply. But it routinely puts their smaller competitors out of business.

What about all those environmental regulations, they must be good, right? Did you know that corporations like General Electric paid no taxes w