Is a multiparty system better than a two-party system?

[BrainGlutton]

There are several structural electoral reforms -- not just easier ballot-access laws, but basic, structural reforms -- that, if implemented in the U.S., might facilitate our two "big tent" coalition parties breaking up along their natural fault lines into several medium-sized parties, as well as opening the way for existing third parties such as the Greens, Socialists, Libertarians and America First. These include:

Electoral fusion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fusion This would allow a candidate to be the nominee (so specified on the ballot) of more than one party; small parties could wield some influence by giving or withholding their nomination from a major-party candidate.

Instant-runoff voting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting This would allow the voter to, instead of only choosing one candidate from a list of more than two, rank-order the candidates by preference. It solves the "spoiler" problem. If we had had IRV in 2000, you could have named Nader as your first choice, Gore as your second; if Nader did not get a majority of first-choice votes, your vote still would count to help elect Gore.

Proportional representation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation There are various PR systems. All are designed to ensure the various parties get representation in the legislature in rough proportion to their support among the voters. Under what we use now -- the single-member-distrist "winner-take-all, first-past-the-post" system -- if 20% of the voters in your state vote Green in the next state legislative election, there still will be no Greens in the state legislature because there won't be enough Green voters in ANY ONE DISTRICT to elect a candidate.

Many countries get by with a multiparty system. Would such a thing improve politics in America? I think it would. ALL points of view would be seriously debated in the legislatures and Congress -- but nothing would actually get done unless a multiparty coalition backed it (because there would no longer be a "majority party" in any legislature). It would raise our collective political IQ by at least one standard deviation. It would take democracy to the next level.

[TechBear_Seattle]

1. Would a multiparty system improve politics in America? HELL YES!!

No more having a choice between just Tweedle-Fascist and Tweedle-Enabler. No more of that "lesser of two evils" bull shit. No more having to vote for disaster or not vote at all.

I am very confident that moving away from the Two Party system will reverse the trend of Americans not voting.

[GreenPartyVoter]

13. Agreed. There a lot of changes we could make that would improve the system

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. My husband has always wanted viable multiple parties

because, in his words "The corporations can't buy off ALL of them."

I like all these ideas. Thanks for posting them!

[villager]

3. absolutely necessary -- but will it happen before America collapses into

....several different territories?

[harun]

17. Exactly, won't happen until after the revolution.

[iamjoy]

4. I Like It

Your old fashioned populists could go ahead and proudly declare their "Pro-Life" stance without fear of ticking off NOW as they talk to the AFL-CIO.

Your social liberals/fiscal conservatives wouldn't feel like they had to nuance their positions to get the Christian Coalition vote while courting the big corporate donors.

The two party system is crazy. It's one reason (of many) that people are alienated with the process, because they feel no one really speaks for them.

[RFKJrNews]

5. You betcha!

Nearly half the country doesn't vote now...wonder why?

Perhaps a few more *real* choices would bring them out of hiding.




* Please SIGN THE PETITION to draft Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for President:
http://RFKin2008.com

[jobycom]

6. It would be about the same

I like the idea of IRV, but not because it allows people to vote for their "favorite" candidate. That just seems like another way to keep from making up your mind, to me. But it eliminates runoffs, and ensures that the winner is the majority choice. Sort of. You run into anomalies when you have more than three candidates, or when a lot of people don't cast second or third votes. But usually it works.

Electoral fusion seems like a good option, though I haven't thought it through. No reason why a candidate can't form other alliances if he wants, and if the people want.

I don't like proportional representation, at least in our system. I think most Americans would not like voting for party instead of person, even if party is most important. There may be variations of proportional representation I don't know, so I'd be open to hearing about it.

But overall, I don't see an advantage to multi-party systems. A lot of people think a multi-party system would give smaller groups more power, but I don't see how. In multi-party systems, the people elect their reps, then the reps form alliances in the legislature to decide who gets to lead the legislature. Lots of time is spent fighting and wrangling. In our two-party system, those alliances are worked out in the primaries. Each party comprises several factions--these factions would likely be other parties in a multi-party system, and they would have to form their alliances once the legislature opened. In the end, you'd wind up with the same thing. The smaller factions would have to compromise to get what they wanted, and they'd only have as much power as what they could bring to the debate, and the final legislative result would be compromises that no one liked.

Might even give the president more power, because the executive branch wouldn't be divided amongst factions.

Our system has evolved into what it is now. Throwing it out and forcing a system on by law is likely to backfire. More likely, over time it would just evolve back into what we have now.

The one major change I want to see to our system, and this would help at much of what you are trying for, is to increase the size of the House of Representatives. It was originally designed to continue growing as the population grew, but its size was capped in 1911, so each year we have more people represented by that number. Double (I'd like to see triple) that number, make smaller districts, and your representatives suddenly have to listen to you more intently. That gives you a much greater chance that the Green candidate you mentioned would have a shot at getting elected. Here in Austin, we have a very liberal population--so liberal, in fact, that the Green Party is weak because the Dems are liberal enough. Just outside of Austin, that changes completely, of course. Tom DeLay's redistricting plan in 04 took away Austin's representative. He drew Austin into four districts, combining each with a large chunk of conservatives nearby. My old district, for instance, had a progressive liberal (LLoyd Doggett) for the whole city. When it was redrawn, the north part of Austin was combined with a swath of rural texas about 180 miles long, and then part of northern Houston. Give us more reps, and that becomes more difficult.

The other change I'd like is an end to extreme gerrymandering. Each party has drawn districts in the state it controls to be safe for its own party. This means that politicians only have to please their own party, and don't have to worry about the opinions of the other party, or even moderates, since their district has been drawn to prevent challenges. This should be ended. There are reasons for racial gerrymandering, to prevent minorities from being drawn out of any representation, but aside from that, it should be very limited, and by federal law, since state judges will go along with their state party. As we saw in Texas.

Just my thoughts. Long, as always.

[welshTerrier2]

12. "you'd wind up with the same thing"

thoughtful post and good analysis, jobycom.

you talked about how some think a multi-party system would give better representation to their ideas but that you didn't see how. i'd like to take a poke or two at that ...

i think multiple parties would give better representation. let's take an example. let's say my views are compatible with the left-hand 20% of the Democratic Party and that, when candidates are selected, they rarely represent that 20%. that's an approximation, whatever the real statistics might be, of the process we have today. i don't think many in the party, and those who have "gone Green" or just left the party believe they are represented at all.

when we talk about intra-party negotiation, i'm not sure this group I'm referring to even has a seat at the table. but that, of course, does not address your point at all because it doesn't make the case that forming a third party would change the situation. fair enough so far ... but then there's this ...

right now, that 20%, or 5% or 10% or whatever are "picked off" as individuals. we campaign for the lefty; we vote; we lose; we support the eventual nominee; we become invisible. that's the situation we have now.

but, suppose that we did have multiple parties ... suppose that we became not just a bunch of ragtag individuals but "organized" under the auspices of a third party. suppose that on any given piece of legislation, we spoke with one voice, i.e. with one party platform. instead of disappearing after an election, we either had proportional representation so we really did have a representative in the Congress or, even absent that, we had sufficient clout to tip the next election. Now, let's say the Democrats chose to ignore our "organized masses." Now, instead of casting our lot with them, we opted to run our own candidate because we disagreed with them on critical issues.

that's the power I see coming from multiple parties. let's take just two issues that are very current right now: Iraq and wiretapping. As a third party, we say to the Democrats, we want a seat at the table. We are very much in the minority and don't expect to get everything we want but we do expect to be part of the equation. You no play ball; we no play ball. In this scenario, much like a union, we have a party structure to represent us. Absent third parties, where have our voices gone? Poooooof ... they've gone screaming into our pillows ...

the argument is, I guess, that building a coalition to pass legislation and run campaigns would unify minority voices into a more cohesive structure. While it's fair to say there are no guarantees anything would change, clearly the current system disenfranchises a substantial portion of the electorate. Multiple parties are not the ultimate solution to all our problems but I do see them as a more democratic, i.e. representative, structure than we have today.

and that's my "long, as always" ...

[jobycom]

21. Those are good answers, but that's already how it works.

There is a liberal faction of the Democratic Party--people like Dogget, Kucinich, you know the list. Whether they voted as a separate party or as they do now, as members of the Democratic Party, the result would be the same. The media wouldn't pay them any more mind just because they called themselves "The Liberal Party" instead of "The Liberal Branch of the Democratic Party." they wouldn't win any votes they don't win now. They wouldn't have any power to break with the Democrats because they'd still only be a fraction of the total, as they are now. Same fraction, in fact, unless we move to proportional representation, and probably even then. I live in a very liberal town. If we had proportional representation here, the Republicans would celebrate until the cows came home, because they'd finally get a foothold here. In other places, the reverse would happen. Overall, it'd come out about the same.

All of the problems we feel as displaced liberals come not from the two party system, but from the fact that the majority doesn't want, or at least doesn't get that they want, what we want. Having more parties wouldn't help that. I know we all want to fix it so that our minority voice has more power than the other factions that outnumber us, but it won't happen that way. They will still outnumber us, by the same proportions, in any system we devise. And they will still have more money than us. The labels might change, but the basic situation won't.

Our best solution is to work the current system. Try to persuade people that we're right. Form the factions with what we have--either way, we'd still have to do this, and still have to compromise just about everything to win. The bottom line would be that we'd lose the FISA debate, our troops would stay in Iraq, and we'd be just as angry at the same people. Pressure our candidates with what we have. If we can't get it to work this way, we aren't going to be able to pressure them any more with more parties. The numbers will still be the same.

I don't know, you've got some good points, especially about more parties raising visibility. I can see the media interviewing us as an amusing side story to the evesdropping bill, for instance, if they knew we were a civil liberties group who opposed it. I wouldn't expect miracles, of course--the media campaigns constantly for the conservative party, and I doubt that would change. But it would at least make people more aware of the opposition, maybe, and maybe give them a chance now and then to voice their displeasure by voting for a third party. But even there, my main experience, nationally and locally, with people voting third party is that doing so usually throws the election to the least favored party--as with the Greens voting for Nader, and costing the Democrats New Hampshire, thus the election (Yes, there were other ways the Dems could have won anyway, but it didn't help).

Overall, I'm not really against it, so much as I see it as a cop-out. We can work the current system just as well as a multi-party system, so why not just do it. No system is going to make it easier on us. More parties might give us some advantages, but would take away others--for instance, the fact that the Democratic Party knows they need our vote and has to acknowledge us at least a little. Then again, that's the same as it would be in a divided government. I guess it just seems like a lot of trouble to wind up in a different system with the same problem we have now--that we are outnumbered and can't get the media to report things as they are. I don't see a different system changing that.

It's not really that I'm against it, it's just that

[bbgrunt]

7. No system will improve things without integrity of the voting process.

but I would welcome a change that allows people to vote for the candidate of their choice without worrying about screwing their second choice.

[Hollow Shells]

8. Yes.

[Throd]

9. Would a bowl of ice cream be better than a shit sandwich?

I think a multiparty system would allow politics to become more nuanced.

[Solon]

10. The beauty of it is that we could at least start the process without the need for a Constitutional..

Amendment. There is nothing in the Constitution forbidding PR representation, party list, or at-large elections, etc. And all of those can break the hold of the 2 party system. Work on it on a state by state basis.

[Disturbed]

11. Yes. I prefer a Parliamentary System of Govt.

Busholini would have lasted around a week or less in that system.

[BrainGlutton]

14. That's not the same thing at all.

A parliamentary system is one where there's no separation of powers -- the legislature/parliament elects the executive/prime minister and cabinet. It is compatible with a two-party systme (like the UK's, for most of its history) or a multiparty system. However, when a multiparty system is combined with a parliamentary system it sometimes raises the problem of "forming a government" when there is no majority party in the legislature; usually a "coalition government" is necessary, and some object that that allows the smaller parties to play the role of "the tail wagging the dog" -- e.g., if an election in the UK returned a Parliament with no majority party, the Liberal Democrats, by far the smallest of the three biggest parties, could choose whether they wanted to govern in coalition with the Conservative or the Labour Party. But if we facilitate the emergence of a multiparty system in the U.S. while still keeping our separation-of-powers system, where the president or governor is separately elected from the legislature, then the "forming a government" problem does not arise.

[Solon]

18. What you say is true, it would mostly affect the House, and maybe Presidential ballots...

for the Runoff voting. In our case, the change would be far less drastic than in most other nations, the Senate would most likely still be dominated by Democrats or Republicans, though some state based parties may form and elect Senators, depends on how things play out. But these changes would mostly change the House of Representatives, and that's where you control the purse strings.

[liberalpragmatist]

40. Multiparty presidential systems tend to be unstable, though

There's no way of knowing how it would translate to the U.S., but in countries with highly proportional voting systems and fractious, multiparty politics, presidential systems tend to be unstable and become authoritarian, such as in Latin America.

Unless the parties form 2 or 3 relatively stable coalitions, presidents typically take power with dubious mandates (small pluralities, for example) and have a very difficult time getting an agenda through Congress where their party may only control something like 1/5 of the seats. Historically, that has produced weak presidencies that become vulnerable to military takeover or authoritarianism, as strongmen decide to just ignore the legislature and rule by decree.

In a multiparty parliamentary system, no government can be formed unless it has the backing of the majority of parliament. That's why true multiparty systems work better under parliamentary control.

[Progressive Friend]

24. IRV has already been passed and implemented in some localities

[Colobo]

15. Of course. The more options the better it is.

[BrainGlutton]

16. Here is some more info on ballot fusion:

On the website of the Working Families Party of New York (one of the remnants of the New Party effort of the 1990s: http://www.workingfamiliesparty.org/fusion.html

And for info on IRV and PR, see the website of the Center for Voting & Democracy: http://www.fairvote.org/

[flying rabbit]

19. How many more

people vote in these types of systems vs ours? Would it increase voter turnout significantly?

[BrainGlutton]

22. Most of the world's democracies use PR in some form.

The exceptions are the UK (which invented the single-member-district system) and its former colonies (including the U.S.) -- except for New Zealand, which switched to PR a few years back; and South Africa, where the ANC agreed to PR in the post-Apartheid constitution as a political concession to the whites (who, under a single-member-district system, would have had no representation in Parliament at all).

I can't speak to voter turnout in specific figures, but I think it's well known European countries have higher turnout in general.

[ncabot22]

20. I think so

I think a multi-party system is better because, believe it or not, it forces compromise and parties have to work together--unless they have a clear majority.

[FlyingTiger]

23. In a word.... yes.

In two words, fuck yes.

[proud patriot]

25. The more the merrier IMO

:hi:

[proud patriot]

26. I also support Instant run off voting

:)

[WCGreen]

27. It's not possible...

We have a winner take all system that encourages the two party structure...

[BrainGlutton]

29. But, that's just the point. Should we change that system?

[mohc]

28. In a word....yes

But I would not limit myself to the options you listed. Electoral fusion alone would not really empower smaller parties, but with a viable multi-party system, I would not see any harm in it.

I am not completely sold on IRV. So long as the "third" party has less support than its closest main party, it is not much different from the current system. One could debate it would drive more turnout in the short term as voters can register their true first choice, but after a prolonged period where they end up having to support the major party anyway, that support would fall. If that "third" party should ever supplant its closest major party, often the exact opposite of what they want to happen ends up happening. Now the major party has its votes runoff, but it may split between the other major party and the now larger "third" party. The result being the rise of the minor party throws the election to the very major party it opposes. IRV can help to increase a more volatile electorate (which I consider a good thing) if the "third" party is actually a centrist party between the 2 major parties. As support moves back and forth between the major parties, it will swing the balance more rapidly than our electorate does.

And as stated by other posters, PR has the problem of making the election more about electing parties than representatives. Maybe its a better system, but I think there would be major hurdles to implementation.

My preference would be to try and find some sort of "proxy" system. There would be so many practical limitations to it, but I can not think of any system that would be more truly representative. Voters would vote for whomever they wanted, not necessarily even district level, just whomever best represented them. Some base limit would remove those that did not get enough support, and the remaining would all be elected. When the representatives voted, they would vote relative to their vote proportions. Sort of like corporate board votes, where votes in elections would be like the "stock" the representatives have, and those with more "stock" have more say.

[BrainGlutton]

30. Of course, we cannot empower left-wing third parties without empowering right-wing third parties.

Such as Pat Buchanan's paleocon/nativist/isolationist America First Party. (But don't worry about Nazis and such, they would remain marginal and shut out.)

What are the prospects, I wonder, for a trans-ideological coalition of third parties to lobby for electoral reform? Strange bedfellows, you know?

[sabbat hunter]

31. oh I would worry

they could form their platform and popularize it thru demigogery and retoric. That is exactly what the Nazi's did in Germany. Remember when Hitler first rose to power the Nazi's did not have a majority in the Rieschtag but formed a coalition with more moderate parties. Whom of course they pushed aside at their first chance.

I would be very worried about a paelocon/nativist/racist party gaining just enough power to swing an election and control a lot more power than their numbers indicate.

That is what happens in Israel, where the small far right wing and religious parties only have a couple of seats, but enough to strongly influence policy.

[BrainGlutton]

32. America today is not Germany in the 1930s . . .

An overtly racist political party would be small, marginal, and would galvanize a multiracial opposition.

Germany has a PR system but has prevented the political resurgence of the Nazis by, among other things, setting a 5% vote threshold before a party can get any representation in the Parliament/Bundestag. (This has also frozen the Greens out of Parliament in many election cycles.)

[sueh]

33. Yes, but the electoral college would have to be abolished.

[BrainGlutton]

37. Not necessarily.

If we used IRV to elect presidents, that still could be done at the state level only, with the state's electoral votes going to the overall winner, as now.

[Vidar]

34. Of course it is!

[CK_John]

35. Multi party systems are different, not better. They wouldn't work here, because,

Multi party systems are based on policy and not a candidate. Even at DU we would end up with 5 or more parties. Americans folklore is an; "either your with me or against me" system. We also feel it is right to vote for the best person (as we see it) and not the party per se.

In a multi party system the candidate is a mere stand in for the party and its agenda. He is committed to vote as the party says he/she should vote.

If you want to understand American politics it all boils down to the answer to this question. "Who is more important to society, the person who builds(or grows) something(DEM) or the person who sells that something(GOP)?

[BrainGlutton]

36. I don't get it -- why wouldn't that work here?

The content of a candidate's politics is much more important than his or her "character." It is better to be well governed by sinners than misgoverned by saints. Are the American people uniquely incapable of seeing that?

[LordJFT]

38. NO

[BrainGlutton]

43. Why not?

[liberalpragmatist]

39. It depends

I'm a pretty firm Democrat, but I do think that there should be space for other viewpoints. Plenty of countries have 2 party systems, and yet none have as restrictive a two-party system as the U.S., where third parties are even shut out of state legislatures!

I'd like to see easier third-party ballot access in all races, full public financing, abolition of the electoral college, IRV in Senate races, and SOME degree of proportional representation used to elect the House of Representatives. By some degree, I mean something modest - like increasing the size of the House and setting 20% aside to be elected on a mixed-member basis (ala Germany, New Zealand, Japan, etc.) or using small multimember districts (about 3 members - 5 at most), elected by the cumulative vote or, better yet, the single-transferable vote.

At the same time, I don't think truly multiparty systems are really all that. Politics often becomes very unstable when you have too many parties and I prefer that if a party has a strong plurality of support that they have a working majority. I think the best systems are those with two major parties and 2 or 3 smaller parties.

[Clintonista2]

41. I've lived under a multi-party system all my life, and I say YES

In Canada, we have 4 major parties (Liberals, Conservatives, New Democratic Party, Bloc Quebecois), as well as the Green Party, which doesn't have a seat in Parliament (yet), but has roughly 10% of the national support. There's always a party that represents you, and the "big parties" know it. In America, if you're a Democrat and the Democrats piss you off, you're probably still going to vote Democratic. Who else would you vote for? Republican? In Canada, if the Liberals piss you off, you can vote NDP, or Green, for instance. It means politicians have to take you seriousley, and there's always someone in parliament who represents /you/

[moondust]

42. It's definitely worth a try.

I'm sure it is in the best interest of The People but not in the best interest of duopolistic professional politicians. Therefore it won't happen.

[BrainGlutton]

44. Remember women's suffrage?

When Susan B. Anthony started campaigning for it, it must have appeared an impossible goal -- because it had to be approved by entirely male politicians answerable to entirely male voters. But the suffragists wouldn't give up. Eventually they got a few states out West to try it, and no major social collapse resulted, which made the idea easier to sell on a national level.

[moondust]

47. All fine and well.

Thank you for restoring a sliver of hope!

However, I remain skeptical that it could happen. In the case of women, half the population was disenfranchised. Not so today. Are Americans really that interested in politics to buck the system and go through with such a dramatic change? Half don't even vote as it is.

But I'm all for it personally.

[BrainGlutton]

48. Does it matter? Major changes are made by the politically active minority.

[AnotherGreenWorld]

45. Yes.

[Hawkowl]

46. Diffuse parties = diffuse power

Anything that lessens the chance of a dictatorship by making it more difficult to consolidate power is a good thing. Our current 2 party system is barely better than the communist one party system such as China has or the old USSR.

[LWolf]

49. Yes. No question.

I'll add a couple of other voting systems suggested to me by someone who doesn't think IRV is the way to go:

The Schulze method, also known as: Schwartz Sequential Dropping (SSD), Cloneproof Schwartz Sequential Dropping (CSSD), Beatpath Method, Beatpath Winner, Path Voting, and Path Winner. A similar system is "Ranked Pairs."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_Pairs

I don't know anything about them, but they deserve at least a read!

[eridani]

50. Multiparty systems always boil down to two parties for governing

They can only govern by joining together, and that usually winds up giving you center-left or center-right coalitions. Without a parliamentary system here, we do our coalitions before rather than after elections.