| Shadow1980 said: And I quote: "Your point was that elections where a party holds or forms a coalition that constitutes a majority happens far less commonly in Canada and the U.K." No. No. No. A thousand times no. You were putting words in my mouth again, just like you were claiming I was "hyperfocused" on majorities when I didn't even mention them. I don't give a damn about coalitions, either. I never even used the word "coalition." Twice you put words in my mouth. Twice! Let me spell it out to you as clearly as I can: When it comes to legislative elections, I care about one thing and one thing only: REPRESENTATION THAT IS AS ACCURATE AS POSSIBLE!. If the vote split is 40 blue/40 red/20 orange, the seats shouldn't be 55 blue/35 red/10 orange or some other out of whack result. FPTP rules consistently result in disproportional results in legislative elections. For example, the current composition of the Canadian House of Commons is 157 seats for the Liberals, 121 for the Conservatives, 32 for BQ, 24 for NDP, and 3 for the Greens. Based on the national vote, it should be something closer to 112 Lib./116 Con./26 BQ/54 NDP/22 Greens/6 PPC, with two to spare. In the U.S., with just two major parties, we can still end up with unrepresentative results. At the national level, in 2012, the Democrats got more votes nationwide than the Republicans for House election, yet the GOP ended up with an absolute majority of 234 seats, or ~53.4% of the total? At the state level, we have results like those here in my home state of South Carolina, where Democrats got 44.37% of the statewide vote but only 2 out of 7 seats instead of 3 (in 2016, they won only 1 out of 7 seats despite getting just shy of 40% of the statewide vote). In neighboring North Carolina, the Democrats have only managed to win a quarter of all U.S. House seats in the past several elections despite the statewide results being a whole hell of a lot closer than 25%/75% (it was a mere two-point gap in 2018 in the GOP's favor, and that's with one Republican candidate running unopposed; take him out of the equation and the Democrats won the most votes statewide). How is that representative? How is that fair? And if you agree that the rules suck, then why are you defending them so adamantly? Because there's more than two major parties in Canada and the UK despite them? That they have so many parties holding seats in the legislature is not in and of itself proof that FPTP works, or that it doesn't produce vote splitting and spoilers. The unrepresentative results is evidence that just because it can support three or more parties doesn't mean that it does so in a fair and proper manner. FPTP creates vote splitting/spoilers. FPTP creates unrepresentative results in legislative elections. FPTP is vulnerable to gerrymandering. FPTP is a garbage system and needs to go. Hardly any advanced nation uses it anymore aside from the U.S., UK, & Canada, and all three of those nations consistently fall prey to the drawbacks of that system. We need ranked-choice voting. We need proportional representation. |
Misunderstanding your position and "presuming your intent" are two very different things. I might have done the first, but I certainly didn't do the latter. Anyway, when you said this,
"Elections in the UK and Canada are a horrible mess because of the existence of more than two major parties. They make our elections look neat and tidy by comparison, and ours are already unrepresentative enough. FPTP rules are not the norm for lower house elections in most of the world, and it's easy to see why."
What exactly did you mean? For example, when you say "ours are already unrepresentative enough" and you precede that by "they make our elections look neat and tidy by comparison" does it not follow that you think Canada's and Britain's elections are more unrepresentative than the American elections? And since all of that was preceded by your concern that the party in charge ruled with a minority government that had a plurality, I (maybe wrongly) gathered that you were suggesting that the American legislature is more representative because majorities (or larger pluralities, near majorities) control it. Hence my response about how only looking at the party representation and not the representation of policy positions in the legislature as a whole is what I'd consider the wrong way to measure how representative a legislature is. I'd argue that if 80% of people support something like Medicare For All, 80% of a legislature (or as close as possible to that) should support Medicare For All. Likewise, with any other policy.
I wasn't defending the rules. I was defending voting third party in certain circumstances, given that the rules are what they are and aren't likely to change soon enough for the 2022 and 2024 elections. If I had my way we'd switch to a Mixed-Member Proportional system, like what exists in Germany. Where did I ever defend first past the post?
