Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Pope OoO (Out of Order) on February 28, 2011 at 1:12am

There already are several parties. I believe the Tea Party's largely responsible for the movement that caused large Democratic losses in 2010 elections. I hope that the Tea Party can sponsor a candidate for 2012 because it would split the conservative vote and make it easier for Obama to win.

Florida was the swing state that decided the entire, 2000 presidential election. If it weren't for Green Party votes in Florida, Gore would have been president instead of Bush (see wikipedia):

In the 2000 presidential election in Florida, George W. Bush defeated Al Gore by 537 votes. Nader received 97,421 votes, which led to claims that he was responsible for Gore's defeat. Nader, both in his book Crashing the Party and on his website, states: "In the year 2000, exit polls reported that 25% of my voters would have voted for Bush, 38% would have voted for Gore and the rest would not have voted at all." (which would net a 13%, 12,665 votes, advantage for Gore over Bush.)

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Permalink Reply by Atheist Exile on February 28, 2011 at 1:21am

Hi Gabriel,

The Republican party has gotten more and more extreme.  It's hard to find much to agree with there.  Beginning with Clinton the Democratic party has shifted somewhat to the right (center), which is something I've also done over the last decade or two.  The extremes of both the right (ultra-conservative) and left (ultra-liberal) turn me off.

There are many alternative parties to choose from but none of them have put together a platform that I can prefer over the Democrats.  If one came along . . . I'd surely give it a serious look.

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Permalink Reply by Eoganacht on February 28, 2011 at 2:48am

In New Zealand, I think anyone citizen can start their own party or run for MP. We have National (Commercial based), Labour (Social welfare), The Greens (enviromental), Maori (represents the Indigenous people), and various other parties that serve other needs. The two big ones are National and Labour and occupy different ends of the spectrum but general try to achive the same thing by different means. The system works well although we've almost had the complete collaspe of the Maori party due to the actions of an unsavoury member. Parties make alliances to make up for seats as generally the main parties do not get the required votes to stand on their own; generally there is more variety that the two party system in america does not allow.e

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Permalink Reply by Samuel H. Kenyon on February 28, 2011 at 3:38am

The game strategy that most Americans subscribe to is that a vote for a 3rd party is wasted.  So either the strategy of enough players has to change (seems unlikely), or the voting system itself needs to be changed to a Condorcet Tally or Borda Count or something like that.

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Permalink Reply by Jaume on February 28, 2011 at 11:13am

This is from Chris Weigant's blog - Exceptional Democracy (April 2010). The article is interesting on many levels, and while it doesn't really answer the Big Question --

 

If America is truly supposed to be exceptional in all things, why do other countries -- almost without exception -- decide our governmental structure isn't really for them, when it comes time to choose?

 

-- it nonetheless presents clues I haven't seen anywhere else so far.

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Permalink Reply by Thomas Raymond on February 28, 2011 at 2:56pm

DEFINITLY~ WE DON'T GET FOOLED AGAIN, I TRUST NADER

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