[olug] OT: PSA

[Dan Anderson]

We are certainly a 2 party system - which is a type of plurality
voting system characterized by elections that are generally between
people of 2 parties.

Suggesting that we are not a 2 party system because we have a
plurality voting system is like suggesting that a dog is not a canine
because it is a mammal .

Be that as it may - my point was that exactly what you would expect in
a 2 party system would be contests between, more or less, 2
people/parties.

If we don't have more then 2 candidates - I don't see any point to
Condorcet voting other then to complicate the process.  Really, the
bar to get on the ballot isn't really that high here.  It's possibly a
chicken and egg thing to some degree, but until/unless we had a viable
third party - it doesn't seem useful to complicate things.

I suspect that some of the reason for the lack of competition in some
races here is due, IMO, to too many positions being partisan elected
positions. As I recall, Assessor, Clerk, Sheriff and Treasurer were
uncontested on my ballot.  I'm not sure that there is a point to any
of those being partisan contests.  I'm also not entirely convinced
that they all shouldn't just be employees and not elected officials.

Dan

On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 6:19 PM, Tim & Alethea Larson
<thelarsons3 at cox.net> wrote:
> On 11/2/10 4:50 PM, Dan Anderson wrote:
>>
>> Or we have a 2 party system with primaries to narrow the field?
>
> We don't have a two-party system.  We have a plurality voting system, which
> heavily favors dominance by two parties.  (This is Duverger's Law.)  Anyone
> who respects the idea of fairness and honest competition based on who has
> the best ideas/platform (rather than who has the best political propaganda
> machine) should check out alternative voting systems that don't have the
> inherent shortcomings ("wasted vote", "lesser of two evils", sacrifice of
> conscience for expediency) of Plurality.  I favor Condorcet methods, which
> is what I used when tallying our votes for Luncheons in the past.
>
>
> Tim
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