Just make sure not to take it too far if you do proportional voting. We have a system in the Netherlands that works like that but the result is that we now also have about 30 parties running for government, most of them being fairly pointless. Don’t get me wrong, it’s better than the US shenanigans but you can also go too far.
I’m not trying to be mean when I say this, but to me your comment sounds a little bit like “I know you guys are starving but if you ever solve that issue make sure you don’t go too far in the other direction. I sometimes buy food that I don’t end up using, which is fairly pointless.”
I wish the biggest grievance I had with my country’s politics was that some of the parties are redundant. I think I’d be willing to give up a limb or two for that actually.
Understandable, it’s all a matter of perspective. There’s no ideal way of democracy and any way has it’s pros and cons. I’d say that overall my gripe is a somewhat minor one but it does lead to big issues sometimes, especially during election times because the biggest party gets first dibs on creating the government. More fragmentation on your side of the political spectrum (left vs. right) can therefore lead to splintering of the votes and losing out on being the biggest.
This is more or less what happened last time. The leftist parties tried to prevent it by joining forces shortly before the election but the amount of leftist parties we have still meant that votes were somewhat splintered; that is (among other factors) how we ended up with another right-wing government after people clearly seemed to be done with over 10 years of right-wing Rutte politics.
Coming from Germany, I wish! We have a 5% cutoff for representation, which means there’s realistically 4-5 parties that get into parliament, and all of them suck. We got the liberal Greens that sold their morals long ago, the social democrats whose greatest strength is blocking, delaying and betraying leftist causes, the christian democrats that have been copying Trump rhetoric for years, and finally the outright fascists. I’d love to be able to vote for some fringe leftist party knowing I’ll not waste my vote
I’d love to be able to vote for some fringe leftist party knowing I’ll not waste my vote
But in a way it will. Many of these fringe parties never have a chance to make it into the government and will forever be in the opposition, meaning their impact isn’t very big. The PVV started off like this as well and their leader, Geert Wilders, has only ever wanted to be the person shouting at stuff from the opposition side of the fence. Even now, when he has the biggest party, they had to come up with some wicked solution where he’s not the PM and not in the government itself. Instead, it’s a neutral PM with some ministers and everyone else is in the opposition and constantly criticising their own “government”. It’s ridiculous and so far they haven’t gotten much done.
In my opinion, a cutoff of 5% is a bit high but I also think that parties should have more than 1 seat to even make it into the chamber, otherwise it’ll turn into a mess real quick.
I honestly don’t mind many splintered parties in parliament. There’s always gonna be assholes whose only aim is to sabotage and fling shit, but they’re just going to join a bigger party under our system. Our (recently fired) finance Minister was like this, constantly publicly criticizing the government that he was a part of, and which he was actively blocking from getting shit done.
I actually think it would be better if there were no rigid factions either. But then again, my opinion of representative democracy isn’t too great anyways
This interesting video details some of the problems with various vote counting systems, including ranked choice. Turns out that formulating the perfect democratic process is something people have been trying and failing at for centuries.
While it’s true that no voting system is completely perfect that’s a little bit like saying that no one’s body is completely perfect, so trying to be healthy is pointless. The efficacy of voting systems can in fact be quantified and compared based on baysian regret, and some are better than others.
That’s for single winner elections. Almost any proportional system is going to be better than any single winner system, with the added benefit of eliminating gerrymandering. Presumably the best proportional system available is proportional score voting, but I don’t know if there’s been rigorous mathematical analysis of that yet.
The title is a little clickbaity though that is frankly the state of YT as a whole these days. Given the rich information in the video and the high effort put into the explanations, let’s allow it.
so trying to be healthy is pointless
No one said anything about pointlessness.
Strictly speaking, the video does a quality job of showing how true democracy is a unfinished science and far less intuitive than most people suppose when they haven’t thought about it much. However it repeatedly makes the same point you do, that some systems are better than others.
Its literally politics 101. This is why we need ranked choice & proportional voting.
Just make sure not to take it too far if you do proportional voting. We have a system in the Netherlands that works like that but the result is that we now also have about 30 parties running for government, most of them being fairly pointless. Don’t get me wrong, it’s better than the US shenanigans but you can also go too far.
I’m not trying to be mean when I say this, but to me your comment sounds a little bit like “I know you guys are starving but if you ever solve that issue make sure you don’t go too far in the other direction. I sometimes buy food that I don’t end up using, which is fairly pointless.”
I wish the biggest grievance I had with my country’s politics was that some of the parties are redundant. I think I’d be willing to give up a limb or two for that actually.
Understandable, it’s all a matter of perspective. There’s no ideal way of democracy and any way has it’s pros and cons. I’d say that overall my gripe is a somewhat minor one but it does lead to big issues sometimes, especially during election times because the biggest party gets first dibs on creating the government. More fragmentation on your side of the political spectrum (left vs. right) can therefore lead to splintering of the votes and losing out on being the biggest.
This is more or less what happened last time. The leftist parties tried to prevent it by joining forces shortly before the election but the amount of leftist parties we have still meant that votes were somewhat splintered; that is (among other factors) how we ended up with another right-wing government after people clearly seemed to be done with over 10 years of right-wing Rutte politics.
That doesn’t sound like a bad thing.
It doesn’t sound particularly good, either.
It’s the same in Australia. Every now and then you get a random crackpot senator.
Coming from Germany, I wish! We have a 5% cutoff for representation, which means there’s realistically 4-5 parties that get into parliament, and all of them suck. We got the liberal Greens that sold their morals long ago, the social democrats whose greatest strength is blocking, delaying and betraying leftist causes, the christian democrats that have been copying Trump rhetoric for years, and finally the outright fascists. I’d love to be able to vote for some fringe leftist party knowing I’ll not waste my vote
But in a way it will. Many of these fringe parties never have a chance to make it into the government and will forever be in the opposition, meaning their impact isn’t very big. The PVV started off like this as well and their leader, Geert Wilders, has only ever wanted to be the person shouting at stuff from the opposition side of the fence. Even now, when he has the biggest party, they had to come up with some wicked solution where he’s not the PM and not in the government itself. Instead, it’s a neutral PM with some ministers and everyone else is in the opposition and constantly criticising their own “government”. It’s ridiculous and so far they haven’t gotten much done.
In my opinion, a cutoff of 5% is a bit high but I also think that parties should have more than 1 seat to even make it into the chamber, otherwise it’ll turn into a mess real quick.
I honestly don’t mind many splintered parties in parliament. There’s always gonna be assholes whose only aim is to sabotage and fling shit, but they’re just going to join a bigger party under our system. Our (recently fired) finance Minister was like this, constantly publicly criticizing the government that he was a part of, and which he was actively blocking from getting shit done.
I actually think it would be better if there were no rigid factions either. But then again, my opinion of representative democracy isn’t too great anyways
My eyes glazed over reading this. Its like hearing people with 6 houses complain about property taxes.
This interesting video details some of the problems with various vote counting systems, including ranked choice. Turns out that formulating the perfect democratic process is something people have been trying and failing at for centuries.
That’s a veritasium clickbait video.
While it’s true that no voting system is completely perfect that’s a little bit like saying that no one’s body is completely perfect, so trying to be healthy is pointless. The efficacy of voting systems can in fact be quantified and compared based on baysian regret, and some are better than others.
That’s for single winner elections. Almost any proportional system is going to be better than any single winner system, with the added benefit of eliminating gerrymandering. Presumably the best proportional system available is proportional score voting, but I don’t know if there’s been rigorous mathematical analysis of that yet.
The title is a little clickbaity though that is frankly the state of YT as a whole these days. Given the rich information in the video and the high effort put into the explanations, let’s allow it.
No one said anything about pointlessness.
Strictly speaking, the video does a quality job of showing how true democracy is a unfinished science and far less intuitive than most people suppose when they haven’t thought about it much. However it repeatedly makes the same point you do, that some systems are better than others.