Two Party System (Page 2)

Yeah I should clarify that for those who haven't heard the term.

Instant runoff voting systems let you rank the candidates in order of your preference.  If no candidate has a majority, the last place one is removed and the vote is tallied again.  This way, if your preferred candidate doesn't win, your vote automatically weighs in for your next best choice.

Considering that has not happened in the last 40-50 years I don't mind running that risk.

It's an understandable concern though.  I just feel that regardless of how good of a job someone is doing, after 10+ years in office, the sense of entitlement and lack of connection to their consituency is inevitable.  Time to get back home and reconnect.  Maybe run again in another capacity in the future. 

We do have four major parties in the House of Commons and another national party who gets a fair percentage of the votes.  The breakdown from the last election was (popular vote with a national turnout of 59%):

Conservative - 38%
Liberal - 26%
NDP - 18%
Bloc - 10%
Green - 7%
Other - 1%

However, if you look at the seats that are allocated to each party, we get:

Conservative - 143 (46%)
Liberal - 77 (25%)
NDP - 37 (12%)
Bloc - 49 (16%)
Green - 0
Other - 2 (<1%)

This often leads to discussion regarding proportional representation, however the ruling party is not likely to be amenable to revising the system to one that would give them fewer seats.

Another problem arose after the last election as it became apparent that many of the politicians don't understand the parlimentary system as the ruling Conservatives were upset when the three parties in opposition planned to band together to form a colliation government.  Their defense was that a majority of Canadians had voted for them (which was clearly untrue) and that a parlimentary system was never designed to allow a colliation to take power.

Shane

I think the only way the two party system will work is if we have a balance of power between the two so no one party can take total control and do anything they want. Hopefully this would force the two parties to cooperate instead of fighting and blaming the other party. Yeah, I know that part is a fantasy but one can hope.

That balance also makes it impossible for anything to get done!!!

Bottom line is that as long as we have this system that only really allows two parties to have any influence, then we don't have a government that is even remotely representative. 

This is mostly becasue our representatives act like a bunch of 5th graders. 

Put yourself in a situation at work where you are solving a problem in a group.  Three of you lean one way the other three lean the other way on a solution. 

Now, your boss is not going to accept a "do nothing" approach, so you are going to work together and concede on some things to each other.  Ultimately, you get a solution to the problem that everyone can deal with. 

You do this becasue you don't want to lose your job. 

Our representatives don't generally have to worry about this part, so they are not willing to make concessions to solve a problem. 

HOLLA!!!

It's even worse than that.  The act of compromise itself can cost you an election these days because you'll lose your heavily polarized base of voters.  Most of the incumbents that were booted in this election cycle were moderates.

As far as last night goes, I agree with you 100 % NXS. It will likely be the same type of anger next time around, unless changes are made.

AndrewMT, yep having to choose between 2 main parties is a big compromise. These 2 systems are big snowball cash machines and it's going to be hard to dismantle either, much less both.

If they voted for the Stimulus and/or Healthcare bills, I would argue they could hardly be considered "moderates".

My prediction is that we will have a 3rd party president by 2020.  The moderate members of both parties are being thrown out when they should be the welcomed change.   

I would like to see the rise of the Pomegranate party. Literally, a party comprised of the fruit provided by deciduous shrubs.

Consider the advantages:

Pomegranates would not raise taxes or their own wages-- in fact, we would save money by not paying them at all.
You'll never catch a pomegranate soliciting sex in an airport bathroom or fooling around with a congressional page in their office.
Pomegranates do not vote for pork; they do however compliment pork nicely as a puree or compote.
No pomegranate to my knowledge has ever sent anyone to war.
Pomegranates are largely non-partisan, although they do tend to favor sunshine and clean water.
If the people so chose, we could always squeeze and make flavorful martinis with their juice.

Pomegranates in 2012! Couldn't be worse than what we've got.

I do think you are correct that this election was not an endorsement of the republican party, but a rejection of the democratic party.

But my rejection is not because of the socialist agenda. I believe in smaller government, less spending, personal responsibility and a sustainable socialist agenda.

I reject the republican party because they have not embodied those ideals they claim to stand for. If they were truly small government I could accept that they tend to have different social beliefs then I because the social issues would be left to the states and I could choose to put people who share my social beliefs in power at the state level and allow the republicans federal power to reign in spending and reduce the size of the federal government.

I reject the democratic party because they have not stood up and taken advantage of the opportunity they had to make our social support system sustainable and effective. Instead of creating a robust nationalized health care system that took the burden off of employers they forced through a watered down piece of crap. If you are given the power to push through legislation, why not push through something you really believe in?

On top of that they bent over backwards to help bankers, Wall Street, AIG, etc just like the Republicans did, while mostly ignoring a 10% unemployment rate for the rest of us.  That's what pissed people off.  So yeah maybe voters were against the Democrats, but expecting improvement from the Republicans is a stretch.  But people have short memories.

That assumes voters can be described as left, middle or right.  What you just described is exactly the problem with the system. It's completely non-representative because there's always an either/or binary choice for democrat and republican.  I'd wager a lot of money that the majority of Americans cannot be accurately placed on a linear political spectrum like that. 

I have always wondered. Does the president's party have to offset the cost sof a president campaigning, or is it totally funded by the taxpayer?

It is scary how much it costs for the president to go on a trip.

I think the reason you have so many folks disaffected by the political process is that we have two parties that reflect a very narrow part of the political spectrum.  While Democrats and Republicans fight to keep each other out of power the one place where they work in concert is to keep other parties out of the process.

In order to win the primary a candidate these days has to have increasingly extreme views, however to win the general election they then have to abandon many of the extreme positions they took in the primaries and tack to the center.  Which leaves the voters with a choice of two candidates they don't trust due to their changing positions and see they're getting either hypocrates and/or liars no matter who they vote for...

There is no right answer here, its a trade off.

The Three (or more) party system - (i.e. Canada) allows for more flexibiliy in choice. If you happen to be a social liberaterian but fiscal conservative you don't necessarly need to compromise by being limited to two diametrically opposed parties.  The problem is that you end up with non-majority parties having to form coalitions. This makes it tough to get bills passed - and in extreeme cases where you have dozens of parties (i.e. Italy or Israel) and end up in paralysis.

Two party system (i.e. USA) means that you always have a clear majority in the house and senate (though not necessarly the same party is the majority). Efficient but leads to polarization, and the two parties end up playing partisan politics, diametrically opposed on every issue.

The one party system has some benefits as well. more efficient in decisivness and action. Little loss of effectivness due to transitions and election campaingns, and much cheaper. It has worked very well for some places: Japan 1945-1990, Singapore 1968-today, China 2000-today.  This system only seems to work for countries moving from developing to developed status - then the lack of choice and 'autoritarian' aspect becomes a big drawback.