CO-04 (Special Election)
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(R) Greg Lopez
(R) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Joe Biden*
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%↓
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
90%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
90%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
(R) Ron Hanks
40%
30%
20%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(R) Deborah Flora
(R) J. Sonnenberg
30%↑
15%↑
10%↓
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Dave Williams
(R) Jeff Crank
50%↓
50%↑
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
90%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) Brittany Pettersen
85%↑
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
(R) Janak Joshi
60%↑
35%↓
30%↑
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
April 24, 2010 07:09 AM UTC
34 Comments
is the best we can do.
If we lived in a proportional representation system, then small parties are much easier to sustain. I used to be completely enamored of that idea, but it does come at a cost. Two-party systems, which lose the cacophony of voices, gain a moderating stability that does have some value as well.
There are certainly aspects of the Democratic Party that I don’t like, both ideologically and structurally. But, far more amazingly, is how close it comes to being just the right vehicle for me. That in part is due to the moderating influence of the two party system, with, over the long run, each being drawn toward the center.
As I get older, I realize more viscerally how complex and subtle our world is. Yes, radical ideas are often right (we do need to institute a dramatic paradigm shift in our energy-and-exploitation-of-natural-resources systems, for instance), but recognizing complexity is always necessary. Few ideas that fail to do so are good ones, and many ideologies tend to gravitate toward ideas that are oversimplistic and overly reductionist, even some ideologies in the middle.
Political parties are means, not ends. They should be seen as vehicles, not identities. Our identities should be far too complex to be reduced to any one political party’s platform. So as we work our political will through one or another political party, the question isn’t whether it perfectly represents what we, as an individual, are, what we think and believe and value, but rather whether it is the best available vehicle for advancing those values and beliefs.
Third parties can certainly serve that purpose for some people, and they are far from irrelevant. Unfortunately, due to the structure of our political system, in the electoral contests themselves, their impact is often the opposite of their agenda (by acting as a spoiler). IMHO, it’s better, at this point, for them not to run candidates in national or statewide elections (unless they can honestly calculate that they have a reasonable chance of winning), but rather to influence candidates in the two currently viable parties.
In the final analysis, the ultimate goal is not to attract people to parties, but to ideas. And the ultimate goal is not to win elections, but to implement good policies that best serve our collective welfare. The game board on which we attempt to do that is dazzlingly complex, involving much more than electoral politics, and certainly much more than partisan bickering.
Unlike most invented games we play, this real one is non-zero-sum, with complex ways to win together, to lose together, to win at others’ expense, to lose to others’ benefit, to win at the expense of future generations, to sacrifice to the benefit of future generations, all on various nested and overlapping levels. At the highest levels, there is some elusive win-win across categories and across time, which we seek in ways small and large.
It is to that synoptic view that my sig-line refers.
In my view, this statement
brings up two thoughts.
One, the description of “collective welfare” is entirely subjective, based, in part, on ones’ relative location on the scale of need. Consensus and majority rule seem to be the only fair principles to determine that definition. Hence, government of,by, and for the “people”.
Increasingly, though, what constitutes the “collective welfare” has focused on the welfare of a collection of giant, money-making, multinational corporations, the financial aristocracy that run them, and the media that enables both. Money and influence for a relative few drive the definition, not the human welfare of the population at large, or that of the planet upon which they dwell.
The other thought is that, it seems to me, the expession “collective welfare” is anathema to an increasing number of people as the “Land of Opportunity ” becomes less and less so. I detect a dramatically increasing “I’ve got mine, screw you” attitude. Mt. Rushbo would be a case study on that point.
As to the diary above, it is indicative of our modern, media-centric society that small voices of reason are drowned by the cacaphony of “politics as professional wrestling”. I hope the author will decide to join with Democrats to help make our party a truer reflection of “the collective welfare”.
Drawing the line between what is subjective and what is objective is always tricky, and always, well, subjective! Or maybe not; depends on where you draw it.
Being in the midst of law school finals (first one tomorrow), I shouldn’t be here at all, and can’t indulge my custom of tortuting you with a long and tortuous stream-of-consciousness reply. I know you’re crushed! 😉
But there are rich and subtle issues involved in what you said above. I look forward to a time, two weeks from now, when I can again afford the time to explore them.
Thanks again. Your thoughtful comments are appreciated.
It isn’t easy being green?
using your best impression of the late Carl Sagan’s voice!
(Ever been to Ithaca, NY, by the way? Sagan had a beautiful house at the top of one of Ithaca’s several waterfalls. If it weren’t for the paper mill nearby, and the frigid winters, Ithaca would be paradise, even better than its ancient Greek namesake for having no suitors to slay after 20 year of fighting Trojans, Cyclopes, sea monsters, and beautiful witches…).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
n/t ‘n’ all…?
that Carl Sagan sounded just like Kermit the Frog. That’s what I meant.
n/t means “no text.” (Not sure if I understood you there.)
I’d never heard that before myself, although I do see that a smattering of web sites mention the supposed similarities in their voices.
And here I’d thought “n/t” referred to “note topic,” in this instance.
Or whatever they call it would be a step in the right direction.
We have solidified into a two party system that will only change when one party implodes. (The Republicans appear to be doing that right now but somehow I think they will survive.) As long as we have a winner take all system, third parties become message carriers in safe races and spoilers in tight ones. Most often spoiling farther away from their perspective than they would have gotten with a moderate (D or R).
I respectfully disagree with my friend, Steve, about the moderating influence of a two party system because I don’t think we have had a moderate federal government during the last 30 years. I think that all those pundits that call us a center-right country are right if they are describing our elected officials and legislators. But, if they are talking about the people, I think we are a center-left country.
While dynamic voting might give the right wing radicals an occasional opportunity to put someone in who truly represents them, I’d say they’ve already succeeded in that regard using gerrymanding and purity primaries. But I think if we used a dynamic voting system, I think it would revitalize the progressive wing of the country. We would find more progressive candidates (Dems and Greens)able to make a statement without spoiling the race and and getting involved in runnoffs with centrist Dems. That would be a truly moderating influence that would create a better reflection of the political location of the country.
There are definitely some serious defects in our current system, and I still favor some form of proportional representation over winner-take-all. Even more, I favor a cultural paradigm shift, resulting in an emphasis on life-long and broad-based education, because a democracy in a culture with a very strong anti-intellectual streak is a troubling disconnect, IMHO.
As to whether we’re center-right or center-left as a country, a lot depends on how it’s measured. We have elements of both, since our wings are muddled messes of social and economic concerns. But I do believe that the memes of progressivism are the kinds of memes that survive the lathe of trial-and-error, while the memes of modern conservativism are the rough patches that need to be smoothed away. The trick is to spin that lathe quickly, and operate it deftly.
meaning that percentages of seats are reserved for various groups according to the percentage of the electorate that they compose, is a terrible idea. See Israel.
Since no governing coalition be formed without the small extremist parties, including various ultra hawk and ultra religious parties, the result is, oddly, that the extremists have completely disproportionate shares of power while the average reasonable Israeli has much less influence.
Israel is basically ruled by the grace of the most extreme little parties in their multi-party (we’re talking many parties) proportional representation system. Besides the whole Arab/Israeli thing, this system is notable for forcing all kinds of wacky religious law on Israel’s 90% secular or mainly secular Jewish population. Why? Because nobody can form a government without bringing the minority religious parties into a coalition by pandering.
Granted, we don’t have a parliamentary system so a majority doesn’t have to be patched together to have a government and our President is not a Prime Minister who must command a majority to form that government, but the alliances that would be needed to get any legislation passed would still require even more pandering and deal making with fringe groups than what we already have to put up with. Fringe parties that hate each other’s guts are always ready, in such a system, to band together to block middle oriented legislation that they all hate for opposing reasons. Picture a half dozen parties of no to deal with. That’s proportional representation.
Have only been able to find difficult to plow through studies on dynamic voting via google. A nutshell definition of how it would work in US elections would be appreciated
See my first post, to which Todd replied. There are trade-offs on both sides (winner-take-all, v. proportional representation). The best systems, as a general rule, are hybrids, and include some elements of various systems, trying to capture their benefits and mitigate their defects.
The more representative any system is, the more danger their is of inordinate swing-vote power going to some small individual or faction (see SCOTUS for something similar in a different context). Ironing that out is a design problem.
of run-offs and that sounds fine. But I’m dead set against any proportional voting system that says this group gets this many seats, that group gets that many.
Besides the disproportionate power it gives to the extremes, it is antithetical to the ideal we are striving for in the US of a nation in which individuals are equal under the law and hold our rights as individuals rather than as members of competing groups to which we may or may not want to be assigned and which prevents us from breaking out of those boxes to reach out to each other.
Proportional representation locks in a way of thinking of ourselves as separate and often hostile groups with grievances against one another and ensures that our differences will always be more important than anything that brings us together. It institutionalizes and perpetuates our differences, often on a non-voluntary basis, and is therefore anti-American to my way of thinking. It’s been tragic for Israel, preventing any forward motion for decades. Once again, I think it stinks.
One possible system is larger districts with an allocation of seats distributed according to what percentage of vote the candidates receive (with a minimum threshold), regardless of party. In this way it represents the spectrum, rather than discrete categories. Like I said, there is a virtually infinite number of possible designs, and a virtually infinite number of combinations of characteristics a system might have.
I agree with you so strongly in your refutation of “categorical thinking” that I apply it even to electoral systems. Rather than different categories of systems, there are different variables ranged along different dimensions. The trick is to identify desirable and undesirable characteristics of the system, and to seek to maximize desirable characteristics and minimize undesirable characteristics.
The advantage of proportional representation is that it puts into government a more accurate and nuanced representation of the actual beliefs and values of the population being represented, rather than reducing that population to those securely enough in the mainstream (or in a district far enough out of the mainstream) to get elected. That advantage doesn’t outweight the disadvantages you’ve identified, but it does weigh in when considering what an optimal system would look like.
You could, for instance, expand districts so that each one is allotted three or more representatives, who will be the top three (or more) vote getters. At the same time you could allow each party to run up to two or three candidates in these expanded districts, depending on their size. This would capture some attributes of proportional representation without actually seating people according to their party affiliation.
That was completely off the top of my head, while studying frantically for my 8:15 AM environmental law exam tomorrow, for which I’m only half way through my last day review. So it may be an idiotic idea (I wouldn’t be surprised). The real point is that there are numerous different ways to design an electoral system to capture numerous different attributes.
So, BC, maybe we can discuss it another time…. Thanks for challenging me (I like what you wrote about not reifying the political categories into which we place ourselves: That’s a very good point).
Everywhere I see proportional rep systems now, I just don’t see anything worth emulating. Locking in the institutionalization of our separate boxes strikes me as deeply un-American. Dynamic voting seems much more worth looking into.
I would say that we’ll have to agree to disagree, but I don’t think we’re even talking about the same thing, so it’s not exactly a disagreement! It’s more of a failure to communicate.
I think you’re paying too much attention to the archetype (“proportional representation,” and what it means to you), and not enough to what I’m actually saying. What I outlined above, I would argue, diminishes rather than increases our institutionalization of separate boxes, by diminishing rather than increasing the relevance of party affiliation (and increasing the possibility of people running and winning just as unaffiliated individuals).
I’m not really advocating anything here, though, just exploring. More inclusion of more points of view in political decision-making is, arguably, a good thing, considered in and of itself without assuming that anything else has to inevitably come with it. If one thinks that it, and it alone, is a good thing, then it makes sense to look for ways to incorporate it, while remaining attentive to the possible pitfalls. That’s all I’m doing.
One thing that I don’t think is a good idea, though, is to label and discard. Forget about “proportional representation.” Think about different factors that are desirable and undesirable, and different systems that have been tried or contemplated. Then work with that material without foreclosing anything just because you have certain associations with certain incarnations of certain pure or reduced forms that belong to a category in which it too can be (but doesn’t have to be) placed. For me, that’s a better way to go about speculative discussions like this (in reality, our system is very unlikely to change so dramatically in our lifetimes, and certainly not by fiat).
All this is, from my point of view, is an exploration of possibilities, neither advocacy nor reduction. Dynanmic voting is certainly worth exploring too. There are far more questions than answers, and far more to be learned by being more inquisitive than conclusive.
I never even hit review and suddenly I was posting and returned to another thread. Oh well.
Anyway, I’ve looked at various models and am quite sure that I think proportional representation, in any form, doesn’t fit with what the United States of America is supposed to be. Once again, sorry.
Of course it isn’t as if there’s a snowball’s chance in hell of instituting any such thing in the foreseeable future so I’m pretty sure it’s not worth spending too much time arguing about.
All I know is any system that remotely resembles Israel’s sucks.
Any government with people in it remotely resembles Israel’s, in that way. So any government with people in it sucks.
At least we agree on something. 🙂
That was a stretch! But smiley face accepted.
shared traits (whether it’s the presence of humans in government, or a greater congruence between the range of views represented in government and the range of views represented in the population being governed) not necessarily being the same as shared fates. The ancient Egyptians and the Mayans both built pyramids and wrote with hieroglyphics, but one was a highly centralized civilization clustered around a big river weaving its way through a big desert, and the other was a highly decentralized civilization scattered about in city-states in a rain forest.
I have no idea whether it’s possible, or desirable, to create a government with a range of perspectives incorporated into it similar to the range of perspectives found among those governed. But I know that I don’t know enough to assume that because certain systems that have purported to accomplish it have not turned out well it can never turn out well. History is full of failed experiments that later succeeded in different form, and of misapplied ideas that were later reincarnated with certain refinements that completely altered their basic efficacy.
Oh Brother!
That is one variation of what I am talking about. Some states are using it with slightly different variations and calling it different names – instant run off, dynamic, and fusion voting.
Pure “instant runoff” would mean that you rank your choices and if your 1st choice isn’t in the top two after the first ballots are counted, then your 2nd choice gets your vote and so on.
Another variation is ranked voting where the top two move on to a run off at a later date.
It lets you vote first for a long-shot, then for the one you like best among the 2 (or 3) that have a chance of winning.
As an independent, you may have some influence in a general election if you live in a reasonably balanced district. But those kinds of districts are increasingly rare.
Under our “purity primary” system there are large numbers of basically voiceless voters – those in their district’s minority party as well as independents. With increasing numbers of “safe” districts, there are more and more voters who have no chance to influence the candidate who will eventually win.
More appropriate than proportional representation might be an open primary, like Washington State’s “Top Two”. Moderate voters interested in candidates who actually address real problems might actually have a voice.
Colorado has a Green Party?
at the Budweiser Convention Center in 2004 (?) and he was by far the most compelling candidate of anyone running for office. He’s was running for CD4. Fascinating, witty guy. I was kind of bummed that I wasn’t going to vote for him but I needed my vote to count and voting for a Green Party candidate was pretty much a straight up vote for Musgrave. And there was no way in the world I was voting for that bitch.
But don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
For better or worse, the American people only understand black or white, good or bad, this or that.
Your shades of gray don’t help. In fact, they hurt.