Lawrence Lessig on East-Coast vs West-Coast code

Posted Feb 28, 2014 11:05 UTC (Fri) by NAR (subscriber, #1313)
In reply to: Lawrence Lessig on East-Coast vs West-Coast code by gswoods
Parent article: Lawrence Lessig on East-Coast vs West-Coast code

I think in most election systems there are usually at most two parties with realistic chances to actually win the elections, so it's enough to attack the other frontrunner.

Lawrence Lessig on East-Coast vs West-Coast code

Posted Feb 28, 2014 19:52 UTC (Fri) by Karellen (subscriber, #67644) [Link] (3 responses)

Typically, that's only the case in plurality/first-past-the-post voting, and the two-party system is a *result* of the voting system used. See Duverger's law for details.

To get a better choice of candidates, you need to change the voting system.

Lawrence Lessig on East-Coast vs West-Coast code

Posted Mar 3, 2014 14:08 UTC (Mon) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] (1 responses)

Germany has a "mixed" political system, still only two parties gave chancellors since the second world war.

Lawrence Lessig on East-Coast vs West-Coast code

Posted Mar 3, 2014 19:12 UTC (Mon) by andreasb (guest, #80258) [Link]

Only if you count filling the position of chancellor as "winning" the election overall.

The chancellor of Germany is elected by the parliament, not by the people. The voters elect the parliament and afterwards the parties try to form a coalition that has more than 50% of seats in the parliament. Of course the biggest party of the ruling coalition then gets to choose who gets the coveted position of chancellor. And that is still only one of many positions to fill.

In the last decades there have always been 4 to 5 parties represented in the parliament, not exactly your typical two-party system. And that's even with Germany having a sort of filter in the form of the 5% barrier, where a party needs to get at least 5% of the votes to be considered for parliamental representation in the first place.

Proportional Representation

Posted Mar 4, 2014 4:56 UTC (Tue) by ldo (guest, #40946) [Link]

In addition to Germany, let me mention New Zealand as another example where a proportional-voting system has led to a greater variety of political parties being elected to Parliament and, more importantly, actually having an influence on what the Government does.