gov101

why don't they teach you this stuff in high school government? how will young activists be born and then revolutionize the crap out of the US government if they are kept ignorant of the facts? the only thing i faintly remember learning in high school government was how wonderful our system of checks and balances was.

"The Republicans well understand - and carefully use - the fact that in the American electoral system a third-party candidate will always harm the major-party candidate with whom s/he is most closely aligned."

voting on the third party shouldn't be a wasted vote, but in america it is.

"The reason is because in America - unlike most other modern democracies - we have regional "winner take all" types of elections, rather than proportional representation where the group with, say, 30 percent of the vote, would end up with 30 percent of the seats in government."

"In the regional winner-take-all type of elections the Framers wrote into the Constitution, the loser in a two-party race - even if s/he had fully 49.9 percent of the vote - would end up with no voice whatsoever. And the combined losers in a 3- or more-party race could even be the candidates or parties whose overall position was most closely embraced by the majority of the people."

our voting system favors a two party race.

"In the 2002 election for Governor and Lieutenant Governor (of Vermont), the people who voted for the Democratic and Progressive candidates constituted a clear majority. Nonetheless, the Republican candidates became Governor and Lieutenant Governor with 45 percent and 41 percent of the vote respectively because each had more votes than his Democratic or Progressive opponents alone. (Example: Republican Brian Dubie - 41%; Democrat Peter Shumlin - 32%; Progressive Anthony Pollina - 25%. The Republican "won.")"

we need to make some room for new ideas and other platforms. in korea a new political party is born every election.

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0324-12.htm

thanks J-man for the link
matt if you're still reading my blog these days, i'm just now catching up to you. you've been talking about this for years...