So what’s the point?

Last updated on: September 27, 2013 at 9:29 am by Jane the Actuary

So what’s the point? 2013-09-27T09:29:00-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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Lovely way to start a Friday. I started looking at The Great Deformation yesterday, was thinking about the whole ObamaCare mess this morning, and am now reflecting on the political system in general, and the fact that ordinary citizens really have no way to make their voice heard — unless their point of view lines up with an existing pressure group to which they can send money.

Maybe if I was in a more “purple” district or state — but my particular very Blue representative has such a gerrymandered district that the GOP didn’t bother supporting the one candidate who tried to oppose her.

The Tea Party? Maybe — but the Democrats sure succeeded in painting them as extremists.

Illinois has a governor’s race coming up. So far as I can tell, the GOP field consists of a bunch of cookie-cutter establishment politicians and a buy-the-election-type millionaire.

In that sense, I find myself thinking that the German parliamentary system gives people more of a voice. If a third party crosses a 5% vote threshold, they’ll get into parliament. (Members of parliament are chosen from districts, as is the case here, but any party with a greater proportion of the overall vote total than their directly-elected representatives get them, gets extra representatives.) And if the stars line up in your favor, you then have a chance at being the junior party of a coalition, with a formal coalition contract getting you some of your party’s platform. The Greens started out as a fringe party, barely on the threshold of the 5% threshold, but in 1998, despite receiving only 6.7% of the vote, they became the junior coalition partner with the center-left SPD (the Social Democrats).

In such a system, a reformist group could play a real role, splitting from the GOP, picking up like-minded independents, promoting their message, and in the case of a coalition, having real negotiating power. Instead, our winner-take-all system locks us into a two party-system.

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