THE HISTORY OF THE USA PARLIAMENT
*********************************
-* FOUNDED ON AUGUST 1ST, 1995 *-
"The First, Third Party/Nonpartisan, US Presidential Mock Election" ~(2/5/95)
==========================================================================
Harry Browne (Libertarian) - Wins the first election.
In the first election, a preference ballot was distributed on the
Internet, resulting in Harry Browne (Libertarian) winner, with Colin
Powell (independent) and Noam Chomsky (New) coming in 2nd and 3rd.
Although the preference voting (PrV) system was used, none of Colin
Powell's or Noam Chomsky's votes single-transferred (STV) to Harry Browne.
-*-
"The First Internet US Presidential Mock Open Election" (ended on 7/4/95)
==========================================================================
In the first open election, web page ballots were distributed by Alan
Keyes supporters, and paper ballots were distributed by Jonah Gruber
(Seattle) and James Ogle (Monterey/Pacific Grove).
Alan Keyes won the single-winner contest by a few votes (proving that
eballots are effective). A 100-member
parliament committee was founded from the results of all the votes cast,
which gained recognition by the FEC on August 1, 1995. Election rules
were published on August 23, 1995.
A 100-member committee, as established on 8/1/95 with the FEC;
Member of Par-
Leader liament (MP) Party/Category Faction Total
-------------------------------------------------------------------
James Ogle Reform 26
Ross Perot Reform 8
34
Alan Keyes Republican 27
Harry Browne Libertarian 13
Randy Toler Green 5
Ralph Nader Green 1
6
Bill Clinton Democratic 6
Noam Chomsky New 4
Gary Geyer Artists 3
Gene Marsee' Hemp 3
Jonah Gruber Moderate 2
Howard Phillips US Taxpayers 2
------------------------------------------------------------------
Total 100
-*-
See more about the recorded history at this link:
http://www.dccourier.com/messengers/messenger_archives_1994_1999/messengers199606.txt
Here's a story James Ogle wrote about PR after a speech by John Cleese, in case
you've never read about this subject. The town is Santa Cruz, where
the "progressives" sided with the narrow-minded business interests,
in torpedoeing the contra-flow bike lanes downtown just after the
rebuilding from the '89 earthquake.
-----------------------------------------------five page essay
The Case for Proportional Representation
By James Ogle, after John Cleese
I'm very sorry to bore you this morning, but this is a political
speech and you know how boring those can be. This one is about (yawn)
proportional representation, so it will be especially boring.
Proportional representation! What's it all about? Let's look
at the 1992 Santa Cruz city council elections. On the chart below,
you can see the share of the votes cast;
| SCAN-51%
|
| | IND-39%
| |
| |
| |
| |
| | ENV-10%
| | |
| | |
--------------------
share of votes cast
The civic group called SCAN (Democrats) received 51% of the vote.
The independents (Republicans) received 39% of the vote. And the Environ-
mentalist Coaltion (a group of four from four different parties including
the Env Party) received 10% of the vote.
Now, let's look at the share of the seats they got;
| SCAN-100% of the seats
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| . .
------------
share of seats won
Oh? SCAN got 100% of the seats!? The independents and
the Environmentalist Coalition got no seats?
Or, look at it this way;
| SCAN-48,012 | SCAN-Won ALL seats
| |
| | IND-35,966 |
| | |
| | |
| | ENV-8716 |
| | | |
| | | | . .
--------------- ---------------
votes cast seats won
On the left, the number of votes cast. On the right, the number of
seats won.
This is ludicrous! Or as a child would say, "That's not fair!" It took
12,003 votes to elect each SCAN member, but with 44,682 votes, the
independents and the Environmentalist Coalition did not win a single seat!
This left a lot of people frustrated, unrepresented and wondering what to do
next.
Well, proportional representation, or PR, is about making
the representation proportional to the number of votes cast --
if you get twice as many votes, you get twice as many seats.
Now, I suppose that you'd like to know how it works? I will
now give you a twenty second explanation:
[Right now, many of the listeners are leaving the room for a Bud]
Instead of placing an X by your choice, you get to rank several
choices in order of preference. Your first choice, you put a one.
Second choice, a two. Third choice, a three -- up to as many choices
(or as few) as you'd like, like this:
SAMPLE BALLOT
Candidate's Name Party
--------------------------------------
9 Nader Green
2 Brockman Environmentalist
1 Ogle Labor
5 Perot Reform
Clinton Democratic
6 Swing TAO Are Frauds
4 Lyttle Pacifist
8 Hollis Socialist
7 Browne Libertarian
3 Chomsky New
10 Keyes Republican
--------------------------------------
That's it! The rest is up to the computer!
I'd like to welcome you all back from your beer! I've just
completed a political dream for a mean clean voting machine! OH!!
There'll be singing and dancing in the streets tonight!
In the example of a Presidential election shown above,
the voter can rank a candidate regardless of party, race or gender.
When the same method is applied to a multi-candidate election, the
threshold for winning a seat is lowered with each additional open
seat to be filled. For example, to win a seat in the Santa Cruz
race, one/ninth of the votes (plus one vote) would be required for any
candidate to win one seat on the nine-member body.
So, had Santa Cruz used nonpartisan PR elections in 1992,
the results would have looked something like this;
| SCAN-51% | SCAN-5 seats
| |
| | IND-39% | | IND-3 seats
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | ENV-10% | | | ENV-1 seat
| | | | | |
--------------- -------------
votes cast seats won
There! Much fairer. Not only more fair, but more constructive
too! Since each candidate wants to win over the other candidates'
support for 2nd choice, there's more discussion, listening, debate,
respect and positive campaigns. Newspapers sell better, too.
So, if PR gives you fairer results and positive campaigns,
what are the objections?
--First objection) Some people say "PR is a weird and abnormal idea."
On the contrary, a vast majority of the world's democracies use PR
and most emerging democracies are using it too. It's our pluralty
elections that are out of the norm.
There are several forms of PR, from the extreme Israeli example;
which is like one large district with 120 members; to the moderate
9-member districts in Scandinavian countries. The US-style,
winner-take-all, single-member district system is considered to be
an extremist example of democracy, when compared to the moderate forms
of PR such as those that exist in the Scandinavian countries.
In Italy's case of PR, government-financed elections led to
corruption, so their elections were replaced by an innovative
new compensatory PR system in which 75% of the seats are elected in
single-member districts and 25% of the seats are elected by PR in
both houses of Italy's Parliament.
In the US, the Federal Elections Commission presently finances
the two largest parties much like Italy's case, and this tends to
perpetuate the two-party system.
Of the democratic countries that use PR, certain correlations
(with no causative connections) exist;
- All democratic countries that use PR, have a lower trade deficit
than the US.
- All democratic countries that use PR, have a lower national debt
than the US.
- All democratic countries that use PR, have a lower per capita
energy consumption than the US.
- All democratic countries that have greater reserve assets than
the US, use PR.
- All democratic countries that have a greater per capita GNP than
the US, use PR.
Within the past year, South Africa, New Zealand,
Russia and Mexico have adopted PR or semi-PR in their national
elected governments. Most of the world's emerging democracies
are adopting PR.
In the US, forms of PR such as preference voting (PrV), cumulative
voting (CV), and limited voting (LV), are used to elect the city councils of
Cambridge MA and Peoria IL, as well as officials for
scores of New York City School Districts, five Texas school districts
and supervisors in several counties in Alabama. And most corporate boards
of directors use CV in the USA. Hundreds of other kinds of organizations
have adopted PR in some form.
In the majority of the world's democracies in which PR is used,
there is a greater voter turn-out, and the election systems
are supported by all parties because PR gives "universal coverage".
--Second objection) Some people say "Why change the old system,
it will lead to instability?" I disagree. One of the primary
reasons for advocating PR is that the present system discourages
change and forces you to conform to the two-party system. You
can only choose between right and left, liberal or conservative,
and when change does occur, it's so severe that it makes long-
range planning difficult. In addition, the winner-take-all,
or first-past-the-post (FPTP), US system gives the winning majority
a false mandate, and leaves the minority parties with no
representation at all. Perhaps we are too stable, and perhaps
moribund.
--Third objection) Some say coalition governments are weak
and indecisive. Oh? Norway, Switzerland, Japan? Poor wretched
and weak things! Sweden, Austria, Portugal? They make your
heart bleed! Germany, Australia, Spain? They're on the scrap
heap too! If only they could get rid of their weak and indecisive
governments, they too could have a system of gridlock where parties
spend more time bickering than they do running the country.
California! Thank the Lord! Where government is effective,
the economy is strong and stable, voters feel good about represen-
tative democracy! Opportunity and fairness for everyone! NOT!!!
--Forth objection) Some people say that PR is too complicated -
they say that Californians won't understand it. Well, yes,
I'm afraid that if you cannot count up to five, you'll find it
a teeny bit complicated!
--Fifth objection) Some ask, "What will happen to our local
representative?" A perfectly good question! In Santa Cruz
49% of you wasted your vote anyway, because that's the percent
of the vote that went for the independents and the Environmentalist
Coalition, who won no seats in the last election.
With PR, everyone will have representation, and
the highest vote recipients in each self-defined interest group
will be the winning candidates. Very few wasted votes.
Do you know how unrepresented women are in
all levels of government? In the nationally elected US bodies
alone, less than 12% are women legislators. But with PR,
there will be more women in government. For example, in three
Scandinavian countries which use the Sainte-Lague PR system
there are more than 26% women legislators in all three
countries' national legislative governments. Today, 41% of Sweden's
national legislators are women because of PR. Studies show that PR
is the most important positive factor influencing fair representation
for women.
In the US Congress, there is only one independent Congressman
out of 435 Congressmen, even though more than 19% of Americans consider
themselves to be an independent. The 19% of the voters which
voted for independent presidential candidate Ross Perot in 1992
realize that he did not get one single electoral vote!
At the very LEAST, we need proportional electoral votes.
Perhaps we should do away with the electoral college system altogether!
Years after women were given the right to vote and before PR
was adopted there, Kate Sheppard, leader of New Zealand's suffrage
movement had written; "The crudity and the unfairness of the present
method of election ... our clumsy system of voting, still goes on
sending men to Parliament for whom only a small number of their
constituents voted, leaving the majority quite unrepresented. As a
representative system, it is sham, a delusion, a snare to the
unthinking."
In summary;
-- PR is used by a vast majority of the world's democracies and is
supported by all parties.
-- PR is change, yes, but change for greater stability and a more
open government.
-- Coalition governments do better and have better economies with
PR.
-- More diverse representation will be achieved for all parties,
so you will more likely have a representative to talk to that you
like.
-- PR solves the vote-split problem and brings more positive campaigns.
It's *still* one-person, one-vote -- THAT COUNTS! Fair taxation with
FAIR representation!!
-- PR is too complicated for Californians ... Ha .. ha .. ha.
The greatest advantage is that it will reflect the will
of the people instantly. It will give greater diversity in
government. As a melting pot, we Americans find strength in
diversity. Perhaps we can rediscover that strength?
As Thomas Paine put it, "The right of voting for representation
is the primary right by which other rights are protected." Without
PR, our rights are not being protected.
If you find some truth to what I've written, please, join
the movement to bring fairer elections to our government.
Thank you very much for your time.
Very truly yours,
MP James Ogle
USA Parliament
To order an excellent book on PR:
_Real Choices/New Voices - The Case for Proportional Representation
in the United States_ by Douglas Amy, cost $29.50 plus $3. shipping.
Columbia University Press
136 South Broadway, Irvington, New York 10533-2599
phone (914) 591-9111, fax (914) 591-9201