I am honored and humbled to have been quoted extensively in today’s Washington Post column by Christopher Ingraham.
How to fix democracy: Move beyond the two-party system, experts say.
In addition to various quotations from me (from an exchange I had with Ingraham), there are quotes and a link to my post on the emergency OLPR reform.
Respect, MSS!
“However, at some point the comments below Professor Shugart’s post devolved into a bizarre and seemingly random collection of anecdotes comparing Second Republic Rome to the rules of order for the student council at The University of Queensland, Australia, four decades ago…” – one takes pity on Mr Ingraham for wading into that particular sewer. (-;
Don’t read the comments!
(Except here, of course.)
I was chair of the UQ student council 4 decades ago!
But were you one of the seven Co-Consuls (elected by STV to a fixed 4.3-year term) who governed Second Republic Rome?
Nah, didn’t think so
I assume in that context STV stands for Surrealist Transferable Vote.
Even Surrealist Transferable Vote barely matches the real-life surrealism of the Single NON-transferable vote…
Well, hopefully one of these days you’ll get a phone call akin to the one you got from Argentina all those years ago…
That would be nice.
Actually, that was a knock on the office door from one of Menem’s assistants, who happened to be visiting UCSD.
I propose a proportional two round system:
first round: voters rank parties (independents can run as a party of one as well) and parties getting the threshold qualify for the second round
second round: all candidates from the qualifying parties run and the candidates with the most votes from each party get the available seats
This idea would allow for transferable votes within parties in the first round and simple plurality voting in the second round, along with proportionality.
Why do two rounds when you could just use ranked ballots?