American political parties and primarys?

[Stuart Mackey]

Umm what is your definition of Westminster system? I always thought that had to do with the rules governing parliament, not how parliament itself was elected. Its been a while since I took civics, but we were taught that the UK was THE archetype of a Westminster system - hence the name.

A westminster system is defined by the nature of its consitition and how a government is formed.
A government can only be formed from the elected members of parliment
The nature of the constition, be it written or unwritten is that the Monarch or the Governor General acts in accordance with the advice tendered by the elected government of the day.
The electoral system defines the makeup of the House.

The English/British parliment is the original model, but it is now only one variation of a original theame.

NZ has a threshold to gain seats in parliment, 5% of the party vote or a actual electorate. We have not had stability problems or blackmail from small parties.

In other words you could theoretically have 94.9% of the population not represented.

How so?
If no one votes?

On a more practical level it is not hard to imagine numerous parties which poll around 0-4% and don't win an electorate - because that is optimistic for just about every third party in this country. I mean according to the statistics a full 4.9% and 6.02% (ignoring registered parties with no list and unregistered parties) of the New Zealand electorate was not represented in the last two elections respectively. Further several parties are overrepresented in parliament, holding more seats than dictated by their polling returns. In otherwords pretty consistent with events in the US.

these percentages refer to what parties?
What parties are over represented?

We have not found this to be the case. smaller parties have had influence, or a veto on a governments actions, this is the price a government pays for confidence and supply.

Actually you have according to your government 5%, give or take, of the populace has no say in the government.

So they obviously have no vote in parliment do they?

Further I thought ever since you went to MMP you've always had minority governments, which has resulted in some of the minor parties getting a few extra perks. Like say a party with two MP's getting two cabinet portfolios.

correct.

You've only been working with the system for what 10 years now? And you are already seeing deals being made for portfolios, small party vetos, etc.

So what? we have a minority governmnet, who, to gain legitimacy it must compromise with the rest of parliment to get its programme passed. Bear in mind that this party has the single largest group in the house.
This is the whole point of MMP, a minority of the vote cannot dictate to the overall majority. If a minority government were to ignore the rest of parliment, those other partys can topple the governmnet.


snip unrelated.

[Stuart Mackey]

What we get down to here is a fundamental difference in philosophy. The United States is and always has been highly decentralized by the standards of Britian's other daughter countries. If your hypothetical 15% (VERY hypothetical, since we're assuming that the members of this hypothetical minority that's so at odds with the mainstream they haven't been co-opted by one of the majors yet is so evently distributed there isn't a clump of them large enough to elect a single Congressman anywhere) is scattered too widely to elect representatives, then their views ARE irrevelant because they don't represent the majority in any state or district, which is more important than their numbers nationwide.

So you would cheerfully ignore 15% of your population? as I said earlier, how can you call your representaion legitimate in such a case?..

Basically, yes. They're citizens of their districts and their states before they're citizens of the United States. If not one single congressional district in the entire country wants a third party candidate, then it would not be democratic to give the third party representation--though if there WAS 15% of the electorate that felt it wasn't being represented, it wouldn't be very long before one or both of the majors started nominating candidates that saw things the same way they did--see, for example, the Republican Liberty Caucus (libertarian) or the Congressional Progressive Caucus (Social democrats).

What ever rocks your boat, i guess. If someone wakes up and realises that a viable third party can put in a different programme then this goes out the window, see the British Whigs/Tories/Labour change after WW1.
You seem to have tha system that is tweedle dum or tweedle dee with no alternative.
Either that our your public is not overly sophisticated, no offence, but you seem to be getting shafted by your politicians.

Well for one thing you do have third parties, but I would also seem that you have a very depolitisied public. Givent the overwhealming attitude of your two main parties I would think that the US public would have woken up to not having alternative vews represented and implemented. Maybe this is a good thing..you have Falwell and other like him

Take a look at the list of third parties at Politics 1 (I posted the link in the Political Resources thread) if you haven't already. Most of them are tiny, fragmented, and they make the Libertarians and the Greens look like moderates. Frankly, if our system keeps those loonies out of power, so much the better.

We have a proportional system and we dont get any more idiots than you do. Thing is that the extreme support is only their own, tiny, parties that dont have broad public support, and if they did, according to you, they would already be represented.

[Ignorant twit]

A westminster system is defined by the nature of its consitition and how a government is formed.
A government can only be formed from the elected members of parliment
The nature of the constition, be it written or unwritten is that the Monarch or the Governor General acts in accordance with the advice tendered by the elected government of the day.The electoral system defines the makeup of the House.

The English/British parliment is the original model, but it is now only one variation of a original theame.

Okay in other words westminster, itself, has no inherent mechanism to garuntee true representation.

NZ has a threshold to gain seats in parliment, 5% of the party vote or a actual electorate. We have not had stability problems or blackmail from small parties.

In other words you could theoretically have 94.9% of the population not represented.

How so?
If no one votes?

26 parties splitting the vote, only one polling above 5%. As I said theoretical. Another theoretical problem is overhang, your electoral system differs from the UK significantly only when one party can't win electoral seats of their own right. It is quite possible to have parties win more seats electorally than on list.

these percentages refer to what parties?
What parties are over represented?

Labour has 2 seats beyond its polling merit. As does National. Green has one extra. Overrepresentation can come from two sources in MMP: overhang and cutoff. Currently we see that cutoff is giving the major parties more seats than they earned. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it just goes to point that your electoral system is by no means perfect.

So they obviously have no vote in parliment do they?

Well that's your arguement. We have plenty of people who vote third party and you argue that they have no say in the government because they never get congressmen in. I beleive that to be fallicious, but hey its your arguement.

Further I thought ever since you went to MMP you've always had minority governments, which has resulted in some of the minor parties getting a few extra perks. Like say a party with two MP's getting two cabinet portfolios.

correct.

Concession accepted. MMP has resulted in disproportionate power to a minority position

So what? we have a minority governmnet, who, to gain legitimacy it must compromise with the rest of parliment to get its programme passed. Bear in mind that this party has the single largest group in the house.
This is the whole point of MMP, a minority of the vote cannot dictate to the overall majority. If a minority government were to ignore the rest of parliment, those other partys can topple the governmnet.

Ahh but let us say that Labour wants to undertake a specific initiative, whoever the majority of the government (and the populace) oppose it. Well they approach the Greens and offer quid pro quo. Vote in this social program and we will vote for some environmental regulations which the vast majority of the populace opposes.

Thus two proposals get passed, neither being supported by the majority, but being horse traded in. Horse trading in and of itself is endemic to government, however minority government brings the ability for a VERY small political party to get massive concessions from the plurality party. I refer you to Greece to see how nicely this played out during the interwar period.

In short Stuart, neither Westminster nor MMP garuntee true representation any more than the US model. Both systems allow for over and under representation. Theoretically both allow for massive problems. Neither is garunteed to be a panacea.

[RedImperator]

What ever rocks your boat, i guess. If someone wakes up and realises that a viable third party can put in a different programme then this goes out the window, see the British Whigs/Tories/Labour change after WW1.
You seem to have tha system that is tweedle dum or tweedle dee with no alternative.
Either that our your public is not overly sophisticated, no offence, but you seem to be getting shafted by your politicians.

The rise of a third party would, in this sytem, have to coincide with the decline of the second party (and probably a realignment of the first). It's not impossible that a new party come to power, but one of the existing two would have to go first.

We have a proportional system and we dont get any more idiots than you do. Thing is that the extreme support is only their own, tiny, parties that dont have broad public support, and if they did, according to you, they would already be represented.

But is IS possible in your system for a fringe party to become disproportionally powerful. That seems to be the tradeoff--Westminister systems can overrepresent minorities, the American system can underrepresent them. You start getting into little mathematical twists no matter how you arrange a representative system. The only system that can represent EVERYONE'S view is a direct democracy, but good luck with that in any organization bigger than a small town.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

So what? we have a minority governmnet, who, to gain legitimacy it must compromise with the rest of parliment to get its programme passed. Bear in mind that this party has the single largest group in the house.
This is the whole point of MMP, a minority of the vote cannot dictate to the overall majority. If a minority government were to ignore the rest of parliment, those other partys can topple the governmnet.


snip unrelated.

No, it wouldn't. You're still not understanding our government at all! This is quite frustrating to read - It's like talking to someone in a foreign language.

Nobody controls the U.S. government except for the President. The Executive and Legislative branches are constitutionally seperated. So the process which determinates the election of the chambers of Congress and that which determines the President, along with the internal process for appointing Secretaries and Committee chairs - These are totally unrelated to each other, and can function totally seperate (and indeed, are designed to function in opposition to each other).

Let me break this down:

If there were three major parties in the U.S. system, and one had 40% of the vote, and 2 had 30% of the vote, that would be totally irrelevant to the operation of the chambers of Congress. The Speaker of the House and the other positions in the House, for example, would be elected by a straight majority (50%+1) of the chamber - So the leadership would in fact be elected by whichever two parties could come to an agreement on the matter (or if one could persuade members of another to "vote their conscience" in favour of a moderate candidate). The process can go on as long as necessary.

Your equivlant of cabinet ministers - Secretaries in our parlance - are appointed directly by the President, and only need to be confirmed in their places by the Senate. The process for determining the leadership of Congress is purely one for the internal leadership, and has nothing to do with the actual running of the country in an executive sense. It's also very simple - A straight majority vote. And you know what? That accomadates third parties. Or fourth, or fifth. It doesn't matter how many you have, in fact. As long as you can get 50%+1 of the Congress to agree on the election of the internal Congressional leadership, things will function, and that can take months without a breakdown in the system - It has before.