Electoral Reform Debate - Commentary Thread

[Lumine]

I'm not sure we will see a similar situation like the one we had on the South Gubernatorial Debate, but this thread might be necessary.

[Prince of Salem]

Show 'em Clyde

[Poirot]

Applause after Clyde's answer.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

If anyone has any questions they would like me to ask, feel free to send me a private message. I can't promise I'll work it in exactly as you worded it (or at all ), but I'll try my best.

[Adam Griffin]

I'm still just as neutral as ever. Clyde's doing a great job at keeping me there, to be honest.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

I do strongly disagree with Mr Clyde's concern about the partisan risk of districting, as someone who went through it as a Governor, the process is probably one of the least partisan things I ever went through. You're much more concerned about the balance of numbers, than who actually lives there. Because it's not an easy process and you actually don't want to spend all your time on this.

[Poirot]

The Aye side has claimed the At-large election results in boring, predictable outcome. That is not true. Over my time in Atlasia many At-large elections have ended in a couple of vote difference in determining the winner of the last seat. So they can be exciting. A few examples:

December 2012, less than 2 votes difference for the last seat
https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=149059.msg3559661#msg3559661

April 2013, less than 2 votes
https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/April_2013_Senate_Election

December 2013, less than 3 votes
https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/December_2013_Senate_Election

December 2014, 2 votes
https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=149059.msg3559661#msg3559661

The At-large election gave a chance to candidates who were not able to win a regional race to get elected to the Senate, it gave them another path. Just by memory I think of Goldwater and Deus who lost a regional race in the NE before winning in At-large. Lumine and Cris in the Midwest.
   
A smaller party like the D-R has managed to win At-Large senate seat with Deus and shua. I'm not sure if they had their party members split in five districts if they could win a district against three much bigger parties.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

The Aye side has claimed the At-large election results in boring, predictable outcome. That is not true. Over my time in Atlasia many At-large elections have ended in a couple of vote difference in determining the winner of the last seat. So they can be exciting. A few examples:

December 2012, less than 2 votes difference for the last seat
https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=149059.msg3559661#msg3559661

April 2013, less than 2 votes
https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/April_2013_Senate_Election

December 2013, less than 3 votes
https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/December_2013_Senate_Election

December 2014, 2 votes
https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=149059.msg3559661#msg3559661

The At-large election gave a chance to candidates who were not able to win a regional race to get elected to the Senate, it gave them another path. Just by memory I think of Goldwater and Deus who lost a regional race in the NE before winning in At-large. Lumine and Cris in the Midwest.
   
A smaller party like the D-R has managed to win At-Large senate seat with Deus and shua. I'm not sure if they had their party members split in five districts if they could win a district against three much bigger parties.

If anything, district elections would probably give a perennial independent candidate such as yourself a much better chance than the multi-seat at-large where you're always at the mercy of positive preference flows.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

A ten member party if unified and at 100% turnout can easily win that election by peeling off support from a largely party or parties and securing like minded Indies.

This is exactly what Xahar, Shua, Deus and now Cris managed to do running as Third Party members in the At-Large elections.

A district will have a limited number of voters, and pulling Smoltchanov from the NE, Angus from the Midwest and Torie or somebody like that from the Pacific won't be possible. Those indies are scattered as are the voters in a major party who would be willing to break ranks for such a candidate.

In a one and one race, the push will be for conformity. In an at-Large race, once your guys are in, a major party can then flex's its remaining muscle in trying to decide who gets the third seat. Or members will feel like they can vote for someone else or just go ahead and do that regardless, which happened in April 2014 with the Feds. Shua got EG and Sanchez, and they are far away from each other. That is where the indies stand their best chance, that played out in five of the last six At-Large elections.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I brought those figures up, as the district elections would be run via the same voting system as regional elections, and history has shown that in single-winner elections the incumbent tends to do better than newcomers, so newer players have less of a look in when compared to at-large elections.

This is an important point. For all the citing of the South as an example, lets not forget that Hagrid has been in the game three years, a cabinet member twice, Former At-Large Senator and most glaring, my indirect predecessor as Fed Chair. He had his own relationships and connections well built up in the region and knew some of those conservative voters far better than I did most likely. He may be an independent, but just like Sam Spade during his time as South Regional Senator, he is an indy with a well established presence and numerous connections to rely upon that a newer member, a third partier with fewer connections, etc etc doesn't have at his disposal.

There was a line in the old recruitment thread in 2008 about how successful the Sam Spade Party was and the response was that its success stemmed from the fact that Sam Spade was successful.


Knocking off incumbents is incredibly hard. Oakvale cited the presence of a Light Party Regional Senator in the debate. That light party member was a former JCPer, turned Liberal before he joined the Light Party. He was a Governor of the region and had served previously as the Region's Senator less than a year before. The seat was also open because Nix was running for President. He also later became a Southerner and a Federalist and served as Emperor last summer. Shame Scott is no longer here.

The only DR Regional Senator was Spiral, elected as a Federalist with the support of ME conservative machine.

The collapse of the DRs as a political force is also the culprit for that lack of representation at regional seat level more than the system.

Oakvale says the collapse of the DR's a political force is the reason for their lack of success at the regional level. What? The DRs won a seat in three straight at-Large elections and an At-Large Special. They never won a regional seat. They challenged Bore, DC al fine and myself and were defeated by incumbents from the dominant party in each region. Do you really think that a district would be any different in this regard?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

If your an indy, would you stand a better chance pulling from the mavericks, indies and third partiers of like minded view in a narrow or a broader constituency? It is not just theory either, but the record actually does back this point up.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

From the looks of this those opposed to the Amendment don't have a good case.  It is fully accepted by all players in this debate that the key, most important issue is competitiveness of elections?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

From the looks of this those opposed to the Amendment don't have a good case.  It is fully accepted by all players in this debate that the key, most important issue is competitiveness of elections?

I am not convinced they will be competitive, nor if drawn to be so that they will remain as such. We have seen ample evidence as to why such should be concerning.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

From the looks of this those opposed to the Amendment don't have a good case.  It is fully accepted by all players in this debate that the key, most important issue is competitiveness of elections?

I am not convinced they will be competitive, nor if drawn to be so that they will remain as such. We have seen ample evidence as to why such should be concerning.

Does the possibility of gerrymandering concern you?

[ZuWo]

It's both remarkable and fascinating to watch how eagerly Labor is throwing their own president and the key reform project of his administration under the bus.

[bore]

This is a very interesting debate so far, and I'd just like to make a few comments

It's both remarkable and fascinating to watch how eagerly Labor is throwing their own president and the key reform project of his administration under the bus.

It's almost as if this isn't a labor plot to seize power...

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It's worth pointing out that my race against Deus in the comparitively left leaning northeast was 16- Bore 17- Deus and 1- Dallasfan which flowed to me. If any 1 of my voters had first preferenced Deus instead I would have lost. When you're talking of margins that thin it's not an example of any sort of structural impediment, but just bad luck.  If shua had run in the mideast for an open seat or maxwell in some southern district they would have won.

The Aye side has claimed the At-large election results in boring, predictable outcome. That is not true. Over my time in Atlasia many At-large elections have ended in a couple of vote difference in determining the winner of the last seat. So they can be exciting. A few examples:

December 2012, less than 2 votes difference for the last seat
https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=149059.msg3559661#msg3559661

April 2013, less than 2 votes
https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/April_2013_Senate_Election

December 2013, less than 3 votes
https://uselectionatlas.org/AFEWIKI/index.php/December_2013_Senate_Election

December 2014, 2 votes
https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=149059.msg3559661#msg3559661

The At-large election gave a chance to candidates who were not able to win a regional race to get elected to the Senate, it gave them another path. Just by memory I think of Goldwater and Deus who lost a regional race in the NE before winning in At-large. Lumine and Cris in the Midwest.
    
A smaller party like the D-R has managed to win At-Large senate seat with Deus and shua. I'm not sure if they had their party members split in five districts if they could win a district against three much bigger parties.

There is a difference between exciting and a technically close race. There have been plenty of at large elections where the winner is decided by 0.0124356123's of a vote. That doesn't make them exciting because no one remembers them or enjoyed watching them. In fact the only people who really had any inkling they were close are each parties respective number crunchers.

A ten member party if unified and at 100% turnout can easily win that election by peeling off support from a largely party or parties and securing like minded Indies.

This is exactly what Xahar, Shua, Deus and now Cris managed to do running as Third Party members in the At-Large elections.

A district will have a limited number of voters, and pulling Smoltchanov from the NE, Angus from the Midwest and Torie or somebody like that from the Pacific won't be possible. Those indies are scattered as are the voters in a major party who would be willing to break ranks for such a candidate.

In a one and one race, the push will be for conformity. In an at-Large race, once your guys are in, a major party can then flex's its remaining muscle in trying to decide who gets the third seat. Or members will feel like they can vote for someone else or just go ahead and do that regardless, which happened in April 2014 with the Feds. Shua got EG and Sanchez, and they are far away from each other. That is where the indies stand their best chance, that played out in five of the last six At-Large elections.

This largely misses the point of FPTP elections which is that it's not all about voting for the candidate, it is also about voting against him. In my race against Deus you had staunch social conservatives voting for Deus because he was not a laborite but in an at large there is no way in hell he would get their first or even second preference.  There were many voters in Poirot's race against me who had never voted for him before and who have not voted for him since.

With regard to what Clyde's said in the debate:

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There are lies, damned lies and statistics. It's true that I had a large percentage over poirot in that election, but how could I not and still win? Every voter in the northeast is like 4 or 5%, whereas in the at large elections every voter is less than a percent. When you look at absolute margin, the most important thing it is true that Poirot came closest in the northeast senate race.

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This is misleading, because the sample size is too small to be significant. It is largely a function that the senators who, over that period, were the most active and the least likely to quit where regional ones. In fact it was always noticeable how few regional senators resigned due to activity. I'd suggest the high number of at large senators is because they kept on getting expelled for inactivity

But even so, the reason the regional figure is so low is because me, yankee tnf and tyrion/cranberry basically held those seats for the entire time. But it is just as plausible for us to have held those seats as at large senators. 3 or 4 people happening to be regional senators over that whole period does not suggest let alone prove anything. Especially since, as yankee keeps on telling us (and he's right ) we all had to work really hard to keep those seats, which isn't necessarily true of at large senators, as SWE can tell you

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If the larger parties are running more candidates, then it stands to reason that it’s more likely for candidates from the larger parties to be elected - as there is more candidates that could be elected.

Voters have less of a choice in candidates for regional elections - as smaller parties may decide not run, as they feel they have no chance of winning the seat.

The evidence for the current voting system helping smaller parties is clear – in the last ten Senates, only three parties have represented regional seats, compared to five parties in at-large seats. If districts had been used - then it would be likely that only three parties would've been elected to the Senate over that time. Smaller parties have only represented at-large seats recently.[/quote]
Firstly, as oakvale pointed out, the three parties stat is just wrong.

But secondly I don't actually disagree with Clyde's interpretation of my post. It is true that under districts the federalists could, say, win 3 seats. But they could also win none. We could run at large elections every weekend for the next year and labor would never get more and never get less than 2.  With districts we could see 0 or we could see 3 or 4. The same is true of the federalists and TPP and the DRs.

Thirdly the idea that smaller parties might decide not to run is also not borne out by the facts. In my elections for the northeast I ran against, in order, a federalist and an indy, a federalist and an indy, a DR, and a TPPer. The only people who don't run in district elections is, perversely, members of big parties, because of primaries (but even so, more will run than do now).

[Oakvale]

I'd just like to point out the obvious point that the sheeple on the Yes side are missing - Labor are secretly plotting by pretending to "throw Bore under the bus" as part of the wider Trotskyist plot to trick people into voting for the ERA. Wake up!

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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It's worth pointing out that my race against Deus in the comparitively left leaning northeast was 16- Bore 17- Deus and 1- Dallasfan which flowed to me. If any 1 of my voters had first preferenced Deus instead I would have lost. When you're talking of margins that thin it's not an example of any sort of structural impediment, but just bad luck.  If shua had run in the mideast for an open seat or maxwell in some southern district they would have won.

I think you got those numbers reversed. If you had sixteen and he seventeen and Dallas flowed to you, he would have beat you in a 17-17 tie by having more first preferences. Keep in mind from October 2013 through August 2014, The Feds actively worked against every laborite Senator who was being challenged regardless of who there opponent was as long as they were to the right. And Deus did in fact win an At-Large seat in the August elections, not come close and lose by one vote, but actually got in. Competiveness is fine unless you are constantly on the losing side of those 1 vote elections.

Junkie ran several times, even ran against bgwah and lost. Ran in specials and lost to the JCP machine. We finally got him in, during the December 2011 election. He was getting tired of losing and almost did not run in that election. A newby who cannot break through is more then likely going to leave the game.

Fun Fact, shua actually did lose an open seat, Mideast Regional Senate election everyone thought he had in the bag. That was during the three region RPP sweep of October 2011. The Mideast Feds are far more Conservative then the Mideast RPPers, was far larger and and had more conservative candidates running typically but in both cases were a plurality of the region's votes. Shua would have won yes, provided a Federalist was not running. Regions often default to the majority party in that region, provided that the candidate is moderate enough to win swing votes like MoPolitico in that election, TJ in June 2013 or DC al Fine.

Are Regional Seats better than the At-Large ones, hell yeah. But if the point here is about indies breaking through, districts and Regions are difficult unless they are a well established figure like Scott, Spade, Hagrid or the like in the region running for an open seat or against a weakened incumbent. Like it or not and all the other deficiencies aside, the At-Large balance out the pro-incumbency nature of the one on one seats.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

This is misleading, because the sample size is too small to be significant. It is largely a function that the senators who, over that period, were the most active and the least likely to quit where regional ones. In fact it was always noticeable how few regional senators resigned due to activity. I'd suggest the high number of at large senators is because they kept on getting expelled for inactivity

This is a point that deserves to be highlighted. At-large elections have given us most of our least reliable and least committed Senators. On the other hand, it's virtually impossible to win a contested regional seat without working for it, whether you're an incumbent or not.

This suggests that there's something very wrong with these elections in terms of keeping at-large Senators accountable to their voters. Even worse, when an at-large Senator resigns, this usually triggers a national, single-seat election. These special elections are some of Atlasia's best, but they're hardly a boon to diversity and minority representation.

In two years the Feds have not won a special election for Senate. The Progressive Union and DRs did though. And DRs came within one vote of winning two actually. In the case of the former, Lumine who had challenged an incumbent in a hostile region demographically, got in later by pulling from the more diverse and less solidified electorate nationwide.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

From the looks of this those opposed to the Amendment don't have a good case.  It is fully accepted by all players in this debate that the key, most important issue is competitiveness of elections?

I am not convinced they will be competitive, nor if drawn to be so that they will remain as such. We have seen ample evidence as to why such should be concerning.

Does the possibility of gerrymandering concern you?

No.

I think the dominant party in each will end up winning them and where there is not a dominant party, one will rush people in to change that, thus distorting the numerical equality as well as the competativeness.

[Blair]

It's both remarkable and fascinating to watch how eagerly Labor is throwing their own president and the key reform project of his administration under the bus.

eh what? I voted for this in the senate

[Talleyrand]

So is the Labor Party planning to pass this to gerrymander the other parties out of existence or fail it to undermine their President? I'm confused.

[Poirot]

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If this is what you think of at-large senators, you should blame the political parties who select their candidates. If it's true parties could run more candidates but feel restricted by the format of at-large elections and at-large senators are least reliable, parties should choose candidates more carefully.

[Adam Griffin]

So is the Labor Party planning to pass this to gerrymander the other parties out of existence or fail it to undermine their President? I'm confused.

Both, obviously!

[Poirot]

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I don't find it a great thing when races are against someone. I think when I did best in regional senate races was because I was the lone alternative to a candidate/ a party. When it was a three person race I would get only a couple of votes and the main challenger was someone from a party.

So when it is said I did good in a regional race to show it doesn't harm small parties or independents, it was probably because nobody else ran (popular incumbent or others felt they didn't have much chance of winning). When a party ran someone I suddenly had very little support. I think small parties will be at the mercy of big parties in districts. They will have to make a deal with other parties so they don't run a candidate and support the small party or something because if the big parties ran candidates in a district the small registration party is probably doomed to survive the first round. It could lead to deals between parties about candidates and support but that goes against the theory that many candidates would run in districts. It could lead to a two person for and against candidate/party race.

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They are exciting because often there is a seat at stake until the last votes, unlike regional seats that have not even been contested or not very close. There is rarely suspense until the end. I have enjoyed at-large elections, finds them exciting and remembers them, like one in which some tried to stop the Liberal party from gaining two seats or the one some worked to stop Labor from gaining two.

I've agonized far more on filling a ballot for at-large races than voting for regional, so eliminating at-large would remove me stress and feeling terrible.