Election Methodologies Discussion WARNING: HERE BE DRAGONS!!!

[Karro]

I agree that the 2 party power structure is a horrible thing. However, to play devils advocate for a second, multi party systems have not always worked out to well. As an example, my understanding is that there were over 100 political parties(200+ IIRC) in Germany after World War I. I want to state emphatically, that I am not a history major, nor should I be considered an expert. In any event, the German people were fairly destitute and the political infighting between so many parties pretty much meant nothing could get accomplished to help the average Joe in the country. Also, note that this was around the time of the US Great Depression so this whole time period was bad for everyone in the world. Ultimatly, this political infighting lead to a few parties banding together and this lead to the power rise of Hitler. Hitler then began creating his secret police force to silent opponents as well as increasing his military might (which was expressly forbidden by the WWI treaty).

Of course, history is always re-written by the winners of any conflict to make themselves look better, so take this all with a grain of salt and look into the facts and make up your own mind. Your conclusions could be different from mine.

Neither am I a history major, just an occassional armchair enthusiast, but I think you're about right. And I agree... multi-party systems are also frought with problems--many problems of which I'm not keen on having crop up here in the USA. That said, I think it might be nice, perhaps ideal, to try having between 3 and 5 major parties.

(Effectively, we kind of do, but they are shrink-wrapped into two permanent party coalitions. On one side you have the Christian/Family Values party permanently tied to the Fiscal Conservative party and the Defense/Warhawk party. On the other side you have the Free-love and Liberal Values parties permanently tied to the Social Reform party, the Environmentalist party and the Government Regulations party [please let those sound mostly neutral to everyone else]. But there's really nothing inherrent to these two coalitions that ought to bind them together. What if, for instance, you have a voter who is a strong Christian Values voter, but who also believes in Social Reform and Environmentalism as well as Fiscal Conservatism... There's not a party that represents this voter's collection of values.)