Comment 62263

By Undustrial (registered) - website | Posted April 14, 2011 at 13:22:15 in reply to Comment 62233

There's lots of countries with disasters for parliaments which use PR (like Italy, with it's new-coalition-per-year record), but that has as much to do with the sheer number of countries which practice it.

The problem is that all of our decision-making power is confined to a vote in who will represent us, and nearly none involves what they do in power. Thus, even if public opinion is constant, we often swing between ruling parties because they simply aren't doing what we want. A term or two, when the "opposition" hasn't either, we swing back. We can vote more, and we can choose a better method for counting votes, but as long as we're voting for people not policies, we'll always be fundamentally disconnected from what the government does. All we can do is react, and we only get one reaction per term.

The enormous public apathy of which Mystoneycreek writes can't just be written off as apathy or cynicism. If 40% of the populace feels so unimpressed by our voting system that they don't even bother to vote, that's saying something.

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