The House Republicans in U.S. Congress are pathetic.

[Ben Kenobi]

My complaint against PR is that you get little chance to pick a candidate, the party has a bigger say over who is on the list. This is true for FPP, where people can be parachuted in, but it is easier to get a groundswell against such activities or people who piss off the local electorate on a personal (not party) level.

I prefer STV.

It works fine for urban ridings and should be confined to them. The problem is that every implementation I've seen reverses this.

If you retain all the rural seats, and use STV for urban seats, you get the best of both worlds - the party lists only have significance in an urban riding, and rural ridings get to keep their local representatives.

What actually happens is this.

The BC STV proposal had 85 MLAs in 20 STV seats. Depending on how you draw the lines, it's possible to eradicate all the rural representation.

You'd also get oddities where a party (say the greens), win 10 percent of the total and get 10 percent of the 50 percent (and zero of the rest), so they would get 5 seats. All 5 would be in areas that they did extremely poorly.

You could have ridings under this setting where 60, 70 percent of the people vote one way and they end up with a representative who earned 5 percent of the votes in that area.

The other thing is that because of the cutoff, you'd see little incentive for smaller parties to form. There would be zero incentive to campaign in rural ridings, as you could earn their seats just by doing well in urban areas.

I don't honestly see how STV is more democratic than FPTP.

[Sava]

BK, if you support my dictatorship, I will give you a country to do with as you please.

... and something in the developed world too

[Imran Siddiqui]

This all seems complicated. You guys should put me in charge.

Then things will get done!

I thought you already were in charge?

Well, now I have to find another reason that the world is so ****ed up

[Sava]

trust me, you would love it if i were in charge

[Sava]

To be fair to MrFun, the circle jerk ripping on him is not exactly comprised of great original thinkers.

[Imran Siddiqui]

This is Poly; what do you expect?

[Sava]

Breakfast and a blowjob usually?

[Imran Siddiqui]

From Poly? Ok, I'll let Aeson know...

[Sava]

[Imran Siddiqui]

It'll likely come from Aeson though

[Sava]

no such thing as a bad breakfast

[Imran Siddiqui]

I think he uses teeth... um, to make his eggs.

[Sava]

To get a clean break, I've found this utensil to be useful.


also makes it easy to separate the yolk

[MrFun]

To be fair to MrFun, the circle jerk ripping on him is not exactly comprised of great original thinkers.

They find me to be so fascinating, that they turn every thread topic I make, into about me.

Don't discuss the issue; attack the person.

[Sava]

They find me to be so fascinating, that they turn every thread topic I make, into about me.

You're really the only person they can conceivably pile on (and maybe serb/ellestar)... which is why they do it.

Personally, I find it to be a clever troll (even if you are serious).