[bedobi]

> Ultimately political systems are judged by the quality of their policies

thanks for putting into words exactly what I thought without really being able to explain it

"fair" voting systems feel good but from what I've seen they seem to kind of end up amplifying extremism and bad policy

[dane-pgp]

Do you have some examples where there is a clear causative link between the "fair" voting system and the amplified extremism / bad policy? Alternatively, can you point to examples where an "unfair" voting system has prevented such bad outcomes that were otherwise unavoidable?

It's actually very hard to predict what sorts of government would emerge, or constitutional crises would occur, under a counterfactual voting system, and countries can fail for any number of reasons, regardless of their voting system. Ideally we'd need a dataset covering dozens of countries and multiple decades, with some sort of measure of "extremism" and "bad policy", which a political scientist might be reluctant to try quantifying.

[bedobi]

Yeah, I posted one elsewhere in the thread

> It also makes it easier for people to vote for trash parties like One Nation. In other countries people would think twice before voting for small, extremist parties like that lest they waste their vote if the party doesn't make it past the threshold for getting a seat. (this is just one of the many problems I see with the Australian system)

[dane-pgp]

But has the ability for people to vote for One Nation specifically lead to bad government policies? Under a less fair voting system, might a minority of extremists have been able to take over one of the major parties (or at least might one of the major parties have adopted extremist policies in order to secure the vote of the extremists)?

I think it would be very naive to imagine that making the voting system less representative would make people just give up on their extremism and peacefully accept the policies of one of the major parties. If anything, I would guess that showing how little support an extremist party has would disabuse its voters from believing they represent some sort of oppressed majority.

[scythe]

It's worth remembering that a particular flaw of IRV which is not shared by all multiple selection voting systems is that it can incentivize putting a low-popularity party ahead of your more popular preference, since your vote will very likely transfer. This is called "non-monotonicity" and has been documented e.g. here:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-05-04/an-example-of-non-mon...

But the Australian system is still much better than the first-choice-only method used in most electorates. You don't have the situation (discussed in the article) where an extreme faction can usurp a major party by being unified in the primaries. By shuttling "One Nation" voters to their own party, you give them a little representation, but you keep a lid on it. Meanwhile, you give a voice to new perspectives that might be ignored for a long time in a two-party system.

[vidarh]

So you're arguing for removing the ability of those whose opinions you dislike to have their opinions represented, in other words.

I love in the UK, which uses FPTP, and personally I don't consider countries which uses this system to be democratic countries at all. I'm de facto disenfranchised.

[bedobi]

> you're arguing for removing the ability of those whose opinions you dislike to have their opinions represented

as I said elsewhere, I think the cost for voting for minority extremist parties and policies should be higher, not lower, yes, and frankly, I don't have a problem with disenfranchising extremism, no.

> I don't consider countries which uses FPTP to be democratic countries at all. I'm de facto disenfranchised

I think that's great. More "fair" voting systems to me are bad because it seems to me all they do is just to cater to people's extremism.

On a side note, probably the fundamental reason why we disagree is because you and people like you seem to think democracy should mean the will of the people and the voting system should serve to cater to and express the will of the people as closely as possible, including the ugly stuff,

while I and people like me think in liberal democracies there are a lot of things which are not and should not be subject to the will of the people, no matter how popular, and the voting system should not cater to peoples extremisms, no matter how popular.

Your side will make a point out of that, saying you're more democratic. Maybe that's true! But I don't want to live in a society where eg fundamental human rights are subject to the whims of popular opinion. (which is often ugly, misinformed etc etc)

[cycomanic]

It's really the other way around, our current systems (to different degrees) give extreme positions disproportionate influence. Just look at the republican party in the US, which has moved considerably to the extreme right over the last 20 years due to the influence of extreme single issue minorities (tea party/fundamentalist christian).