The Marquis de Condorcet and Admiral Jean-Charles de Borda were two men of the French Enlightenment who struggled with how to design voting systems that accurately reflected voters' preferences. Condorcet favored a method that required the winner in a multiparty election to win a series of head-to-head contests, but he also discovered that his method easily led to a paradoxes that produced no clear winners. The Borda method avoids the Condorcet paradox by requiring voters to rank choices numerically in order of preference, but this method is flawed because the withdrawal of a last-place candidate can reverse the election results. Mathematicians in the 19th century attempted to design better voting systems, including Lewis Carroll, who favored an early form of proportional representation. Economist Kenneth Arrow argued that designing a perfect voting system was futile, because his "impossibility theorem" proved that it's impossible to design a non-dictatorial voting system that fulfills five basic criteria of fairness. (more inside)
posted by jonp72 on Aug 27, 2007 - 43 comments

Newsfilter: H.R. 4694 - Let the People Decide Clean Campaign Act. Introduced by Representative David Obey (D-WI), this act seems to be intended as campaign finance reform, but some suggest that it "eliminates any hope of reasonable, legitimate competition being raised by any third or independent party in the future." The Libertarians and The Green Party are among those that see this act as anti-American.
posted by Joey Michaels on Feb 17, 2006 - 8 comments

Are you tired of two-party politics? Cheer up. You can be a Beer Drinker or a Nazi [possibly NSFW] or a Fascist. Join the Pot Party or even the anarchosocialist Birthday Party.
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly on Jan 7, 2004 - 25 comments

In a British Parliamentary by-election yesterday, there was a surprise upset. It had little to do with the candidacy, however, of Alan Howling Lord Hope (59 crucial votes), current leader of the Monster Raving Loony Party. The Party was founded by the very late Lord Sutch, whose current political activity is unknown. Besides the current California circus, we yanks haven't had a good "hampaign" since this man (we're overdue).
posted by moonbird on Sep 19, 2003 - 4 comments

Third parties spoil elections for some guys trying to run for office. It seems that from reading CNN election results, some people were able to get votes while not running with a D or R. Some of the notables (not including Bernie Sanders (I-VT)) include Gary Richardson (I-OK) who might have cost Steve Largent the election, Tim Penny (I-MN) couldn't replace Jesse, Tom Golisano (I-NY) will need to try again in 2006, Jim Mahoney (I-AZ) fared well, Ed Thompson (Libertarian-WI) got over 10%, not bad for being Tommy Thompson's brother, the MT Senate results were (in order) Baucus/Teddy Roosevelt Look-a-like/Blue Guy/Green Guy and in the most dubious of all good news for Third Parties, Jim Traficant loses from behind bars but he got 15%, showing some people like their politicans imprisoned

Three cheers to the third parties!
posted by RobbieFal on Nov 6, 2002 - 34 comments