Last week, Denmark held national elections. R. Spencer Oliver, an American statesman living in Denmark, has this commentary on Denmark’s election system. Oliver feels Denmark’s election system is better than the system used in the United States. He notes voter turnout in Denmark’s recent election was 87.7%, and he also notes that Denmark, because of proportional representation, has eight parties in its Parliament.
Oliver was chief counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs between 1985 and 1993. Since 1993 he has been Secretary General of the International Secretariat of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, more commonly known as the Helsinki Accords organization. In the Watergate scandal of 1972, he was one of the persons whose phone was tapped by Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign. At the time, Oliver was a Democratic Party official. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
P.R. has been around since at least the 1840s — repeat 1840s.
The U.S.A. is in an ANTI-Democracy minority rule gerrymander STONE AGE — i.e. the left/right top EVIL party hacks raving at each other.
P.R. and App.V.
All he’s talking about is banning TV ads-nothing about PR.
We have something called the First Amendment in the US-so banning TV ads would take a constitutional amendment. What’s the chance of that happening?
What’s needed in the US is for a non-partisan or multi-partisan coalition to form in one or more states with initiative and referendum with the aim of getting a prop on the ballot to get PR for some parts of state and local government. The odds shouldn’t be insurmountable because all the polls show that there’s at lot of discontent with both major parties. You have to start somewhere.
To get non-IR states to switch to PR you’d have to make it a civil rights issue and conduct civil disobedience campaigns. That’s cause (surprise!) the incumbent wh*re
parties don’t like the idea of giving up their existing cosy relationships.