Posts by Rich of Observationz
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I'm thinking that Maui could provide enough helium for a few zeppelins, should the appropriate extraction gear be installed.
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Muse: That Book, The Ban That Isn't,…, in reply to Ben Curran,
Whitcoulls had a huge selection of books that had nobody wanted to buy from their original retailer (including several Wishart works, last time I looked). Apparently that helped their bankruptcy.
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I could post something intelligent and considered, talking about the use of the media to create an "other" out of the real problem of social deprivation and child abuse. Not to mention Wishart's prior form for supporting legalised violence against children.
But instead, have a link to the leaked book cover proof.
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It isn’t so much a matter of trust as a question of scale.
The US has primaries (ok, for FPP candidates rather than list positioning) at almost all levels of the political process. There are 72 million registered Democrats, for instance, and about half of them voted in the most recent primaries. (American parties typically allow anyone to register as a supporter and vote in primaries - there is no requirement for financial membership).
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Legal Beagle: Referendum Fact Check #1, in reply to Keir Leslie,
Yup, if you feel the membership can’t be trusted to decide the direction of a party, then having branch committees elected on a rainy Tuesday night in June, who then elect area delegates, who then make indicative nominations for regional delegates, who make non-binding recommendations subject to leadership and caucus veto is definitely the way to go.
That sort of sophistication truly empowers the party membership and has turned the Labour party into the smooth, united, election-winning machine we know and love.
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Yes, wouldn't it be great to have the Tories set the tax rate and Labour spend the money? We wouldn't go bankrupt or anything...
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I've read the Wikipedia article on open lists and now understand, sort of (it's all in the counting).
I have thought of an alternate method. Each party holds a primary through an Electoral Commission serviced website (to avoid shenanigans). Any voter can access the site and express a preference, and having done so, they get a multi-digit code number to print/note down. The generated code numbers are retained against each vote by the EC.
The "provisional" list is thus decided.
At the general election, those who voted in the primary write in their code number. This validates their primary vote, and only the votes of those who actually voted for the same party get counted. The EC generates the final list. (They could then destroy or escrow the data, but in any case it doesn't reveal any traceable personal information).
That allows a fair ranking ballot to be conducted with people making the decisions at leisure, and knowing the rough party list before final voting.
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But as a "look we get input" thing almost any method would do, however ineffective in practice.
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That's not a very proportional way to re-rank a list though. And it would tend, I suspect, to mean the biggest show ponies getting elected (a bit like mayoral elections, and look at the fucktards they throw up).
Maybe some kind of us style primary might work better.
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Yeah, but truly, who's going to sit down in a polling booth and rank 50+ candidates? If we had open lists, there would need to be an opt-out and I suspect many would take it.
Still, I guess it would be symbolically open.