Seeking good web sites for Debian tools

[Claude Rubinson]

On Wed, Apr 20, 2005 at 08:30:31PM -0700, Ian Zimmerman wrote:
> David> Politics and election systems are interesting too, but I think
> David> there you have to concentrate first on an election system (like
> David> Australia's IRV, or Debian's Condorcet) if you want to change
> David> things, rather than considering "choice fatigue", which most
> David> likely won't play a factor any time soon.  The centralized system
> David> we have is due to the rules of the game.
>
> I've been spotted at Green meetings so I had opportunity to think
> about this.  I think you have it at least partly backwards.  The
> rules are what they are because the two majors made them such, after
> they got a big scare from the Populists around last century turn.
> That's when "fusion" (ie. official ballot cross-endorsement) was
> made illegal in most states.  New York is the exception and that is
> precisely why that state's politics is still relatively lively.

If I recall correctly, fusion was a response to our winner-take-all
election system.  If we had a proportionally representative system,
tactics such as fusion wouldn't be necessary.  Lacking such a system,
though, I suspect that fusion is probably among our best strategies
for third-party viability.

Claude