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Comment by imbur | Hacker News Reader

Are there any examples of states or countries that handle this the right way? Can this be applied to NYC?

Most European countries have a multi-party system, usually due to not using first past the post voting systems.

As a result you have more parties, more diversity of choice and less polarization and of course more competition. Parties can actually go away and they do, usually every few decades.

The downside is that you can get deadlocks as no party can get a majority sometimes, even after making coalitions with smaller parties.

Still better end result than the US end result, in my opinion.

You also get small parties extorting billions in pork for their support or pet project in the UK the DUP and Libdems in the previous coalition did this and likewise the greens in Germany.

The DUP and LibDems are examples of FPTP distortions in the UK.

The “extortion’ by the Greens doesn’t seem to have damaged Germany unduly, except by forcing it down the path to so-cheap-it’s-almost-free renewable energy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany "According to Forbes, the IEA reports that in 2015, German prices were 17.9 cents per kwh for industry, and 39.5 cents per kwh for residential customers, versus 7 and 12.5 cents respectively in the U.S."

In what measure is that a result of bad policy and or a result of a desire to promote thriftiness? After all gas in the US is cheap and in Europe it's expensive and I think a major part of the price are excises meant to discourage consumpation.

As a side note, the EU is also pushing heavily energy efficiency for homes, this might be related.

Given that was the direct result of a panic over tsunami's in japan and guess what Germany doesn't have much of a coast line.

The early mothballing of Germanys nuclear reactor which where being phased out is the direct cause of the increase.

The German nuclear phase-out and funding of renewable energy development through electricity taxes was started in 2000, a decade before the Fukushima event and as a direct result of a (by then) two decade old environmental movement.

The German government decided to extend the lifetime of some reactors shortly before the event but that plan was immediately scrapped again. Risk of tsunamis itself were not the reason but rather that the public overwhelmingly did not trust the operators to follow safe procedures given that the Japenese operator didn't. But again, nuclear power was really unpopular even before that.

no its just rare in FPTP compared to PR systems which can give minority parties an advantage their small vote does not deserve

We haven't had a single-party government in Ireland since the '50s, and it hasn't done us a lick of harm. Quite the opposite, in fact, as junior parties tend to be a moderating influence on the senior one. If anything, it's typically the junior party that gets shafted the most when the elections come.

If you want real pork extortion, then you need a minority government propped up by a deal with an opposition party. That's what you have with the DUP.

Exactly my point though quite my comment was voted down I wasn't expecting many hardline brexiters on here.

And Ireland has had major problems like Bertie Ahern and Charles James Haughey?

Those two gobshites are more a consequence of political culture, especially within FF, than voting system.

First-past-the-post is bad, but it's not the problem here. Almost every city, state, and county election across the country is run under first-past-the-post rules, and only New York has the level of inter-party corruption that New York does. As I explain above, it's specific to New York and the way parties have written laws to preserve their stranglehold on power.

You also have two parties, the "government" and the "opposition". They are created after the election. At that point, the voters no longer get any say. The voters don't even know what they will get.

Consider a situation that starts with 12 parties. One gets 45% support, and the others each get 5% support. When the 12 parties merge into the 2 that will actually govern, that party with 45% may be the loser. The other 11 can merge to become a party with 55% of the power. The party which is most popular by far is thus locked out of power.

> Are there any examples of states or countries that handle this the right way? Can this be applied to NYC?

New York State is the source of the problem, not New York City (although the city government is affected by these as well).

The problem is that the two political parties have passed a series of laws that empowers the party leadership and ensures that voters have essentially zero influence in the so-called democratic process.

Party leadership, not voters, is able to nominate the candidates that they want to represent the party in each race[0]. The parties have a gentleman's agreement not to compete with each other in the other party's claimed districts[1], so the general election is almost always uncontested.

Due to fusion voting, third parties are pressured to endorse first-party candidates in order to maintain ballot access, so you'll almost always see the same candidate running (oftentimes uncontested) on multiple party lines. The only "choice" you have is in choosing which party to use to vote for the all-but-guaranteed victorious candidate.

Party registration is fixed as well, so it's impossible to switch between parties in order to influence party direction. The deadline to change parties for the 2018 cycle passed in October. If you submitted a change of registration on October 13, 2017, it won't' take effect until 2019. Yes, you read that right.

And the party leadership is controlled by a series of local clubs (yes, they literally call them clubs). For example, the dominant party in my district is the Democratic party, and my local Democratic club is run by the son and daughter of the last Irish mob boss in Manhattan[2]. The son, incidentally, openly jokes about how similar the system is to Tammany Hall when violating election laws[3]. If I wanted to have any influence in local politics, I'd have to influence the Democratic party, and if I wanted to influence the Democratic party, I'd have to pay the steep membership fees to join this club, and then hope that this dynastic family listened to what I have to say.

Any initiatives to change this have to go through the New York State legislature, and any bills have to be approved by the top three ranking members of the government, who are coincidentally the most powerful members of the two parties[4]. Unsurprisingly, they have little incentive to reduce their own power.

Unlike other states, New York doesn't have a ballot initiative process, so we can't bypass the legislature. Any statewide ballot initiatives have to be first approved by the legislature.

[0] https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/nyregion/new-york-poli...

[1] Think of the way Comcast and Time Warner Cable (Spectrum) don't compete with each other.

[2] You can't make this up

[3] You really can't make this up: https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/10/mcmanus-member...

[4] This is known as "three men in a room" https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/24/nyregion/us-attorney-pree...

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