The US already has primaries. And the votes someone sabotages away from a comrade might be the ones that mean they themselves do not get elected, while they would if they didn’t sabotage.
I think the incentive for a unified messaging “vote for our party no matter who’s on the ballot” is stronger than any sabotage incentives.
Edit: I think this deserves some more detail. Keep in mind that I’ve developed an ‘ugh’ field with regards to the article, so some of the below might repeat or contradict what I said there—we’ll wing it if it happens.
First. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that this does encourage intra-party competition and sabotaging, in a way that does not happen in most PR systems. I am fine with that, since I am not proposing existing PR systems switch to this district-based method! Countries like the Netherlands, which use nationwide PR, work very very well—they’re the best ones we currently have, actually. (Although, specifically in the Dutch case, I personally would raise the threshold which is currently at 0.67%. They have probably the only Parliament in the world to have nationalist parties for three different nations—Dutch, Turkish and Kurdish!)
So, what I mean is: this system is meant as an improvement to systems like the US and Canada; I think it would make “normal” PR systems worse,or at least not any better.
Now, as for competition within the party. I heavily favor parliamentarism over a presidential system. To put it in a few words: head of government is too important a job to have a basically guaranteed 4-year tenure. So if someone sabotages their comrade, they are also hindering their party’s chances of forming a government, even if they themselves make it into parliament. That is still an important consideration in a presidential system, albeit to a smaller degree.
That assumes you’re thinking of a candidate from district A sabotaging someone from district B. I think party discipline should take care of that, and it seems more disciplined parties would outcompete less disciplined ones, all else equal.
There’s also the scenario of competition within a district. The US would likely solve this with primaries. There’s an extension to my proposal that allows for combined primaries and general elections, all in one go. Each party could field as many candidates as they want in a given district. In the general election, voters vote for the candidate they prefer in their district; the votes for all candidates of the same party in a given district are what’s used to allocate seats to parties. Then, if you know the Brown Party has won the district of Citystown, then you look at which Brown candidate got the most votes in Citystown—they’re the one who’s elected.
The US already has primaries. And the votes someone sabotages away from a comrade might be the ones that mean they themselves do not get elected, while they would if they didn’t sabotage.
I think the incentive for a unified messaging “vote for our party no matter who’s on the ballot” is stronger than any sabotage incentives.
Edit: I think this deserves some more detail. Keep in mind that I’ve developed an ‘ugh’ field with regards to the article, so some of the below might repeat or contradict what I said there—we’ll wing it if it happens.
First. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that this does encourage intra-party competition and sabotaging, in a way that does not happen in most PR systems. I am fine with that, since I am not proposing existing PR systems switch to this district-based method! Countries like the Netherlands, which use nationwide PR, work very very well—they’re the best ones we currently have, actually. (Although, specifically in the Dutch case, I personally would raise the threshold which is currently at 0.67%. They have probably the only Parliament in the world to have nationalist parties for three different nations—Dutch, Turkish and Kurdish!)
So, what I mean is: this system is meant as an improvement to systems like the US and Canada; I think it would make “normal” PR systems worse, or at least not any better.
Now, as for competition within the party. I heavily favor parliamentarism over a presidential system. To put it in a few words: head of government is too important a job to have a basically guaranteed 4-year tenure. So if someone sabotages their comrade, they are also hindering their party’s chances of forming a government, even if they themselves make it into parliament. That is still an important consideration in a presidential system, albeit to a smaller degree.
That assumes you’re thinking of a candidate from district A sabotaging someone from district B. I think party discipline should take care of that, and it seems more disciplined parties would outcompete less disciplined ones, all else equal.
There’s also the scenario of competition within a district. The US would likely solve this with primaries. There’s an extension to my proposal that allows for combined primaries and general elections, all in one go. Each party could field as many candidates as they want in a given district. In the general election, voters vote for the candidate they prefer in their district; the votes for all candidates of the same party in a given district are what’s used to allocate seats to parties. Then, if you know the Brown Party has won the district of Citystown, then you look at which Brown candidate got the most votes in Citystown—they’re the one who’s elected.