How to Organize Society From the Bottom Up

Chapter 18

In the last section we examined the proportional voting system in use extensively in the European Union.

There we see people being elected to office in proportion to their percentage of the votes received in the general election.

How has it gone?
Generally, it is well received but lately we see some weakness when that system divides the population on genuinely divisive issues in the society.
Will it bring society together or tear it apart?

Understand that part of the creation of the European Union was that countries with low levels of labor mobility, becoming integrated economically, working together on issues in Europe would avoid war which has destroyed Europe twice in the last century.
From that vantage point the European Union has been a tremendous success.
However the issue remains how much of that stability is due to their mode of electing politicians?
Really divisive issues such as immigration is forcing changes to that system which the political system cannot handle as well as it could.
Country after country cannot absorb huge numbers of immigrants, some can, most cannot In most countries there has been a backlash and it is clear that this issue is issue which can tear that union apart.
Whether the Union can survive it, remains be seen. Some countries like Germany needs large numbers of immigrants to survive economically, but Poland and Italy feels over run by immigrants especially from Africa.
The entire continent’s future hangs in the balance. And yet we do not see their political proportional system as a way to ameliorate the issues, but often acerbates them.

A second system which is gradually growing here in the United States, {see our citations on this system} is the rank voting system. There each voter votes for candidates ranking them in order of their preference.
Your first preference is ranked number one and your second preference is ranked number two and so so.

It is in place in more that ten states and over ten localities in the United States.

The experience of this system is relatively new and is well liked where it has been installed. But it does, on occasion, produce surprises. Some candidates make agreements that opponents agree to have voters rank them number one in ranking but they secretly or openly agree who they will rank number two, The first two largest voters move on but the second ranked candidate in fact in the second round garners more votes until that candidates wins out in the end, a surprise to many if not everyone.

The third political selection system is one Weyl recommends where each voter has one hundred credits to allocate on a given issue or candidate. This is not in operation as yet and next time we take a look at its strengths and weaknesses.