[Insert welcome message of your choice here. I've run out of ideas.] At least I corrected the “you choice” part from last week’s message. Natalie Davis on Reagan and Ted Rall’s criticism thereof. Joe Flaherty rants about Republicans, racists, and…

JimMA adds: “So what’s the clothespin for?”

Uh, just what do you folks use to fasten your clothes on a clothesline???

Don’t tell the fundies about this, though. They would love this kind of scheme.

State elections and federal elections
are still more simple. :)
More to the point, the idea behind that
“fun” :) is to give the ordinary citizen
more rights.
(And that?s the reason why this system or
similar systems is currently used only
in German regional elections. :) )

For your readers:
Political parties do have a lot of power in
German elections and the whole voting system
is pretty much centered around the political
parties.

For example candidates of any party are not
listed in alphabetical order but in order of
their importance/influence in any given party.
The party (party members) determine the order
of their candidates on the voting lists.
So if you just vote for a party list,
the first, then the second, the third candidate
(and so on) will get elected.
That was the “old” system.
For example the town/county council has 30
members. Your party got 50% of the votes so the
first 15 candidates on your list were elected.

The idea behind this complicated voting system
is that you as a voter can decide to back up
candidate number 47 on the party list by
giving him/her three of your 60 votes and
(hopefully) propelling him/her upwards on
the “list”.
The 30 candidates (from my example) with the
most votes would get elected.
Leaving behind candidate 10 on the party list
for example.

And by creating your “prefered list” you can
vote for candidate A from party X, candidate B
from party Y, candidate C……
You get the idea.
You?re not restricted to just vote for one
party when you detest 50% of their candidates. :)
You can design your “own” town council.

Although I readily admit I believe that our
political parties made the “new” voting system
so complex in the hope that most voters won?t
bother to really distribute their votes. :)

60 votes for me and I can give up to three
votes for any candidate?
Why not give me one, three or five votes – to
keep it in one digits :) – and let me distribute
them like I choose.

So, I like the “idea” of the “new” system but
not how it was implemented.

Detlef

This is what a Dutch voting computer looks like:

http://www.zowerkt.nl/rechten/images/uitleg/stemmachine_geheel.jpg

As you see there is quite a lot of choice :D