[pp.int.general] Pirates and election thresholds!

[Philip Hunt]

On 22 August 2010 09:03, Sven Clement <sven.clement at gmail.com> wrote:
> First of all I want to say that I do not want to start a "flame war" but a civil discussion on a topic I deem very important for some of the Pirate Parties around the world.
>
> I blogged today (quite short at http://sven.lu/blog/2010/08/against-election-thresholds/) about election thresholds and I think that Pirates should firmly stand against thresholds in elections, but as I said it's an opinion and I wanted to know how some of you guys think about it.
>
> I know it's not one of our foremost concerns at the moment with ACTA, INDECT and the like, but I think it's a very important topic for every Pirate Party running in upcoming elections where there is a threshold.

Thresholds are indeed a practical problem for Pirate Parties worldwide.

My personal opinion is that as many voters' opinions as possible
should count, and the the electoral system shouldn't discriminate
against new parties (and therefore new ideas), which will necessarily
be small to start with. Consequently, either there should be no
thresholds, so that a party with 1% of the vote gets 1% of the seats,
or a transferrable voting system should be used, such as AV or STV, so
that votes for a losing candidate are transferred to the voter's next
preference.

If there is a threshold it should be no higher than 5% -- anything
higher than that means the country isn't in practise a democracy.

-- 
Philip Hunt, <cabalamat at gmail.com>