No surprise at all. Listen to this true story. In San Francisco and the Bay Area, the Green Party started to make inroads in the mid 90s. The Democratic Machine decided to change the format of the elections in San Francisco then and there. With the system change, no more Green Party winners here, folks. Ruthless. The Democrats do not like anyone but themselves; big-tent ideology means you must fit in their church, otherwise there is no space for you.
San Francisco had at-large elections prior, meaning that with every election cycle either five candidates or six candidates were elected by voters in the entire city, collectively. At-large is a semi-proportional voting system, and when there are five seats in the cycle, then getting one of these seats required about 17 percent of all votes. That meant that the Republican Party could still be kept at bay, but now the Green Party was making inroads. Some in the Democratic establishment had ended up becoming Green Party members. Something had to be done.
When the Democrats ended the at-large elections, there were 5 females and 6 males on the board. When the district elections started, there was 1 female and 10 males on the new board. For those in the know how bad winner-take-all is for diversity, this was not a shocker. Naturally, the Democratic Party recreated the desired male-female balance within a couple of cycles. They had to look good and made sure to get that outcome as quickly as possible (took a few years). In winner-take-all, the minimum is 50 percent of all votes in the districts, a much larger hurdle for representation. So, the Greens were removed and the gender balance recovered with some good help from the Blue Party.
The whole Green Party revolution fell apart in the Bay Area when Matt Gonzalez barely lost the mayoral election to Gavin Newsom in the next election for mayor (which is always a winner-take-all election). Not sure if that was the year they found ballot boxes floating in the bay. I think it was.
Then, one last miracle, Ross Mirkarimi won District 5 in SF because there was no incumbent running, and 20 candidates tried to get the seat, and it was the first time Ranked-Choice Voting was used. No candidate won straight-out. They had to run through so many cycles before Ross did indeed win the required 50 percent majority. But... only when 70 percent of all votes remained standing (meaning, he won the seat with basically 35 percent of all votes and Ranked-Choice Voting handed him the win instead of having an honest run-off election). To further his career, Ross Mirkarimi changed from the Green Party (that he had helped found) to the Democratic Party later on, before being spit out by the Democrats.
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Thank you for your article. No one should be surprised about what you wrote.
This is a two-party nation. If you try to support a third-party movement, you are being spit out and spit upon. The Democrats want to win from the Republicans no matter the cost.
If you are a Republican, then the third-party movement was successful in infiltrating the Republican Party. Third-party folks did end up being successful getting Trump in office.
So many people are sick and tired of the two parties. It is a big surprise how few people talk about this in the open. Folks are really fed up but self censor.
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When New Zealand changed its two-party system in 1996, the number of females jumper with almost 50 percent [21/100 seats to 37/120 seats, you do the math].
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My advice is to help change the way we vote at the local and state levels -- US Constitution approved.
* The US Constitution does not prevent a system of equal representation being put in place for city and state.
* The 14th Amendment has been ruled to require governments to put the better system in place when available (and proportional voting is the better system by far).
* Cities and Counties are not given specific freedoms in the US Constitution to do as they like.
From this, we know that cities and counties should have proportional voting in place today. The politicians in the seats right now act as if their noses are bleeding and try to get away with winner-take-all as long as we let them.
* For the state level, this political freedom we have means we can also try and put proportional voting in place. Note that the US Constitution gives states far-reaching freedoms, so there is no demand like there is for the local level. But... nothing preventing from getting the real form of democracy at the state level.
* For the federal level, the US Constitution is actually quite particular and changing the overall system there will take a lot of work.
It is easiest to undermine the two-party hegemony at the local level where the US Constitution is already requiring it.
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I write about our 18th century political system. Here is one of my latest articles:
'And the Winner is: The Losing Party.'
https://medium.com/the-national-discussion/and-the-winner-is-the-losing-party-c683c1d739e5
It sounds like a lie, but it is actually true.
