Taki, on the British voting system:
“One-third of the vote gave Labour two-thirds of the seats in Parliament. And it gets better—worse, that is. The Reform party got 4.1 million votes and five seats in Parliament. The Liberal Democrats received 3.6 million votes and got seventy seats in Parliament. If that’s democracy, I’m Kim Kardashian.”
I’m not a fan of “pure” democracy — popular vote decides parliamentary apportionment — and of course our U.S. electoral system isn’t that either, being a representative republic.
The problem with Taki’s idea of democracy is that it’s based (unsurprisingly) on the Classical Greek system. Except that in that system, over three-quarters of the voting-age population were excluded from voting before the first ballots were cast.
But I have to say that the Brit system does seem to be a few too many steps in the other direction.
Draft and sortition, and the cursus honorum. It’s still democracy.
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I understand that these are all local elections, so the overall vote doesn’t matter any more than the popular vote matters in a U.S. Presidential election. But in France at least, the left clearly manipulates this fact by pulling candidates off the ballots in locations. So there is only one leftist candidate on the ballot and multiple right-wing parties. That’s how France is going commie after a huge popular vote win for Le Pen.
Can anyone refer me to a short guide on how British and French political systems work as well as a guide to the various parties?