NationStates Jolt Archive

I remember hearing on the news Ralph Nader saying something about how he thinks political parties should be abolished. I personally thought this was an intersting idea, and was wondering what anyone else thought of it.

I'd love it if the parties no longer existed. In any country. However, I've no idea how the system would run then. There would need be a great amount of changes to make a party-less system run.

Maybe it would be a way for more independent parties to be able to run and actually have a chance to win?

It sounds cool - that way there would be more than two people with a chance in each election - but then how the hell would they narrow down the number of people on the ballot? If we didn't have parties to narrow it down, I don't see how we could stop from having a twenty-page list of people in the final elections.

It sounds cool - that way there would be more than two people with a chance in each election - but then how the hell would they narrow down the number of people on the ballot? If we didn't have parties to narrow it down, I don't see how we could stop from having a twenty-page list of people in the final elections.

I don't see how a complete partyless system would work either, but I was interpreting it as seperating the current two party system a bit..just adding some people to the ballot, not lots.

Party's didn't just start out in America, people created them, so it would be pretty hard to abolish them.

Well it's an interesting idea to think about, at least.

One idea of how a partyless system would run is if the area a candidate was elected to represent was reduced down to less than 1000 households. This way, party politics is irrelevant, since most voters will have the chance to speak to their candidates directly. Candidates will have to adapt themselves to fit the views of their constituency, instead of the constituency watering down it's wants and concerns to stream into party lines.
The national representative of the body elected like this will just be the one of them the body elects as leader, or a shortlist will be voted on by the body and put to national vote. Essentially, the Prime Minister or President is elected by considering the legislature as a constituency and holding an election.

The real problems with this are that

a) It requires effort on the part of the constituents in getting to know local candidates, when most won't bother.

b) It abolishes the party system, making unpopular legislation difficult to pass.

c) More often than not, the Left, Right, Environmentalists and so on will group together into coalitions anyway, effectively forming parties, whether official or not.

d) It makes it difficult, if not impossible, to cut out extremists completely, since it is not possible to ban, for example, Nazi parties and any party with less than 5% of seats if there are no definite parties. A thorough investigative branch would have to be established, and even then, there's the argument that the candidate has been voted in by their community.

I support it, political parties do nothing more than divide a country, especially in situations like this. I've always supported it. Hell, even George Washington told the nation to stay away from political parties.

The only problems, as far as I know...

1. Getting people adjusted to this
2. Getting people to stop grouping up in parties
3. Figuring out a new way to choose canidates

I'd love for the party system to be abolished - that way we dont get all these crapheaded leaders who are being pressed by party agenda.


Perhaps w/o parties, in order to narrow down the ballot choices we should hold a debate between all the candidates, and get an independent forensic panel to rate, say, the three most competent leaders

And in elections, one would rank candidate by preference, rather than by just 1 vote - IE:

1 (most-desired candidate): asdfasdf
2 (2nd-most desired): dhjdfhghfdgjghj
3 (least desirable): ae5uq3jtio

I would never support the abolition of political parties as a whole. I don't want to live in a democracy a la Athens...