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Comment by TulliusCicero | Hacker News Reader

My understanding is that when pirate parties actually got some amount of power (by getting into the legislature) in other countries, things got weird, by nature of them having to establish policy positions on lots of stuff other than IP law. Like suddenly you need a position on green energy and foreign interventions and public teacher salaries and zoning and all the other things a regular party is gonna have to vote on. And this conflicted with how they got popularity and power, which was by being largely single issue.

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The main means for a third party to win seats in the US would be if they went into districts which are effectively uncontested because they're >70% blue or red, so the other major party isn't even running a candidate for you to split the vote with.

Then the winning platform in that district would be the one where you're mostly aligned with the party currently occupying that seat but differ on the pirate issues.

So you'd end up with a blue pirate party and a red pirate party based on which district they're running in. They would work with each other on pirate issues, but they'd generally caucus with different major parties on a per-district basis.

It might also help to prioritize getting range voting or STAR voting so this would stop being necessary.

There are parts of the US that don't use first past the post voting. NYC is one prominent example that uses ranked choice. Many of these alternative voting systems make it easier for a candidate that is not part of the main two parties to get elected.

Also even if this party does not have success, just by running they can change the other candidates policies

> NYC is one prominent example that uses ranked choice.

Only implemented recently iirc.

As long as there are single-member districts it's basically impossible for a third party to gain a large representation. I'm sure that's the main reason for the US and UK huge polarity in politics.

I quite like the German model:

> Every elector has two votes: a constituency vote (first vote) and a party list vote (second vote). Based solely on the first votes, 299 members are elected in single-member constituencies by first-past-the-post voting. The second votes are used to produce a proportional number of seats for parties, first in the states, and then on the federal level.

(from wikipedia)

This model has a flaw, it does not use preferential votes. The sequence of candidates on the list as determined by the party is preserved.

In CZ, we can prefer individual candidates from the party list. Plenty of VIPs lost their putatively safe seats because they were disliked enough.

> As long as there are single-member districts it's basically impossible for a third party to gain a large representation.

This is only a result of first past the post voting. If a third party had any significant support, they would split the vote with the major party most like them and hand the election to the major party least like them. Then the third party merges with the major party most like them and we're back to two parties.

Switch to STAR/range/approval voting and that doesn't happen. You can run a hundred candidates and no one splits the vote. There is no point in even having primaries anymore, just run all your candidates in the general. Party becomes little more than an endorsement.

Libertarians don't have to run as Republicans to avoid splitting the vote with them, and then don't have to vote with Republicans on stupid wars or oil subsidies or whatever to avoid having a Republican run against them and hand the next election to a Democrat. Likewise with Greens vs. Democrats and anything else you like.

Winner take all elections ( single person wins per constituency) is still fundamentally flawed, because it disenfranchises too many people. Even with ranked choice, there will be "losers" who didn't vote for the winner, and nobody represents them and their choices and wishes. Proportional representation deals with this.

> Winner take all elections ( single person wins per constituency) is still fundamentally flawed, because it disenfranchises too many people. Even with ranked choice, there will be "losers" who didn't vote for the winner, and nobody represents them and their choices and wishes. Proportional representation deals with this.

Proportional representation brings a bunch of different problems and is much harder to achieve in the US because it would require federal constitutional changes, whereas you can change the voting system in a state with a simple majority of the state legislature.

And different voting systems fix this. Suppose you have single representative per constituency with STAR voting. Then there is no "you didn't vote for this person" because you vote for everyone in degrees and the candidate who best represents the district wins.

Now suppose you're a minority constituency. You're 5% of the population, dispersed all across the country. With the existing system, a candidate willing to murder you in order to lower gas prices by 1% for everyone else can win the election with 95% of the vote. This is also the result you get with PR, because the "don't murder me" party gets 5% of the representatives, a coalition government forms in which they are not a part, and you get murdered.

But with STAR, the candidates who commit to not murdering you get the highest possible score form your demographic and the ones who want to lower gas prices get the lowest possible score. Since there can be a hundred candidates running, this will plausibly be the main difference between two of them, and a 1% difference in gas prices isn't enough to significantly change the scores people outside your demographic give to the other candidates. So the "don't murder me" candidates win everywhere and constitute the entire government no matter how the coalitions shake out.

> And this conflicted with how they got popularity and power, which was by being largely single issue

In Czechia (where a pirate party is currently a part of the government) it was IMHO quite the reverse - the Czech Pirate Party mostly gained popularity by accenting ordinary center-liberal political themes.

It's hard to gain too much insight from Wikipedia, but it looks like it fills a niche that was empty.

The Pirate Party of Canada used to be quite active on r/CanadaPolitics. Once they fleshed out their platform they ended up overlapping heavily with the NDP and Greens (particularly the Greens).

I think many Pirate Parties have fallen into similar traps when they fleshed out their platform.

> It's hard to gain too much insight from Wikipedia, but it looks like it fills a niche that was empty.

Yes, pretty much. There are Greens in Czechia but they are more left-progressive (compared to center-liberal pirates) and they are unacceptable for many because of their anti-nuclear position.

... and put the ideas about IP reform on the back burner, to my dismay.

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