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Comment by nextaccountic | Hacker News Reader

Cuba actually has a democratic process, believe it or not.

Many dictatorships actually do. The question is more like "is it a process that only exists on paper?". If an election ends with a 98% approval of the supreme leader (or whatever the designation), then it's probably rigged and just for show...

Pray tell

To give an example Italy had an election with 98.5% for the fascist party in 1929. That was to confirm or reject the list of house members appointed by the party. I mean, there were no candidates to chose from, the ones in the list would be... elected?

So do China, North Korea or Russia. Sometimes there are even multiple parties.

Is there a chance that the people in power (at any level of government) get voted out?

Ha, your comment got me thinking: is there a chance Democrats and Republicans will ever be voted out?

The Whigs did so it’s possible! ;)

thats 250 years ago damn it!

This shows exactly how party change comes in a 2-party system (enforced by Duverger's Law due to first-past-the-post voting). One of the two main parties implodes for some reason, so the other party gets all the power. But that can't be sustained because there's different factions within that party, so the big party breaks in half, and you're right back to a 2-party system.

The party system in the US does feel rigged to entrench the two remaining parties in the US. My hope is dropping first past the pole and adding ranked choice will help break up the duopoly.

Still, there are glimmers of hope now and again. Like Ross Pero running as independent or the Bull Moose party.

The GOP really suffered in recent Alaskan elections after they adopted Ranked Choice voting. So expect them to very loudly and strongly oppose it being adopted anywhere, with a lot of bad-faith arguments implying it's a form of electoral corruption/manipulation and holding it up as an example of Democrat trickery.

Ranked-choice voting (STV, IIRC?) was rejected by referendum in the UK because (words to the effect of) “it’s too complicated for the average voter to understand”, according to the Keep FPTP camp.

It’s a dumb argument for sure, but now (i.e. post-Brexit referendum) I can’t help but think it’s a valid dumb argument…

I don't think British people are inherently dumber than the people here in Germany.

Here you get two votes (one for the candidate of your district and one for the party. The second vote determines the number of seats while the first one makes sure a local guy gets one if them).

This is much more difficult than just listing candidates in the order you like them and "make sure you include anyone you can somewhat stomach".

Yet I've not heard if anyone being "confused (in the sende that they don't know what to choose) by the German system.

Some people might not fully grasp the system but that's ok (after all most will be intellectually able to understand it).

Mixed-member proportionate representation requires a constitutional overhaul though, which is why it's a very, very hard-sell without a prerequisite revolution, war, and/or guillotining of the malign parts of the aristocracy...

> Like Ross Pero running as independent or the Bull Moose party.

The thing is those things either don't work (as in those examples) or they do and just replace one of the major parties in whay becomes a new, generally stable 2-party alignment.

To get out of that, you need to weaken the electoral system elements reinforcing duopoly, the most direct way being to adopt some form of proportional representation (e.g., STV), at least for most (e.g., all state and the federal House of Reps) legislative elections.

Even the commonly offered proposal of ranked ballots methods in single-member districts doesn’t really address the problem (PR, whether by STV or other mechanisms, also destroys the ability to significantly distort by gerrymandering.)

You can’t compare the outcome of the first past the post system of the U.K. and USA and the dictatorships of China and Russia that ensure the dictator will never peacefully transfer power to a rival.

I don't want to defend the Chinese government, but the transitions of power in China have been peaceful since Deng Xiaoping.

Not hard to have a peaceful transition was all other parties are banned.

In public, at least. Though, didn't Deng just get dragged out of Congress on camera?

You are thinking of Hu Jintao.

Ah yes, thank you.

> the dictator will never peacefully transfer power to a rival.

Was Xi Jingping an open rival to Hu Jintao? Given Xi Jingping has purged his rivals from the levers of power, do you see any possibility that he'll peacefully stand down in 5 years to someone who is ideologically opposed to his government?

Stepping down peacefully in 5 years seems pretty unlikely. Stepping down peacefully in about 10 years, in favor of a younger leader who's amassed political power either within or outside of his camp seems entirely possible. Some previous examples of a rival taking power peacefully in China or the USSR are with Brezhnev displacing Khruschev and Deng Xiaoping displacing Hua Guofeng.

I don't think Xi Jingping was really an open rival to Hu Jintao, but the nature of these sort of authoritarian governments is the rivalry is not really made open until the point at which the power transition happens, even if it obvious to those behind the scenes. A rival usually careful cultivates political support while openly declaring support for the leader until he has enough support to gain power. Certainly the way Xi Jingping has behaved toward the Hu Jintao/Jiang Zemin faction and the policies he has pushed indicate he is rivals with them.

But really, the main point of my comment was rejecting the assertion that it is impossible for peaceful transitions of power to occur in countries like China. As long as a country has a norm that removal from leadership does not lead to physical harm, peaceful transitions of power are possible. I'm not trying to create a false equivalency between these governments and liberal democracies.

Elections is the most visible part of a democracy but I think separation of powers is even more important. And of course is the first thing a dictator will eliminate, even more than elections. Actually is the first thing wannabe dictators inside democracies attack

China being one of the ones with multiple parties which often surprises people. But there are eight legal ones besides the CCP.

In reality of course this means nothing, given they are all required to be part of the "United Front" led by the CCP.

So does Russia, believe it or not.

Does Saudi Arabia?

Saudi Arabia doesn't pretend to be a democracy.

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