Second Goal

As long as the Local Party is small with only some representatives elected from the Local Party the system is just fine as it is, but as soon as the Local Party becomes large enough in its city or county district it will implement the desired change from the archaic district system into a more modern version of democracy. It can never hurt to repeat that in districts the second choice is muted; the winner takes all, the loser is not even standing small. How can you feel that your local government is there for you when you cannot even deliver a more precise vote. Local elections can get changed from district elections into that of full representation, allowing a much better expression of our voice. In proportional elections the same number of board members are elected, but they are a better representation of the wishes of the people than is currently the case. You will no longer have to choose between the winner and the runner-up for you can elect the person yóu like. In proportional elections you can give your vote to the person you believe will represents you the best, and have a close to perfect chance that this person is elected. By eliminating winner takes all, we vote for a city council that is truly representative of us, the people.

Some people fear that too many different groups may block decisions at times when decisions are required. While LocalParty.Org does not share that fear, a solution is fairly simple. Compared to the local monopolies of single powers in full control, any improvement of diverse representation is better than none. While a second party may already deliver more excitement for voters, and a stronger grip on politicians to deliver for us and not for special interest groups, a minimum of three parties is all it takes to really democratize our local system. A threshold can be put in place, for instance, of 5 or more percent (but never more than 20%) to ensure that small parties are not elected too easily. Sometimes a natural threshold exists: when there are only six seats available, a threshold of 16,67% exists automatically to obtain that seat. When there are many seats a threshold can be put in place to control the number of parties.

Why three parties at least, but not one hundred? The same way we can get beautiful color pictures with just three colors, it doesn't take twenty parties to be free. But just the colors red and blue can't show us the beauty of a sunflower, or create the color of the sun in a child's drawing. Just red and blue create no fantastic California poppy and do no justice to the color of the grass in our neighbor's yard. We need that third color to free our spirits of the two-color restrictions. To let that third color really be yellow, we actually need one or two parties more than three, because a third party only will most likely be purple or brown, and not yellow. Because, like the democrats and republicans, just a third party would bottom-fish in the shallow middle to get the seats. Four or five parties will do the trick. Six parties in our nation may indeed be a bit much, yet two parties are definitively not enough. Growing up, we are made politically colorblind in the United States, and we don't object because seemingly no one else objects. And once we accepted our colorblindness, we can no longer object, because we do not see or miss the yellow anymore, not in specifics and not in the overall picture.

The seat of the mayor may remain in place, but whether it needs to remain a powerful seat elected by the people is debatable. Today, some cities have only a city-manager, while other cities in California have both. Chico, for instance, has an elected mayor, but also a city-manager. The elected mayor is then just the ceremonial person representing the city. And while that position is a degradation of the previous role, the role of such a mayor is still very important in both a social and an economic setting. Citizens can emotionally connect to a mayor, while businesses may be enticed to invest in a town when the mayor is the intermediate person. Top