There is a gra among alot of people of Party List systems. The idea is that instead of you voting on a constituency basis you vote for a party on a national scale. So say that 35% of people voted Fianna Fail giving them 55 seats Cowen would then go and pick 54 guys or gals (We guess he picks himself) to fill those seats. This of course has the benefit of being more representative of the popular vote. While our presence system is fairly fair in the last election FF and the PD’s got over 50% of the seats with just less then 50% of the vote.

Now many people who do like these ideas do so because they think it is more democratic. Others because they hate Fianna Fail and think that if you take the parochial nature out of Irish politics. Everyone will vote Joe Higgins and lead us to a Chavez’s style utopia paid for by the billions of imaginary gas in Corrib. A Lass this will not be the case. While our system is not prefect it is close enough to represent the views of the majority , ie that Fianna Fail Rock Fine Gael Rock to a lesser extent, Labour used to be cool but still pull in a crowd etc etc.

However we can draw lessons from the internet on the functioning of a party list system. While most people use the internet for normal things, the internet is also home to many of the crazies. On the internet people are linked not by location but by interest. So you tend to get groupings of concentrated craziness. Is it any wonder Child pornography has been boost by the net? Because when likes mines get together they can organise and be more effective. With out the internet we would be still divided by location constraints and the concentration of crazies cannot happen as easily.

SO if you took a party list system while the majority would still vote the way they do the crazies could gain strength as they would no longer be randomly distributed throughout the land but concentrated. And that could be more damaging then the benefits of the current system are.