With proportional representation, voters don't feel coerced to support the lesser evil, because they can vote for the representation they want and get it, as long as their preferred party has a modicum of support to pass the entrance threshold (3-5% in most systems). For example, the Australian Senate uses proportional representation. In Australia's 2010 election, many voters who were dissatisfied with the ruling center-left Labor party voted for the Green Party, denying the center-right opposition a majority. The result was a Labor-Green coalition, while plurality-take-all voting would have given the center-right minority a legislative majority.
What if American progressives dissatisfied with the performance of the Democrats in government could vote for an independent progressive alternative and get it?
7. Why the Green Party?
The Green Party is both movement and party, both global and grassroots a global party based on shared commitments to nonviolence, social justice, grassroots democracy, and ecological wisdom that has inspired people around the world to organize in their communities. In the United States, the Green Party's key values also include decentralization, community-based economics, respect for diversity, gender equity, global and personal responsibility, and future focus. It's hard to imagine a progressive who would disagree that public policy based on these values is exactly what we need in this day and age.
For the various movements that have been pouring their energy into the Democratic Party and getting little in return but a combination of excuses and disrespect, the Green Party's platform is like a breath of fresh air after years of imprisonment. The labor, environmental, peace, women's rights, LGBT, immigrant, minority, and civil liberties movements, as well as all Americans who want to return government to the service of the people all would be much better represented by the Green Party than by either the Democrats or the Republicans.
Green candidates pledge not to accept contributions from corporations, their PACs or their lobbyists, meaning that when Greens are elected, they are beholden only to the voters. Because Greens recognize the fundamental contradiction between their worldview and the corporatists', they police their own party for behavior that could lead to conflicts of interest. Progressives would do well to build a party that is independent of corporatist influence, rather than try to take over a party that is not only infested thoroughly with corporatist influence, but has shown much more willingness to fight progressives than to compromise with them.
The Green Party is not only interested in winning power for itself Greens want to win power for Americans by democratizing our obsolete, insular political system. Greens support electoral reforms such as instant runoff voting, proportional representation, independent redistricting, and abolition of the electoral college; campaign finance reforms like public campaign financing, free airtime for all ballot-qualified candidates, and abolition of corporate personhood; ballot access reform to overturn laws that place an unreasonable burden on citizens' right to run for office; and other needed reforms such as expansion of initiative and referendum, open debates, and fully verifiable voting systems.
Voting Green accomplishes a number of things for progressives. It shows that you are party of a growing progressive bloc that will vote only for candidates who refuse corporate money, and that you refuse to let your vote be taken for granted by the corporatist, militarist duopoly. It shows that you support democratic reforms to America's broken political system, and that you will no longer be complicit in a system that gives voters the illusion of choice in return for the myth of consent. It also exposes the critical flaws in our electoral system and creates the opportunity to raise awareness of alternatives. Most importantly, by voting Green you help to build a party that offers real hope and real solutions, not only for the deep-seated problems of American politics, but for the whole range of problems that face humankind and the planet that is our only home.
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