thirds

First, sorry for the lapse in writing - I've been in Japan since just after the fourth, and in Kyoto for the first time - what a wonderful city!

It is election season in Japan, and I learned some interesting things about their process. First, the election laws in Japan are old and quite arcane - according to the BBC and Newsweek, once an election starts, you may not create new websites or update existing ones; you can only distribute so many posters or leaflets to a very small percentage (less than 5%) of your constituency; there are many others. Second, there is no interest on the part of the politicians to change the system! The politicians (I should say incumbent politicians) want to make it as difficult as possible, to impede opponents/upstarts from gaining ground.

This surprised me: only 95% of Japanese in their 20s surf the web, and only a third of them vote. The Japanese think that makes sense: "Young people shouldn't be involved, ...because they're not serious enough or they don't have the education." What's more, most of the politicians are in their 70s like Senator McCain, and recognize that their online savvy isn't comparable to their grand children's. Again the incumbent party (LDP) is old, entrenched and knows that 79% of Internet users in Japan would vote for the DPJ, so they've impeded it.

We've had a great conversation on this blog about the viability of a third party in the American political system. There's a lot of theoretical argument against it, d.eris (here and on his blog) and Dale Shelton have both mentioned Duverger's Law, and the nature of the American politic which impedes a multi-party system.

But in Canada they've shown that multi-party systems can survive, often beginning regionally (for example the Bloc Québécois is a totally regional party, but still a national force, while the New Democratic Party began in Western Canada, but is now a fully-national party). Canada, like the US has a system where only one party or candidate can win in a given district, and yet critical mass can and has occurred; multiple parties are flourishing.

I think the American system has the same "mentality" as the Japanese LDP. It believes it's OK to disenfranchise whomever it wants to as long as the incumbents prevail (can you say "redistricting"?). Perhaps American politicians will take a lesson from the citizens of Iran, who have demonstrated that when they're pushed far enough, they will rise up and insist that their voices are heard.

Further to what I wrote in threeway anyone? - this is the first time in history that it is possibly to directly reach practically every voter in the United States - all you need is their mobile phone number. Moreover, because of the technology proficiency gap between the contemporaries of most of today's politicians and the 18-29 year-old demographic, it is fair to assume that the 18-29 year-olds are actually more reachable and more interconnected than any other demographic in history.

This convinces me that it is possible to organize a national party or at a minimum a strong regional party (both coasts + cities like Chicago, Austin, other university towns, etc.) that would dramatically alter the political landscape and balance of power in Congress. I don't think it'll take something as dramatic as recent events in Iran to create a groundswell, it might be much simpler - perhaps the next mortgage-the-future spending proposal by the President or Congress?