The New York Libertarian Party holds its state convention in Albany on April 23-24. The convention will choose nominees for statewide office. Kristin Davis’s campaign says she will attend the convention. She wishes to run for Governor of New York this year but has not decided whether to seek the Libertarian nomination or to run independently under the label “Personal Freedom.”
I assume you’re going to run a story on the Iraqi elections eventually. Their system is awesome, it’s the same used in the Netherlands. Basically it’s a party list system only instead of voting for the whole party in general, you vote for one candidate and that vote counts towards their party.
Like if the People’s Union won 10% of the votes, they would get 10% of the seats.
Normal so far.
But if 8% of the votes for the People’s Union were votes for candidate 86# on the list, candidate 86% would win a seat, even though he wasn’t in the first 10 slots or whatever on the list.
Make sense?
It allows for minor parties and for voting for individuals.
I’ve done a little research on Iraqi political parties. This is perhaps an over-generalization, but it appears that there are at least two parties in Iraq that are generally supportive of free market and perhaps even libertarian ideals: Gorran (described as an Iraqi Tea Party-style movement), and the tiny Assyrian Party which supports “market economics,” to propell economic growth.
Let’s hope they did well.
Gorran (the Movement for Change) doesn’t have an ideology beyond opposing corruption (as in actually illegal corruption, not just routine government spending they don’t like). They almost certainly lean more to the left than the right though, as most of them are former members of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which is social democratic. Both main political parties in Kurdistan are social democratic.
The Assyrian Party might be right-wing but supporting “market economics” is kind of like being for jobs or against crime. Even the People’s Union (the Iraqi Communist Party) would probably say they support market economics if pressed. Also, I doubt the Assyrian Party will win any seats anyway. The Assyrian Democratic Movement has that community locked up.
The Iraqi Nation Party of Mithal al-Alusi is a neo-con party, they’re probably the only party that would come out and say they support limited government. Maybe.
I really don’t think any party in Iraq would come out against more government though. People don’t have electricity or water and they need the army for protection.
The Iraqi National Alliance and Iraqi Accord (the main Shi’ite and Sunni religious parties respectively) both call themselves conservative. They’re more than likely just referring to social issues though.
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