How I think campaigns should workFollow

I agree. I think it's much healthier to have more than just 2 parties.

Though I'm sure you could argue that the Primaries serve as a sort of "filter" to similar but different political views. So if you're green, socialist, and hard-left, you can campaign on this plateform as a Dem during the primaries, and hope you get through. Similarly, if you're a fascist creationist who wants to turn the US into a theocracy, you can campaign like this at the primary of the Reps. Of course, you'd never win an election by being too far on the political spectrum, since elections are often decided by the floating centrist voters, but technically you could try, and technically it would almost like being in another party within a coalition.

Technically, we're a mutli-party country, but the 3rd, 4th, 5th, nth choices are just to steal votes from one of the 2 main parties. It'll be a long time before any party other than Conservative or Liberal run this country. However, with minority governments, the minor parties can still influence things.

It's plenty of time. How long does it take to read a brochure, a website, and watch a debate?

Each groups stance on issues shouldn't change simply because there's an election. They have existing policies, all that's required is to communicate them to the public so the public can decide who's policies they prefer. The short time period keeps things a bit more honest. There's little time to change your "official" positions due to changes in polls because there's little time for trends to be tracked.

This way the parties actual values are more transparent, as opposed to an image of the party that is created based on the reaction of the general public over a period of time. It's also a lot cheaper.

I disagree. One debate is not long enough for 5 speakers to properly discuss their views on issues. I can read the websites/brochures, but it doesn't allow for any questions to be answered and only having one debate, or lack of time for more discussions of any sort, doesn't allow for one to get a complete understanding of a party's view. I can guarantee you that very few people will fully understand the Liberal Party's Green Shift policy come election day.

Edited, Sep 19th 2008 1:45pm by Uglysasquatch

If I was creating a new country, I'd pick shadowrelm and knoxsouthy, stuff them in a deep hole, throw one spade between them and who ever came back up with the severed head of the other and spoke, clear and coherent english, I'd let them pick the president based on their political leanings.

shadowrelm/Obama vs knox/McCain. Pay per view would be sold out instantly.

They have to stay in the hole until either 1: shadow learns to speak english 2: knox dies of starvation and just admits that it was all an act, he really does hate freedom.