On one hand I agree with you. Yet MacDonald makes a good point: there are other ways to increase voter turnout. It intrigues me that our system locates the place for compromise is in the voter's mind.

I agree that all electoral systems require compromise. However, it had never occurred to me that that is what happens in my mind when I feel supportive of a particular party or leader, but choose, to vote for the best local candidate. I am not sure it has ever occurred to me that that, or its opposite, makes our system stronger.

An election takes shades of grey and, from them, manufactures an assembly of lawmakers, most of whom subscribe to the concrete ideology of a party. Somewhere in the system the "grey-to-concrete" conversion must be made. MacDonald says, "Why not in my head?"

I have gone through a conversion of sorts in my life in which I learned that it strengthens one to be able to embrace ambiguity. It weakens us - and our nation, perhaps - when we are stuck in black & white.