Proportional Representation

[hrothgar]

Anyone else starting to question whether the United States would be better off adoption a proportional representation system within individual states?

 

Conceptually, I am thinking of a system in which various parties nominate a slate of candidates for the House of Representatives.

The better your party does, the more of your candidates head off to the House.

 

Traditionally, I have been rather skeptical of systems based off proportional representation. (Watching things in Italy, Israel and the like has been rather discouraging). With this said and done, I believe that the US House of Representatives has become much more dysfunctional that anything we've seen before and I am starting to rethink my original position.

 

From my perspective, the key advantages to a system based on proportional representation are

 

1. Eliminating gerrymandering within states

2. Motivating majority parties to nominate more centrist candidates

2. Providing better representation for minority view points within States (Republicans in MA, Democrats in Texas)

4. Providing better representation for minority parties (libertarians, Greens, etc.)

5. Compensating for the merging rural / urban divide

 

Anyone know whether this can be done on a state by state basis? Alternatively, does it require an amendment?

[helene_t]

Of course it can be done.

 

FWIW I think there are many advantages of proportional representation. But I don't see how it would make majority parties select more centrist candidates. I would expect the opposite effect since the candidate doesn't need to appeal to 50% of the electorate.

[Cyberyeti]

My preferred method of election is one akin to the way we elect members to the European parliament.

 

Take a group of seats together, this can be one large or two or 3 small states. Elect 2/3 or 3/4 of the members directly in geographic first past the post constituencies. The rest come from party lists and are allocated in such a way that they bring the overall representation closer to the share of the vote.

[TylerE]

By the 2016 cycle, Democrats will the majority, not the minority in Texas. Isn't it amazing what 50 years of immigrant bashing does to traditional assumptions?

[helene_t]

My preferred method of election is one akin to the way we elect members to the European parliament.

This is the way it works in the UK, other countries have different ways of electing MEPs.

 

Anyway, the method is similar to the way the Danish PMs are elected, except that they elect multiple (usually 3) MPs per constituency. I like the method although it's a bit complicated. A possible drawback of the method is that a voter who votes for a small party has no influence on the election of the MP that represents his own constitution so in principle FPTP should be replaced by AP, but I think at least in Denmark most voters don't care that much about their own constituency's choice. It would be different in a country like the US where voters are used to voting for individual candidates.

[kenberg]

Conceptually, I am thinking of a system in which various parties nominate a slate of candidates for the House of Representatives.

The better your party does, the more of your candidates head off to the House.

Assume, correctly, that I know little about this. The parties now nominate a slate of candidates and the better they do, the more seats the party has. I am trying to grasp what happens differently. I could look up "proprtional representation" but i imagine there are different versions and I want to understand yours. We would vote for a party rather than a person? Or the candidates would run at large? Sorry to be dense, but I am not getting it.

[billw55]

We would vote for a party rather than a person?

Yes, and this is the biggest disadvantage of the system IMO. I want to vote for specific people.

[Winstonm]

Although I appreciate your frustration with the present system, one thing time has taught me is that the wheels of democracy grind slowly. I am convinced by recent polls that the tide is turning against the far, hard right and, like a poster above noted, even tirelessly red states like Texas may end up Democratic within a decade - after all, LBJ was a Democrat so it is possible.

 

I do not believe these radical right-wingers should be slowed - the more radicalized they act and sound, the quicker the populace tires of their dreariness. When that tide turns, I wouldn't want any of the radical right left in Congress, so for that reason I reluctantly vote to keep the status quo.

[Vampyr]

Yes, and this is the biggest disadvantage of the system IMO. I want to vote for specific people.

 

To whom would you write if you didn't have a specific MP representing your constituency? My partner and I have both written to our MP and received thoughtful answers.

[kenberg]

Yes, and this is the biggest disadvantage of the system IMO. I want to vote for specific people.

 

 

At first thought, and probably at second thought, I want to vote for Donald Duck rather than for the quacker party. I doubt that my mind can be changed on this but I am not entirely irrevocably adamant. Close though.

 

I'll follow the discussion. I am not sure I have useful thoughts.

[helene_t]

Maybe it is just a question of what you are used to. Personally I wouldn't feel I were living in a democracy if my vote was effectively restricted to a choice between two candidates (say a labour and a conservative) because any third party candidate (or lower-ranked major party candidate for that matter) would have no chance.

[mgoetze]

Maybe it is just a question of what you are used to. Personally I wouldn't feel I were living in a democracy if my vote was effectively restricted to a choice between two candidates (say a labour and a conservative) because any third party candidate (or lower-ranked major party candidate for that matter) would have no chance.

Or you could have the worst of both worlds by introducing a 5% minimum as in Germany. This past weekend, 15.7% of voters in Germany voted for parties which are not going to be represented in the national parliament.

 

(To be fair, however, the German system is actually a mix of proportional representation and direct constituencies which should alleviate Ken and Stephanie's concerns.)

[Bbradley62]

Possible hijack of the thread, but a variation on the original theme:

 

I'd like to see a proportional representation system used for the election of US presidents. Maintain most of the current Electoral College system, but assign each state's electors in proportion to votes received by each party's candidate. Under this system, John Anderson, Ross Perot and Ralph Nader (possibly among others) would have received electors since 1980. Those electors would sometimes have to be won over by a major party candidate to form a majority, and would presumably win some concessions to promote their voters' interests which might otherwise be ignored.

[Vampyr]

Possible hijack of the thread, but a variation on the original theme:

 

I'd like to see a proportional representation system used for the election of US presidents. Maintain most of the current Electoral College system, but assign each state's electors in proportion to votes received by each party's candidate. Under this system, John Anderson, Ross Perot and Ralph Nader (possibly among others) would have received electors since 1980. Those electors would sometimes have to be won over by a major party candidate to form a majority, and would presumably win some concessions to promote their voters' interests which might otherwise be ignored.

 

Who are your electors? Do you know? Do you trust them? Did you vote for them? Electors who are not committed to their candidate are another step removed from representative democracy. In fact, if electors are not committed to vote for their candidate, they might just become electors (however this is done) for another candidate and switch their vote to the one they actually favour.

[barmar]

Who are your electors? Do you know? Do you trust them? Did you vote for them? Electors who are not committed to their candidate are another step removed from representative democracy. In fact, if electors are not committed to vote for their candidate, they might just become electors (however this is done) for another candidate and switch their vote to the one they actually favour.

29 states plus DC have laws that penalize such "faithless electors", although they've never been enforced. 2 states declare their votes void. And there have never been enough electors who switched their allegiance to change the result of the election.

[Vampyr]

29 states plus DC have laws that penalize such "faithless electors", although they've never been enforced. 2 states declare their votes void. And there have never been enough electors who switched their allegiance to change the result of the election.

 

Whatever. Bill was suggesting a change whereby the electors could change their vote.

[cherdano]

Anyone else starting to question whether the United States would be better off adoption a proportional representation system within individual states?

(...)

5. Compensating for the merging rural / urban divide

I've always found it obvious that proportional representation is superior. But of course that maybe partly because that's what I was used to.

In any case, 5. is by far the most important reason in your list in my view. Underrepresenting urban views is really a huge problem of the current US system in my opinion.

However, I think you forgot another important one: a better a governing party is held responsible for the outcome of the laws it passes, whereas an individual member of congress is mostly held responsible for the votes he cast. Thus, it becomes a governing party's interest to pass laws that work, rather than votes that serve as nothing but grand-standing. In other words, they would operate a little more like governors, and a little less like [insert your favorite idiotic congressman here].

Of course, the (too) many veto points of the US legislative process will always make this sort of accountability very messy.

[blackshoe]

Who are your electors? Do you know? Do you trust them? Did you vote for them? Electors who are not committed to their candidate are another step removed from representative democracy. In fact, if electors are not committed to vote for their candidate, they might just become electors (however this is done) for another candidate and switch their vote to the one they actually favour.

Don't know. Don't know if there's a way I can find out. So no, I don't trust them. I have no idea who they are so I have no idea whether they're trustworthy.

 

There are 370 million people in the US. That means that each Representative, on average, represents some 850 thousand people. How can any single person adequately represent the interests of that many people? OTOH, the Constitution says that each Representative must represent at least 30,000 people (still too large a number, IMO), and at that level the House would have about 12,333 Representatives. We'd need to rebuild the Capitol. B-)

 

Senators are supposed to represent the interests of the States, not of the people directly, but since the Seventeenth Amendment (in 1913) changed the method of their election can this really be said to be true any more?

[nigel_k]

We have this in New Zealand. It has a kind of mathematical appeal to fairness but it doesn't work that well in practice. There are two main reasons why:

 

1. Getting elected is more to do with having a high position on the list chosen by the candidate's party, than by appealing to voters.

 

2. Middle parties have too much power. At the moment, there are a lot of party line votes. Imagine a third party with 5% of the vote and how much power they would have.

[Scarabin]

F.w.i.w. my experience of proportional representation is that it tends to weak government and broken campaign promises.

[Mbodell]

I think a different approach that could work, instead of proportional, is to do single transfer voting for a slate of candidates. Combine several districts (or just do all elections congress people in each state at once) and then do single transfer voting for the multiple representative. You factor people's votes when they elect someone, and you transfer people's vote when you eliminate a candidate. See link for more information. As long as you have large enough set of people running then you have the twin benefits of roughly proportionate outcomes and also the people directly vote for candidates and in effect choose the list for the parties, not rely on the parties to choose the list order.

[helene_t]

Whatever. Bill was suggesting a change whereby the electors could change their vote.

Not really. He suggested that electors of 3rd party candidates would vote for one of the major party candidates once it's obvious that their own candidate has no chance.

[helene_t]

We have this in New Zealand. It has a kind of mathematical appeal to fairness but it doesn't work that well in practice. There are two main reasons why:

 

1. Getting elected is more to do with having a high position on the list chosen by the candidate's party, than by appealing to voters.

 

2. Middle parties have too much power. At the moment, there are a lot of party line votes. Imagine a third party with 5% of the vote and how much power they would have.

As for 1, it doesn't have to be that way. In Denmark, most parties don't have a list order so in each constituency in which the party wins a seat, the seat goes to the most popular candidate of that party in that district.

 

As for 2, I am not sure if that a disadvantage. If

49% of the voters want 0 VAT,

2% want 15% and

49% want 30% VAT

 

it seems reasonable to me that we end up with 15% even though it is the preference of only 2% of the voters. But OK, there will be situations in which a small party choses to govern together with whichever major party is willing to give them concessions on the small party's idiosyncratic preferences. In the town I lived in in the Netherlands, for example, most shops were not allowed to be open on Sundays because some weird fundamentalist party refused to support the coalition unless they got the other coalition parties to agree to ban Sunday sales, something which probably only a small fraction of the electorate supported.

[Trinidad]

We would vote for a party rather than a person?

Yes, and this is the biggest disadvantage of the system IMO. I want to vote for specific people.

You can obviously have your cake and eat it too. In many countries you vote for a person in a party.

 

If the person gathers enough votes by himself to get a seat, s/he will get it. If this person doesn't get enough votes for the seat, the votes will go to the party. The same is true for the excess votes that he gets. The party will assign the seats that they earn from these excess votes to candidates that didn't make it on their own through a predetermined system.

 

Suppose that there are 5 seats available and 500 votes are cast, this might lead to (votes - party/candidate):

 

Party 1: 309 Strong club

1. 113 Hrothgar

2.  83 Rhm

3.  62 Straube

4.  27 Zelandakh

5.  24 PrecisionL

 

Party 2: 191 Natural

1.  55 Kenberg

2.  11 Trinidad

3. 112 Helene_t

4.  12 Nigel_k

5.  11 Blackshoe

 

The natural party picked Kenberg as their top candidate, but Helene_t was more popular among voters. (Sorry, Ken.)

 

This means that 100 votes are required to gain a seat: Hrothgar (SC) and Helene_t (Nat.) are in. Nobody else got in on his own force. The Strong club party can divide 209 votes = 2 seats and they go to Rhm and Straube. The Naturals don't have enough for an extra seat. Four seats are given and we look at how many votes remain for the last seat: The Naturals have 91 "rest votes" which is more than the 9 that the Strong Clubbers have. The fifth seat goes to the Naturals and they pick Kenberg.

 

The BBF House will consist of:

Hrothgar (SC)

Rhm (SC)

Straube (SC)

Helene_t (Nat.)

Kenberg (Nat.)

 

Rik

[kenberg]

"If nominated I will not run, if elected i will not serve" (Sherman)

 

Vote Helene. Vote Helene. Go natural. Go Helene.

 

Do I have a future as a campaign adviser?