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Proportional representation

Would this system work?

  • Yes, it would work better than our current system.

    Votes: 5 62.5%

  • Possibly, with some improvements.

    Votes: 2 25.0%

  • No, this system has fatal flaws.

    Votes: 1 12.5%
  • Total voters
    8
Kandahar

Kandahar

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In the United States, Congress' approval rating hovers around 10%, yet we all know that the vast majority of incumbent congresspeople will be reelected. Why is this? Because everyone loves THEIR representative, and thinks that the problem lies with everyone ELSE'S representative. To combat this problem, I suggest a system of proportional representation. I've been looking into how other countries operate their proportional representation systems...and none of them work quite the way my idea does. So I'm asking the good people of DebatePolitics to help me figure out the flaws in this system, why it wouldn't work, or (if it's salvageable) how it could be fixed. Here's how it would work:

The United States is divided into 435 congressional districts. On Election Day, voters would get to cast two votes: One for their district's representative, and one for which party should control the House of Representatives. The nationwide vote totals for which party should control the House are then counted. For this example, assume that the Democrats get 47% of the nationwide vote, Republicans get 43%, Libertarians get 5%, Greens get 2%, Constitutionalists get 2%, and Socialists get 1%.

Only parties which meet a 5% threshold would be eligible for congressional seats. This is to prevent fragmentation and extremism. Parties which do not meet the threshold are excluded, and the proportions are rebalanced among the remaining parties to determine how many seats each party gets. So in this example, Democrats would get 49.5% of the seats, Republicans would get 45.3%, and Libertarians would get 5.2%.

Which specific representatives would get to take office? That's where the local representative voting comes into play. The candidates from each eligible party are ranked, in order of their margin of victory. So if there were five congressional districts where the Democrat ran unopposed (and therefore received 100% of the vote), those representatives would be the first to be awarded a seat. We then continue awarding seats to the Democrat with the next-highest margin of victory, until all of the seats to which Democrats are entitled have been taken.

Note that this system does not guarantee that the candidate with the most votes in any specific district will be elected. For example, if Rob the Republican narrowly edges out Dave the Democrat (49.5%-49.3%) in a certain district, but the Democrats have already seated all of their members who received a plurality in their district (i.e. had a margin of victory greater than 0%) and are still entitled to additional seats, Dave will be elected from that district! Similarly, if the Republicans seated their last member with a 0.8% margin of victory and are not entitled to any additional seats, Rob will not be entitled to a seat despite "winning" the district.

The advantages that I see are that it would be much more representative of the overall will of the people nationwide, while still preserving the right of the people to choose their individual representatives instead of merely choosing a slate of candidates from a political party. The disadvantage is that in a few districts in which the election is very close, the candidate who receives the 2nd-most votes might actually "win" and get a seat in Congress while the candidate with the most votes would "lose" and not get a seat.

What do you guys think? Are there additional drawbacks or benefits that I'm missing? Do the drawbacks outweigh the benefits? I'm interested in what YOU think, not what some dudes in wigs thought 200 years ago. ;)
 
I think your idea is poppycock. A congressional district votes for a candidate but those votes are thrown out by the majority of voters outside that district.....why even have a vote? Why do liberals hate the Constitution?
 
conservativeguy said:
I think your idea is poppycock. A congressional district votes for a candidate but those votes are thrown out by the majority of voters outside that district.....why even have a vote? Why do liberals hate the Constitution?
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your first sentence makes no sense. Your second is pure BS. This has nothing to do with the Constitution. Really love how those who claim to love the Constitution the most fail to actually read or comprehend it.
 
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One flaw is that a group of people in whatever district can legitimately claim to have no representation, depending on how the math works out.
 
One comment I have is that I don't see the 5% threshold as necessary. Even if you have some extremist party gain, say, one seat, I don't see that as that big of a deal.
 
megaprogman said:
I mean in this case, a whole district. I should have been more clear.
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I see what you're saying now. You make a good point. That's probably the biggest flaw with the system that I can see right now.

Edit: however, if I tried to have a system that had both PR and congressional districts, Kandahar's idea is probably how I would go about implementing it.
 
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megaprogman said:
I mean in this case, a whole district. I should have been more clear.
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Yep - that's the biggest hangup right there. Where do those 5% seats come from? - because you know full well if the whole country only ranks 5% then any one district isn't going to be even close to a majority. Probably the best you could hope for in any one district would be 10-20% and you've got to come up with 21 of them. That leaves a lot of people out in the cold.

And what happens if it's one of the smaller districts like DC or ME or NH where there are darn few seats already?
 
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Kandahar said:
In the United States, Congress' approval rating hovers around 10%, yet we all know that the vast majority of incumbent congresspeople will be reelected. Why is this? Because everyone loves THEIR representative, and thinks that the problem lies with everyone ELSE'S representative. To combat this problem, I suggest a system of proportional representation. I've been looking into how other countries operate their proportional representation systems...and none of them work quite the way my idea does. So I'm asking the good people of DebatePolitics to help me figure out the flaws in this system, why it wouldn't work, or (if it's salvageable) how it could be fixed. Here's how it would work:
Click to expand...

The problem are politically ignorant voters.Not people who do not think their representative stinks. There are people who pay little to no attention to politics and usually on participate only in the federal elections.The spend their days watching American idol, stupid reality shows, sports and other things instead of paying attention to what their elected officials. This is why I think the get out vote campaigns are damaging.

Regardless of how much or little someone pays attention to politics everyone has issues they are for and against. So I think the solution is to ban party affiliations on ballots and underneath the candidate's name should be a short list of issues a candidate is for and against and if applicable a short list of issues the candidate has voted for or against.On the voting booth there should be a more thorough list of issues and past votes. In busy polling places there should be booklets on issues and past votes that can be passed out to waiting voters. This would eliminate people ignorantly voting for someone based purely on party.
 
jamesrage said:
The problem are politically ignorant voters.Not people who do not think their representative stinks. There are people who pay little to no attention to politics and usually on participate only in the federal elections.The spend their days watching American idol, stupid reality shows, sports and other things instead of paying attention to what their elected officials. This is why I think the get out vote campaigns are damaging.

Regardless of how much or little someone pays attention to politics everyone has issues they are for and against. So I think the solution is to ban party affiliations on ballots and underneath the candidate's name should be a short list of issues a candidate is for and against and if applicable a short list of issues the candidate has voted for or against.On the voting booth there should be a more thorough list of issues and past votes. In busy polling places there should be booklets on issues and past votes that can be passed out to waiting voters. This would eliminate people ignorantly voting for someone based purely on party.
Click to expand...
Our local newspaper does a far job of posting information on politician's stands on various issues and I'd bet most metro areas have similar publications. The information is available but people have to read it. I don't think putting it in voting areas will help any.
 
Kandahar said:
In the United States, Congress' approval rating hovers around 10%, yet we all know that the vast majority of incumbent congresspeople will be reelected. Why is this? Because everyone loves THEIR representative, and thinks that the problem lies with everyone ELSE'S representative. To combat this problem, I suggest a system of proportional representation. I've been looking into how other countries operate their proportional representation systems...and none of them work quite the way my idea does. So I'm asking the good people of DebatePolitics to help me figure out the flaws in this system, why it wouldn't work, or (if it's salvageable) how it could be fixed. Here's how it would work:

The United States is divided into 435 congressional districts. On Election Day, voters would get to cast two votes: One for their district's representative, and one for which party should control the House of Representatives. The nationwide vote totals for which party should control the House are then counted. For this example, assume that the Democrats get 47% of the nationwide vote, Republicans get 43%, Libertarians get 5%, Greens get 2%, Constitutionalists get 2%, and Socialists get 1%.

Only parties which meet a 5% threshold would be eligible for congressional seats. This is to prevent fragmentation and extremism. Parties which do not meet the threshold are excluded, and the proportions are rebalanced among the remaining parties to determine how many seats each party gets. So in this example, Democrats would get 49.5% of the seats, Republicans would get 45.3%, and Libertarians would get 5.2%.

Which specific representatives would get to take office? That's where the local representative voting comes into play. The candidates from each eligible party are ranked, in order of their margin of victory. So if there were five congressional districts where the Democrat ran unopposed (and therefore received 100% of the vote), those representatives would be the first to be awarded a seat. We then continue awarding seats to the Democrat with the next-highest margin of victory, until all of the seats to which Democrats are entitled have been taken.

Note that this system does not guarantee that the candidate with the most votes in any specific district will be elected. For example, if Rob the Republican narrowly edges out Dave the Democrat (49.5%-49.3%) in a certain district, but the Democrats have already seated all of their members who received a plurality in their district (i.e. had a margin of victory greater than 0%) and are still entitled to additional seats, Dave will be elected from that district! Similarly, if the Republicans seated their last member with a 0.8% margin of victory and are not entitled to any additional seats, Rob will not be entitled to a seat despite "winning" the district.

The advantages that I see are that it would be much more representative of the overall will of the people nationwide, while still preserving the right of the people to choose their individual representatives instead of merely choosing a slate of candidates from a political party. The disadvantage is that in a few districts in which the election is very close, the candidate who receives the 2nd-most votes might actually "win" and get a seat in Congress while the candidate with the most votes would "lose" and not get a seat.

What do you guys think? Are there additional drawbacks or benefits that I'm missing? Do the drawbacks outweigh the benefits? I'm interested in what YOU think, not what some dudes in wigs thought 200 years ago. ;)
Click to expand...

To me this looks basically the same as the German proportional representation system, which I'm all for. Unless there is a difference that I'm not seeing.
 
jamesrage said:
The problem are politically ignorant voters.Not people who do not think their representative stinks. There are people who pay little to no attention to politics and usually on participate only in the federal elections.The spend their days watching American idol, stupid reality shows, sports and other things instead of paying attention to what their elected officials. This is why I think the get out vote campaigns are damaging.

Regardless of how much or little someone pays attention to politics everyone has issues they are for and against. So I think the solution is to ban party affiliations on ballots and underneath the candidate's name should be a short list of issues a candidate is for and against and if applicable a short list of issues the candidate has voted for or against.On the voting booth there should be a more thorough list of issues and past votes. In busy polling places there should be booklets on issues and past votes that can be passed out to waiting voters. This would eliminate people ignorantly voting for someone based purely on party.
Click to expand...

It's much more than simply ignorant voters. A certain degree of ignorance is inherent in the system. The problem has been the gerrymandering of districts and the increasing effects of incumbent advantage. Kandahar is right - we have a Congress that certainly ISN'T really representative of the country at large.
 
MoSurveyor said:
Our local newspaper does a far job of posting information on politician's stands on various issues and I'd bet most metro areas have similar publications. The information is available but people have to read it. I don't think putting it in voting areas will help any.
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Most people don't read news papers.Thats why sales are declining. The information should be presented at a time when it matters like at a polling place on a ballot and voting both wall.
 
StillBallin75 said:
It's much more than simply ignorant voters. A certain degree of ignorance is inherent in the system. The problem has been the gerrymandering of districts and the increasing effects of incumbent advantage. Kandahar is right - we have a Congress that certainly ISN'T really representative of the country at large.
Click to expand...

In the day and age of computers there is no reason what so ever why we can't have a computer program draw up district lines based purely on population number.
 
jamesrage said:
In the day and age of computers there is no reason what so ever why we can't have a computer program draw up district lines based purely on population number.
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Ah, but who writes the program? ;) Who supervises the supervisor?
 
jamesrage said:
Most people don't read news papers.Thats why sales are declining. The information should be presented at a time when it matters like at a polling place on a ballot and voting both wall.
Click to expand...
The Internet is out there, instead, and often has more information than the newspapers. Our local paper, BTW, is on-line. They make a good chunk of their money from Internet ads. Of course, if you want the comics or the puzzles you still have to buy the paper, which I did for many years even though I read the news on-line. ;)


Political groups regularly hand out information at voting sites around here.

But even if someone handed out more or less honest lists I'm sure they couldn't be posted inside the voting site. All solicitors are required to remain a given distance away from the doors of the voting site and not impede traffic, pedestrian or otherwise.


Bottom line, though, is "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink."
 
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jamesrage said:
In the day and age of computers there is no reason what so ever why we can't have a computer program draw up district lines based purely on population number.
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It takes people to do this.
As said more than once - we need a better people.
The election process can be improved, if 99% of the people care and vote..Right now, its at what ? 40% ???
K......... and J........ have some good ideas.
The German process, how well does this work in reality ?
 
MoSurveyor said:
The Internet is out there, instead, and often has more information than the newspapers. Our local paper, BTW, is on-line. They make a good chunk of their money from Internet ads. Of course, if you want the comics or the puzzles you still have to buy the paper, which I did for many years even though I read the news on-line. ;)


Political groups regularly hand out information at voting sites around here.

But even if someone handed out more or less honest lists I'm sure they couldn't be posted inside the voting site. All solicitors are required to remain a given distance away from the doors of the voting site and not impede traffic, pedestrian or otherwise.


Bottom line, though, is "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink."
Click to expand...
The same people who spend their days watching American Idol, sports and stupid reality shows instead of paying attention to politics are not going to look on the internet or read what some politcal groups hand them. However if you remove the party affiliation from the ballot and put a shot list of issues a candidate is for and against as well as past votes relating to those issues then voters might read those and make more informed decisions than they have in the past.
 
Such a system might be workable but is pointless unless the restrictions on what is a official party are made minimal. And I would set the number of seats that would supposed to be for a particular party would be decided on the State level. This would prohibit situations of the Coasts overriding less popular states.
 
RightOfCenter said:
To me this looks basically the same as the German proportional representation system, which I'm all for. Unless there is a difference that I'm not seeing.
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The German system (if I understand it correctly) works slightly differently. Everyone gets to vote for the party to control the legislature, as well as the representative from their own district. All of the district winners automatically get seats in the legislature, and then a number of "at large" representatives are added from a slate of candidates provided by the parties, so that the overall distribution of power in the legislature was proportional.

I kinda like this idea, and think it could work in this country too if we were willing to expand the size of the House of Representatives (say, to 600 people). So for example, if the Democrats won 49% of the nationwide vote, Republicans won 45%, and Libertarians won 6%, they would each get exactly that percentage of seats in the House. We'd start by filling the 435 seats that were won by district representatives, and then the "at large" seats would be allocated among the parties as necessary to make sure that they each had the correct number of seats.

Mixed-member proportional representation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

But it's important to note that this system has the potential for electoral abuse if the proper safeguards aren't put into place:
Political parties can also abuse the system by splitting their party into two, if this is allowed by electoral law. One subdivision of the party contests the constituency seats, the other contests the list seats. This will produce an overhang. They can co-ordinate their campaign and work together within the legislature, while remaining legally separate entities. This can also give other advantages in areas such as party funding.

For instance in the Italian general election, 2001, one of the two main coalitions (the House of Freedoms, which opposed the MMP system), linked many of their constituency candidates to a decoy list (liste civetta) in the proportional parts, under the name Abolizione Scorporo. As a defensive move, the other coalition, Olive Tree, felt obliged to do the same, under the name Paese Nuovo. The constituency seats won by each coalition would not reduce the number of proportional seats they received. Between them, the two decoy lists won 360 of the 475 constituency seats, more than half of the total of 630 seats available, despite winning a combined total of less than 0.2% of the national proportional part of the vote. In the case of Forza Italia (part of the House of Freedoms), the tactic was so successful that it did not have enough candidates in the proportional part to receive as many seats as it in fact won, missing out on 12 seats.
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