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- politics@lemmy.world
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- politics@lemmy.world
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In my opinion there shouldn’t be districts at all. Too much potential for fuckery.
Proportional representation is the way. X% of the vote means X% of seats, no shenanigans
No shenanigans except the party picks the rep instead of the voters. Maybe you have a party you trust to do that, but I don’t.
You will have more parties. Internal party democracy is not that important then
The point of representatives is that they each represent a small portion of the population. If you remove districts, then who are house members representing?
Indeed that’s the intention, but in practice gerrymandering often leads to the opposite outcome where urban cores are divided up with large rural areas to suppress one side’s votes.
See Utah’s districts for the most obvious example of this. It would be logical to group Salt Lake City in one district, Provo + some suburbs in another, then the rural areas in the remaining districts. But instead the city is divided evenly such that each part of the city is in a different district, with every district dominated by large rural areas.
One of the main complications in the US is the racial mix. Looking at party lines and geographic boundaries is an over simplification
Say 20% of the population is black, and the state has five reps. Two neighboring cities each have 30% black population, and enough population to have two of the five reps. The rest are dispersed in rural areas. Do you draw that each city gets one rep? Or do you draw such that a district has a majority of black residents, with funny boundaries to accommodate the geography?
The former means that you will more likely end up with a white representative for both cities and the voice of the black community are not heard in the legislative body. The latter means that you have now gerrymandered to ensure a group gets a voice they deserve.
This is the real pain in the ass about the whole thing. Some level of drawing stupid districts is needed to create good. Pure geographically created boundaries will only cause segregation if we want minority groups to have an equal voice in the legislature.
But, people in power tend to fuck everything up.
You can have an electoral division of your country without gerrymandering. Cf most european countries.
Most European countries do not use first past the post, but proportional representation with multiple elected representatives per voting district. There is far less incentive for politicians to gerrymander with proportional representation.
Multi-representative per-voting district isn’t the same as proportional representation - you still get a percentage of votes that gets thrown out, normally smaller parties which can’t get enough votes in any one district to add up to a representative but if you added up their votes nationally it would be enough to have several representatives.
You still get things like parties getting 10% of the vote but only 5% of parliamentarians, whilst the big parties can get 50% of parliamentarians on about 40% of the vote.
In Proportional Representation there are no districts and the votes of the whole country are added up and then used to allocate parliamentarians, which minimizes the votes lost because they didn’t add up to a parliamentarian.
Multi-representative per-voting districts are still better than First Past The Post (as a singled representative per district mathematically maximizes the number of votes thrown out), but it’s still designed to reduced the representation of smaller parties and boost that of larger ones.
As far as I know the only true Proportional Vote System in Europe is in the Netherlands, though Germany have a mixed system with a 5% threshold to get into the Bundestag.
Proportional representatives. Of a party gets a 30%of the votes, it gets a 30%ish of the seats.
The arguably huge downside of this, is that it cuts the direct line from you to a representative. That undermines democracy, because it undermines your capacity to be heard.
Does your representative ever done something you asked for?
I’m not anerican so I’m unsure how pertinent my experience is.
But yes, my representatives often hold public neetings in which anyone is invited, although I don’t go there myself.
If the “direct line” is theoretical anyway it just doesn’t matter anyway.
I don’t have any citations sorry, but I did look into this about 15 years ago for reasons I no longer remember, and what I learned is that in most places with large overall populations that uses a system like this, and where leadership is not voted for independently of local representation, the representatives overwhelmingly vote along party leadership not on the community they represent.
Not sure I’m explaining it well sorry
When everyone votes along party lines, why does it matter if you have local representation ? Barely any of them actually vote how they think their constituents would want them to vote, they vote however the party tells them to vote.
This is a very cynical point of view that would make it even less possible for independants to be represented in the House, remove town halls from the system, and therefore make the entire system even less democratic and remove the entire point of a representative democracy.
There is zero benefit to this.
Proportional voting would actually make smaller parties be able to have representatives, breaking up the 2 party system and promoting more diverse point of views. You can also have mixed systems, with locally elected reps for a part of the house, and the rest of the house being filled in a manner that the end result is proportional to the global voting share
Also it’s possible to have a “national circle” which when votes allocate parliamentary representatives, is used for, after all regional representatives have be allocated, pick up all votes that didn’t yielded any representatives in the regional circles and use them to allocate representatives nationally.
Smaller parties which are not regionally concentrated loose regional representation but they don’t lose representation in overall as those votes end up electing national representatives, whilst very regional parties get regional representatives and the bigger national parties get mainly regional representative and maybe a handful of national ones.
I’m not saying getting rid of local representation is the solution, necessarily. In fact, I personally think the opposite is true and we need more local representation.
It’s just with the current system, local representation is kind of useless and supports gerrymandering and corruption.
If I were in charge I would demand political parties to disperse completely and local representatives be the only people on the ballot to go ahead and make decisions for the people who voted for them. Vote for the person not the party.
The secret is that you need proportional elections within each district. What also implies that they should be bigger…
Or, in other words, just copy Switzerland and you’ll be fine.
(Personally, I’m divided. The largest scale your election is, the most voice you give to fringe distributed groups. I can’t decide if this is good or bad.)
In my country Germany the system is that every party above 5% can send representatives according to their percentage of votes. Then there are districts, who have to have size of approximately 250.000 inhabitants with German citizenship, who send a representative of the party with the most votes.
There a laws in place to not seperate counties, towns and cities when district lines have to be redrawn.
It’s a bit simplified of course.
Stephen Harper, Pierre Poilievre and the CPC began the process of gerrymandering Canada to match GOP attempts in the states.
As example: in Vancouver you have a riding that is two physically distinct pieces of land that you have to travel through two other ridings to get to.
Do you have more context for the gerrymandering attempt? I don’t remember that one, and web search is terrible now so I can’t find more about it either.
In Canada, independent commissions handle the process, which makes gerrymandering much more difficult to get away with. An article discussing it:
https://www.vox.com/2014/4/15/5604284/us-elections-are-rigged-but-canada-knows-how-to-fix-them
“Independent commissions now handle the redistricting in every Canadian province”
Eventually, in 1955, one province — Manitoba — decided to experiment, and handed over the redistricting process to an independent commission. Its members were the province’s chief justice, its chief electoral officer, and the University of Manitoba president. The new policy became popular, and within a decade, it was backed by both major national parties, and signed into law.
Independent commissions now handle the redistricting in every province. “Today, most Canadian ridings [districts] are simple and uncontroversial, chunky and geometric, and usually conform to the vague borders of some existing geographic / civic region knowable to the average citizen who lives there,” writes JJ McCullough.
“Of the many matters Canadians have cause to grieve their government for, corrupt redistricting is not one of them.” Hoffman concurs, writing, “The commissions have been largely successful since their implementation.”
Even worse, google “Pierre Poutine”.
Links to get people started on the 2011 one
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Canadian_federal_election_voter_suppression_scandal
The 2011 Canadian federal election voter suppression scandal (also known as the Robocall scandal, Robogate, or RoboCon) is a political scandal stemming from events during the 2011 Canadian federal election.[1][2][3][4][5][6] It involved robocalls and real-person calls that originated in the Conservative Party of Canada’s campaign office in Guelph, Ontario. The calls were designed to result in voter suppression. Elections Canada and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) conducted investigations into the claims that calls were made to dissuade voters from casting ballots by falsely telling them that the location of their polling stations had changed.[7] Further possible electoral law violations were alleged as the evidence unfolded. Under the Canada Elections Act, it is an offence to willfully prevent, or endeavour to prevent, an elector from voting in an election.[8][9]
Cracking and packing
Why do votes need to be done by district? Just do it statewide
The purpose is to have the people of smaller areas represented by an individualized Congress member. So the people in say the backwoods of California, aren’t being spoken for by all big city people from LA/San Fran etc. When something is going on in your district, you are supposed to have someone who is empathetic to your cause and familiar to it. Then they bring that to the house and make the argument for you.
Aka, when someone brings up a federal code change proposition that will bankrupt the main source of jobs in your town, your legislature is supposed to go to bat, not fall in line and let your town die. 200 jobs being lost doesn’t sound like much to a large city, but in a town of 2,000 people that’s game over
Good point but for presidential elections, electrical districts don’t make any sense. You could just use the total votes for the whole state to allocate electoral votes. Also, if the districts are being manipulated to provide a skewed election result then are the districts really groups of people with similar needs?
Good point but for presidential elections, electrical districts don’t make any sense.
In 48 out of fifty states, they don’t matter for presidential elections. I think only Maine and Nebraska split their electoral college votes at all.
Also, if the districts are being manipulated to provide a skewed election result then are the districts really groups of people with similar needs?
The original purpose has indeed been corrupted in many places, and those where it hasn’t are tempted into a “race to the bottom” as states with modest but persistent majorities are gerrymandering their states to the hilt. Still, the original idea of electoral districts makes a lot of sense, and even moreso when communications and travel were much slower.
This will lead to the majority of the state getting full say and suppressing minority views. This can be political, racial, etc.
California has a large Republican population. If it goes state wide they get zero voice as the full state will go blue.
These days I’m kinda fine with that, but in principle this is wrong. The same suppression logic can be spread to ethnic groups, etc.
From reading the comments of others I’ll say it seems like I’m pretty uninformed about how the actual process works. But what i meant was that if there are 6 electoral votes and each candidate wins 50% if the votes in the state then they both get 3 electrical votes. If there are 8 electoral votes and someone wins 27% if the vote they get 2 votes, not all or nothing
Because the concerns of farmers in California’s central valley are different from the people in Hollywood.
Right, but without districts you could have ranked choice voting so the farmers in central California can vote for candidates that they want to represent them and all of their votes should be able to elect those candidates. Meanwhile, people who vote in other regions should have enough votes to elect candidates of their choosing.
The candidates might all focus on the big population centers, and the central California voters might have to choose between LA candidate A, LA Candidate B and SF Candidate C.
What if everybody just votes thier opinion on a set of issues. The cadadites have to declare thier opinion on the same set. When the voting is done, the percentages are calculated for all the issues. Then a computer program picks a list of cadidates such the they together match the distribution of the voters.
Three problems:
- It makes voting more complex. Having citizens able to make their opinion heard is important, but it should be separate from voting, unless you want an even larger abstention.
- The matching problem doesn’t necessarily have a solution. As in, it might be (and is actually likely) impossible to have a set of representatives that matches the percentages of each opinion.
- Not all opinions can be expressed in a multiple choice question. Most topics are way too complex to be summarised in a few options. So, who picks the few authorized opinions?
1, it is actually less complex for the voter. Right now they don’t kniw much about who/what they are voting for because all the info they get is marketing. But a question about homelessness or crime they probably feel more confident in thier answer. Plus many people don’t vote because thier options are all liars. The reps in this case don’t have to be popular, so they don’t have to lie. 2 in very small states it might be tough, but an algorithm can find the closest match by simply trying all the combinations. For a computer that will be a very simple task. And it could even print them all out for anyone to validate. 3 this for sure is the hardest part. Probably some kind of public proposal and polling combo would be needed. Btw, at work we were told to use numbers instead of bullets because it makes referring to a point much easier.
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- You are conflating complexity and difficulty. But I’ll argue it’s both more complex and more difficult. It’s more complex because rather than choosing your candidate, you have to express your opinions. You have a bunch of choices to make instead of one. That’s complexity. But it is also more difficult, because it requires you to have a grasp of all the issues that are brought up. Not everyone is able to give their opinion on how to best fight a job crisis, for instance. And picking what “feels” best makes the choice pointless and dangerous. It also doesn’t prevent lies, marketing and false promises at all, as a candidate could still be lying about their intentions just to get more votes.
- It is very hard to find the closest match. I tell you that as a software engineer. Because what rules do you use to determine the “closest”? Do you consider every opinion as important? Do you minimise the average distance? Do you minimise the amount of extreme differences? Do you prioritise some “more important” issues? Who even decides what is important? There are so many ways to bias and twist a system like this.
- Then you’re probably better off advocating for a direct democracy, which is another topic and can be done in a much easier way than trying to adapt a representative democracy for it!
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I disagree that answering the questions have to be harder. They don’t have to be so specific that they require a solid grasp. They should be more like do you agree with doing X. Not “choose the best way to solve the homeless crisis”.
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You’re overthinking it. You take each question and determine what % of the population answered each way. Then you choose multiple cadadites such that together roughly the same % of the cadadites answered the same way as the people. So yes you should end up with representatives on opposite sides of the issue if people voted that way. The idea is that the representatives as a whole accurately represent the people. And like I said, in a small population state that may be a challenge. But there are ways to work around that.
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I don’t think a direct democracy is better. In a dd, money determines what gets voted on. And there are less things voted on in general, so money can sway the people a lot. When the number of questions is higher and all at once, money has a hard time focusing a message on them all. And even after that, the answering of the questions chooses a rep who is able to learn enough aboutvit to be less likely to be swayed by money. A large part of that is that they need no campaign, so they don’t have to serve the money to get reelected.
I’m not saying it perfect, but the general idea is to get people who represent the opinions of the people, not popularity contest winners. And to reduce the money connection to poloticians votes. Also, you don’t need a “party” at all.
- Then we’ll have to agree to disagree on this.
- I’m not overthinking it. Doing stuff like this is my job. I receive a problem, I ask the questions to get precise requirements. What I am telling you is that depending on who answers these questions, the outcome of the elections can be completely different. In a very oversimplificated way, it’s a new, even sneakier way to gerrymander.
- I’m a devops engineer. I personally haven’t written code to do this, but it isn’t something that hasn’t been done before. Just take all possible combinations of candidates and use thier answers to compute the percentage that answered a given way for each question foreach combination. Do the same with the voting results. Then compare the % of the population to the % of each combination to get a set of differences for each combination. For small states you probably need to increase the number of seats to some minimum like 20 or more. For big states you will probably get a match with a tolerance of +/- 1%. For others you will have to iterate the tolerance up until you get a match.
If you want to get a better match, you could make the number of cadadites selected dynamic. And personally I support having a larger number as it reduces the power of anyone individual. Then the reps from the state can vote on any issue, and the states votes can be distributed to represnt the votes of the many representatives.
The idea is a group that actually represents the views of the people they represent istead of special interests.
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Obligatory mention of CGP Grey and his fantastic animal kingdom voting series: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Mky11UJb9AY
And Alpha Phoenix demonstrating how to produce rigged boundaries that look natural and not suspicious:
I love that video. One awesome solution he brings up is letting math draw the district lines, specifically the shortest-split line method. There’s also an updated version of the method called Impartial Automatic Redistricting, that uses an approach similar to SSLM, but will only make cuts along the boundaries of census blocks (the smallest geographic unit used by the Census Bureau) to avoid cutting towns/neighborhoods in half, although it can create some odd results sometimes.
However, I think both of these would currently be illegal in the US under the Voting Rights Act for not taking minority representation into account. That is one downside to these methods, even though they’re probably still an upgrade compared to the heavily-gerrymandered system in the US. So in the US’s current system, the algorithms would have to be updated to somehow take that into account.
There are also a few other neat district drawing rules on Wikipedia that he didn’t cover which are worth a read.
Most sane countries leave electoral boundaries to an independent commission
It’s almost like the idea that representation based on land instead of based on people is flawed to begin with.
Our nation will continue circling the toilet until gerrymandering is outlawed.
And with how many stupids there are here that are scared of change, even when presented with facts proving it’s better for them, the odds of things getting better are pretty slim.
”Perfect representation” only works if everyone votes. Blue can win with 3 votes against 20 votes.
So, “perfect representation” is when one side wins that does not represent 40% of the votes?
When there’s just two “teams”, yeah. What’s more fair than majority rule in that situation?
Maybe proportional representation instead of winner takes it all?
For district seats, that is proportional representation. It doesnt say it is winner take all. When it says that blue or red wins, it is just saying that they won the majority, and have dominate power over whatever government body they represent.
I just took the graphic literally without trying to guess which body (presumably in the US) this might represent.
If I need more information to understand the implication of this graphic than it imparts on me, then it’s not very informative.At no point does it imply proportional representation or that blue has a majority in some form of parliament.
So if blue just “wins” then red isn’t represented at all. And I’m pretty sure there are election systems like this, including the US presidential election, or am I mistaken there?What do you think “districts” means? Each district gets represention for the whole body, whatever body that may be. If you need that explained to you, okay, but don’t then lecture others on minutae of semantics when you arent familiar with what the word “district” entails.
And the U.S. President is not elected like this, no. There is no districting involved in US Presidential elections, at least not currently and not directly. It is far stupider than that, unfortunately. Each state has so many districts on the federal level based on population of the whole state (minimum 1), and each district gets a federal representative in the US House of Representatives wing of congress. Each state also gets 2 and only 2 Senate seats regardless of population in that wing of congress. The Presidency is actually determined by the votes of Electors in the Electoral College. Each state gets as many Electors as they have seats in both the Senate and House, and it has nothing to do with how the districts in that state are subdivided or what party their Representatives are from.
Now, each state gets to determine for itself how they run their elections, how they assign their Electors, and even whether their electors are required to vote the same way as their state, so things can be pretty complicated. In many states, it is winner take all for that state’s Electors, with the winner being the one with the plurality of votes in a FPTP election, which is dumb as fuck. Some others assign their Electors proportionally. There is even a slowly growing coalition of states that, once they reach a plurality of Electors in the coalition, have agreed to no longer assign their Electors on a state by state basis, but on the national popular vote instead. Again, within each of these states, rules differ on the relative power of the Electors themselves to vote according to their own desires even if that goes against the state’s popular vote. They could, also, if they wished, leave each House-tied Elector up to each individual district, or just decided the Electors without considering or even having a democratic vote at all, neither or which currently happens, though. It’s a giant fucking mess, it leads many many people in hard red or blue states to just to just not bother as their vote will be overwhelmed anyway, which is why the Electoral College should just be eliminated and replaced with a national popular vote. But that is a whole other story.
What do you think “districts” means?
A subsection of a larger unit, here the subsections of a rectangle. What does that have to do with me not guessing what the rectangle represents?
And the U.S. President is not elected like this, no. There is no districting involved in US Presidential elections,
In many states, it is winner take all for that state’s Electors, with the winner being the one with the plurality of votes in a FPTP election
Ok, so there is an election system like the one I criticized in the US, just not in every state.
Some others assign their Electors proportionally.
Would you then say, that this is better than “winner takes all” and that “blue wins” is not perfect?
Ok, so there is an election system like the one I criticized in the US, just not in every state.
Would you then say, that this is better than “winner takes all” and that “blue wins” is not perfect?
No… because in the example, it was NOT winner take all. Blue won the majority of districts. Red won the other districts. Nobody took all. I feel like you are trying really hard to misunderstand a VERY simple hypothetical example. Yes, winner take all states for electors is bullshit, but that is NOT what is happening in the example, for the love of god!
When there is one seat, two parties, and you’re using First Past the Post voting (which is a terrible voting system that inevitably causes the two party divide), yes. They perfect out come is majority win. When distributing multiple district seats, proportional representation is the perfect outcome, which that also acheives.
When there is one seat, two parties, and you’re using First Past the Post voting (which is a terrible voting system that inevitably causes the two party divide), yes
So we can agree the system is inherently bad at representation?
Sounds more like that outcome is the “least bad” rather than “perfect”.First Past the Post is objectively a problem in general. However, if there are only two candidates, and thus only possible outcomes, with one possible seat, all forms of voting will be functionally identical to FPTP in result. So in this given example, “least bad” and “perfect” are synonymous.
Now if there was a third+ party or more candidates from the two parties, and alternative forms of voting, then things do get more complicated. But the point of the example is to show, in simplist terms, how districting works in an ideal world, and how Gerrymandering can warp the end results to give either the advantage.
Except that the lack of a third candidate is partially because of the FPTP system. It’s a waste of time, money and energy to try to compete with the Dems and the Reps. In a ranked voting system, or even a two-round system like we have in France, I guarantee you you’d see more candidates, because people then wouldn’t just “vote useful”.
I don’t understand it well, but I like your 2 round system. What are some typical flaws with it that might not be obvious? I’m also curious what is the best thing about it, in your opinion
It is better than FPTP, but not a great system either. The flaws are similar to FPTP: The final winner may not be the candidate that would be most approved by the pooulation.
The main arvantage of it is that you can go wilder during the first turn, and pick a small party that you truly support, in hope it passes to the second turn. That happens often enough. And if it doesn’t, then you vote for the least bad candidate in the second turn/the closest candidate to what you want.
That happens often enough. And if it doesn’t, then you vote for the least bad candidate in the second turn/the closest candidate to what you want.
That’s what I like about it that I thought it would solve for me. I don’t think the person I’ve voted for, in any election I’ve ever voted for, has won my riding (Canada)
I often have to choose between who I want to represent me, and voting for the strategic choice so that the leader of the country isn’t the worst choice
Except that the lack of a third candidate is partially because of the FPTP system.
Right, that’s what I said in my previous comment. Ranked Choice is an improvement, yes. Though, I think it still is too easy to push the winning vote to the more polar candidates. If the centrist doesn’t rile up passionate supporters (because what centrist does), they are more likely to be dropped in the first round even though they were ranked 1 or 2 for nearly everyone. I prefer Approval voting as my ideal alternative. It does tend to push more toward center, but if the idea is true democratic representation, then that would be the natural result, right? But anything is better than FPTP.
Ranked Choice is an improvement, yes
So if improvements are possible then the current situation can by definition not be perfect, right?
As I said elsewhere, if there is only two parties/candidates running for each of these seats and the districts are divided this way then there is no functional difference between Ranked Choice, Approval, Proportional, or First Past The Post. The results would be 100% identical in any of those systems. In this specific situation, the result is “perfect”, as it says. Under different circumstances, it would be less than perfect, but that is not how hypothetical work, my guy.
Non-surprisingly it exists in some form in anglo countries.
UK and CanadaIn the UK we have the electoral boundary commission specifically to avoid this sort of thing. Do you have an example of it being a problem in the UK?
This is just from what I looked up (from 4 years ago):
With both parties getting 38% to Tories get 12 more seats than Labour.
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/usercode.py?scotcontrol=Y&CON=38&LAB=38&LIB=12&Reform=2&Green=3&UKIP=&TVCON=&TVLAB=&TVLIB=&TVReform=&TVGreen=&TVUKIP=&SCOTCON=23.6&SCOTLAB=19.2&SCOTLIB=6&SCOTReform=0.3&SCOTGreen=1.5&SCOTUKIP=&SCOTNAT=47.5&display=AllChanged®orseat=(none)&boundary=2019baseSeen other comments they can also mess with other factors, avg inhabitants, etc…
Anyway, really not familiar with this but at first glance you at least have that system and you all can decide if 12 seats is a problem to you or not. Not my problem
why not count each person instead to avoid the issue entirely
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Because then the rich wouldn’t be able to control everything
I’m not sure that would make much difference. When you control the media companies (including social media), you control what people see and hear. When you control what people see and here, you control what they believe and how they act, to a large extent.
Which is not to say that it wouldn’t be an improvement, just that it wouldn’t solve that particular problem. At least not directly. Perhaps it would make it easier to implement systemic changes we’d need to truly address it.
Jeff Bezos didn’t buy the Washington Post out of a love for journalism, that’s for damned sure.
So what, one representative for all those people?
Here in Brazil, one person means one vote, no districting, no gerrymandering, none of this things, one vote for the president is one vote, one vote for your state senator is one vote, one vote for your deputy is one vote for them and their party (in this part it’s weird, but makes sense that the politician also represents their party, but creates effects like “party gerrymandering”).
Bolsonaro went into house arrest yesterday, so this could mean something.
I am also from Brazil and that’s why I was a bit perplexed. To me, simply counting votes directly instead of counting districts makes more sense.
Bolsonaro went into house arrest yesterday, so this could mean something.
He was also elected President, so that can mean something too.
Majority of people didn’t want him and don’t want him again, like with Trump, but only one of them got reelected.
Well, each vote is counted. Gerrymandering affects (federal level in the US) only the House of Representatives, and districts are drawn (ideally) proportional to population. How those lines are drawn are not and cannot be objective; Gerrymandering is when that subjectivity allows for bias.
The objection is that lines are not legitimate. Lines and districts do not represent voters, they represent politicians and that is not democratic.
Districts by their very nature represent voters.
I feel like you are misunderstanding representative government. There is value in districts, provided they are drawn apolitically. Without it, people living in sparsely populated areas would effectively have their unique needs unmet.
I am not saying the system is without critique. There is loads wrong with it as is, as the gerrymandering problem illustrates. But while one person / one vote would be ideal for an office like president (and it should be changed so this is the case), it would have other issues if it were used for all offices.
Districts by their very nature represent voters.
I feel like you are misunderstanding representative government. There is value in districts, provided they are drawn apolitically. Without it, people living in sparsely populated areas would effectively have their unique needs unmet.
It’s really important to understand why this is not the case. Districted voting essentially introduces first-past-the-post voting at more levels. Each level of FPTP creates a larger disparity between what voters want and who gets elected. This is in part due to gerrmandering, but that’s not a required thing.
Every time you decide a district election through FPTP, you essentially create a rounding error, a disparity between the election results and what voters actually voted for. This FPTP system then reinforces the two-party system that the US and UK have a very hard time escaping. And as you may be able to guess, having a mere two major parties to choose from is fucking terrible for getting niche voters represented. It’s why the US and UK see comparatively little regional focus and increased disillusionment with national politics in these areas.
Abolishing districts actually helps local representation(!). Because under proportional representation, if someone campaigns on serving the needs of a small group of voters, said group can vote for them and they will be elected. It lets anyone basically define their own “district” of voters, without political manipulation. If they fail to attract a sizeable enough share of votes, then this electoral niche is simply too small to be represented at the national level, and this group should perhaps petition local government instead.
We see this effect quite clearly in countries like the Netherlands, where there are quite a few national parties to choose from, and several focus on a specific group of voters (eg the BBB which focuses on farmers, or the FNP which focuses on people living in the region of Friesland.
I don’t see why FPTP voting are inherent to voting districts. I would agree FPTP voting is problematic, but don’t necessarily agree abolishing districts would be the way to solve it.
I’ll admit to being largely uneducated on political theory, but nothing you said has convinced me districted voting is inherently bad.
Yeah it’s not that districted voting requires FPTP, but I think the point was that it has an effect that’s similar.
Even if you had RCV in each district so that the elected candidate was generally more preferred by the people in that district, you could still end up with an aggregated outcome where no members from a given party win any districts, yet still had some small portion of voters in each district. In that way the unlucky party gets no representation despite having a non-zero voter base.
So while I wouldn’t use the phrase “inherently bad” to describe district elections, I think the arguments in favor of districtless, proportional voting are stronger.
FPTP isn’t strictly necessary for districts, but it’s the most common. One way or another, you need some way to determine which candidate will ultimately represent a district. Unless you’re in a 2-party system, it’s very likely that this candidate will only represent a minority of voters in a district. Even with RCV you might get a “least disliked” candidate, but that’s still not a candidate that has majority support.
Perhaps to make it easier to understand: there is zero guarantee that all voters in a specific district have the same voting preference. And those without a plurality opinion are likely to end up marginalised under a districting system. If another group in your district is slightly larger, you end up without representation. Without districting, these voters can band together and choose their preferred candidate, without being constrained by arbitrary district lines.
Perhaps a concrete example will help. Take a random western country with a small minority. This minority doesn’t tend to aggregate in specific districts as much, they’re usually very well spread out over the country (let’s say there’s 2% nationwide, but at most 10% in any given district). Under a districting system, they’re likely to fail getting even a single representative, as they’re a minority in every single district. But under proportional representation, they could get a representative as collectively the minority is large enough to warrant representation with at least 2% of seats.
There’s also systems like the Danish, which iirc tries to figure out how many districts should be appointed to which party by dividing up the national vote (though I’m not very well acquainted with it). But even such a system will then be forced to assign a district representative to a district where the candidate does not enjoy majority support.
And that’s the issue with districting. It’s not possible to have a system that guarantees the national election results match the national voter preference, and that guarantees that district election results match the district voter preference.
FPTP needs voting districts for legislative bodies, and FPTP are the easiest implementation of voting districts.
Without it, people living in sparsely populated areas would effectively have their unique needs unmet.
Why? That’s why you have different tiers of government. Parliament shouldn’t have to worry about the state of the water in a particular municipality, that’s a local government issue. Similarly, the state sets the budget for healthcare, but the regions allocate those resources based on the needs of the municipalities.
Both sides have had opportunities to make it illegal and neither have done it. I wonder why.
Because if you have the power to make it illegal, by definition, the old system worked for you (you won), so why would you change it?
It’s cynical as all hell, but that’s how it works.
I mean yeah but it feels stupider to me. Like bumping your head on something repeatedly then seeing somebody else bump their head, laugh at them and then bump your own head again. Political slapstick.
Because you never were a democracy
I’m not USA or from USA.
lol idiot
Simply vote for the one who’s not supporting it the least to push them towards actually supporting it at all.
Where do we draw the line?
