It's interesting that it's possible to achieve proportional representation with respect to geographic distribution and party votes simultaneously. (Though, as the article notes, Iceland falls short of this ideal.)
This makes me wonder: why stop at two? Some places have explicit quotas for different ethnic or religious groups as a compromise to avoid civil war. Could they use a tripoportional system?
And why not add in even more demographic variables? Age, gender, income, level of education, ... I suppose at some point it stops being a secret election because the number of voters sharing all attributes becomes too small, or the parliament would get unwieldily large trying to represent every hyperspecific constituency.
> It's interesting that it's possible to achieve proportional representation with respect to geographic distribution and party votes simultaneously.
That would be interesting, but it's not even possible to achieve one of those things by itself.
Huh, TIL the Constitution doesn’t require Congressional districts. A state could technically switch to a model like this for assigning representatives at large.
> Huh, TIL the Constitution doesn’t require Congressional districts.
True, but...
> A state could technically switch to a model like this for assigning representatives at large.
No, it can't because Congress itself is given the overriding power in the Constitution to regulate the "time, place, and manner" of elections to the House, and has exercised it to prohibit at-large districts (many times, with lax enforcement, but the most recent mandate, adopted in 1967, has not had the compliance problems the earlier ones often did.) The 1967 mandate was adopted under the dual specter of a some states failing to resolve districting controversies and potentially facing judicially-imposed at-large districts and several states having used at-large districts for non-federal elections to effectively disenfranchise Black voters and concerns that the same might be done to Congressional delegations as a way of blunting the impacts of new rules like the Voting Rights Act.
Additional detail at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43739929
Appreciated as always!
The two main parties in the US are way too happy with the status for any change to happen. If there is one thing they hate more than each other it's another party.
I don't think that is actually true. It is in part redistricting that lead to the ascendancy of extremism, by putting all of the strategic emphasis on the primaries in uncontested constituencies.
"Redistricting" isn't a new recent thing, it is a process done by state legislatures to state and federal legislative district every decade that has been used for both personal and partisan advantage since the founding; the word "gerrymander" was coined in criticism of a particular instance in 1812.
> two main parties in the US are way too happy with the status for any change to happen
California could make this change by referendum.
> California could make this change by referendum.
No, it could not, because Article I, Section 3 (emphasis added): "The times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing Senators." (the last part of that about choosing Senators has its effect eliminated by the 17th Amendment, but that isn't important here.)
And Congress has exercised its authority in U.S. Code Title 2, Section 2c (emphasis added): "In each State entitled in the Ninety-first Congress or in any subsequent Congress thereafter to more than one Representative under an apportionment made pursuant to the provisions of section 2a(a) of this title, there shall be established by law a number of districts equal to the number of Representatives to which such State is so entitled, and Representatives shall be elected only from districts so established, no district to elect more than one Representative (except that a State which is entitled to more than one Representative and which has in all previous elections elected its Representatives at Large may elect its Representatives at Large to the Ninety-first Congress)."
Many states could, but why would they if other states retain a system that disproportionally skews sits towards one party?
> why would they if other states retain a system that disproportionally skews sits towards one party?
Because your constituents are better represented. California strikes me as a potent place to do this because I could see a constitutional amendment passing at the ballot box.
Yes but Ds and Rs will come out in force to rally their base against it. That's what happened in Colorado this past election.
1. The original 1787 apportionment would result in a House of Representatives of ~30k members[1].
2. That's obviously unwieldy, and so we haven't had a bump in seats since ... 1910.
3. 'Factions' were viewed dimly by the Founders. I would argue in favor of two immediate changes:
- Term limits for everything, including shorter max civil service careers. Capitol Hill, like any compost heap, benefits from regular turning.
- A "bidder bunch" rule, whereby if Congress can't manage its key function--that of producing a budget--then none of these goofs (even the ones I admire) get to run for their seat when next up. There are copious talented alternative people to put on ballots. Do your job or face corporate punishment, say I.
> A "bidder bunch" rule, whereby if Congress can't manage its key function--that of producing a budget--then none of these goofs (even the ones I admire) get to run for their seat when next up
This creates an obvious and huge perverse incentive to throw a wrench into the works to force a do-over.
There was a time when senators were not elected by popular vote. The constitution leaves a lot of this up to the states and just by convention they mostly do the same thing.
The nexus of stupidity in our Republic has less often been the Senate, so I’m less keen to mess with it.
The House is a mess. So is SCOTUS. My proposal for the latter is redefining the Supreme Court as one drawn by lot from appellate judges for each case. This not only solves the appointment lottery. It also incentivises expanding the judiciary, which we need to do, and removes the modern perversion which is the Supreme Court just not bothering with controversial cases.
Most importantly, the edits to SCOTUS can be done by the Congress. The edits to the House can be done by the states. Senate requires a Constitutional amendment; that window isn’t open at this time.
This is something that was defined in the Constitution, however. Article 1, Section 3 called for the selection of Senators by state legislatures. This is superseded by the 17th Amendment, and calls for Senators to be elected by the people of their states.
This is important to understand, because the 17th Amendment is an on-again-off-again political issue; Republicans have, in recent history, held most state legislatures, so repealing the 17th Amendment would basically guarantee that the Republican Party would control at least one house of Congress for the foreseeable future, and give the party greater control over who is selected to the office.
Thanks… didn’t remember that detail and admittedly didn’t check the source.
Nnnneeeeeeeeerds!
I absolutely love that you need to read a list of axioms with Greek symbols in their descriptions to make an informed vote in Iceland. Sets a minimum bar of education to vote, which is reasonable.
Nah, just vote for the party you like the most. The nerds at the elections office take care of the math themselves. "Better" than US/UK/Canada where you have to consider a primary system or multiple elections or "Liberal Democrats win here" signs to not split the vote.
It does underline the comparative disadvantage of America’s uneducated population: something like this wouldn’t get through because most of the population is too stupid to grok it. We’re foreclosed from an entire domain of solutions because idiots won’t or can’t tough through understanding them.
This is true, this is an inherently more complex system. Personally I prefer the French two-round system as a balance between complexity and proportionality -- America sorta has this with primaries, although them being months in advance and the districts being gerrymandered to hell doesn't help.
The French two-round system is wildy unproportional to the point that it is just very marginally less undemocratic than first past the post.
The good thing is — you don’t have to suffer the idiots. It’s a choice
And yet we push the idiots to vote.
And the government keeps allowing even more uneducated people through the open border!
I think you’re both underestimating the education of immigrants and overestimating the abilities of your neighbors.
A lot of bad shit hides in the averages. Some US states have poor or no standards, or allow kids to bypass standards through various means.
Unless they got remedial education in the military or something, the average high school graduate from a poorly performing place is much less capable than a Mexican or Filipino graduate.
Hong Kong used to have a proportional voting system. The pro-China camp is often very efficient, sometimes winning a seat with half the votes compared to another candidate
You absolutely don't. The formula they give for calculating seats from votes is very simple and only uses a few letters from the standard alphabet.
The section further with the complicated Greek formulae is for a different voting system, explicitly not the Icelandic one.
> The section further with the complicated Greek formulae is for a different voting system, explicitly not the Icelandic one.
What? It's for all voting systems. It just defines a set of criteria that are desirable; it doesn't describe any system.
Sadly, these tweaks don't address any of the more obvious oddities that people have with proportional representation in the legislature. While such a system won't necessarily end up with Dutch levels of weirdness, it is still possible:
https://demodexio.substack.com/p/why-does-proportional-repre...
If your source for "Dutch levels of weirdness" is just that article, then keep in mind that the VVD being "in power" meant that they were one of the parties in the government coalition. They have had to compromise with other parties through all of that time, and so it was not the case that those governments were only representative of a very small party of the electorate, as that article makes it sound.
(In my opinion, the Dutch system is one of the best implemented in practice, precisely because of its proportionality.)
That didn't really make sense. On the one hand, the author complains that proportional elections favor a limited number of parties, which don't always give voters good options to choose from. And on the other hand, the winner usually doesn't get the majority of seats, forcing them to negotiate with other parties instead of governing unilaterally.
Then there the focus on the left vs. the right, which is no longer as relevant as it used to be during the cold war. If you choose a single faction (such as the left, conservatives, or environmentalists), that specific faction is almost always smaller than everyone else combined. When there are multiple major issues instead of a single overarching question, political divisions become more nuanced than simple X vs. not-X.