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There is actually "One Weird Trick" to fix democracy, and it's the voting system not mentioned in the article: Direct and Party Representative (DPR) voting. At

There is actually "One Weird Trick" to fix democracy, and it's the voting system not mentioned in the article: Direct and Party Representative (DPR) voting. At least for parliamentary / congressional elections it is both more proportional than FPTP and simpler to count than all the alternatives mentioned. You simply provide the voters with two ballot papers: one to select a local representative (counted and decided in the same way as a traditional FPTP election), and a second ballot paper where the voter can choose which party they want to have more power at the parliamentary / congressional level. The trick is that these second votes are totalled across the whole nation and used to calculate the ratio of support for each party nationally, then those ratios are used to normalise the voting power of the representatives in the legislature. So if 10% of MPs elected are from the Triangle Party, with 20% of the national vote, then each MP gets effectively a double vote on bills, relative to a nominal MP with a proportionally correct amount of national support.

pluma 10y ago
This still sounds like it's based on a polarized two party system. In practice (outside the US) few people fully agree with one political party. In Germany I find most people I talk to don't fully support any party but partly agree with one or more parties on various issues. A scoring or approval system makes more sense in this situation because it would allow voters to express their tendencies towards each party individually rather than having to pick one compromise directly. It's also one of the few systems that allows voters to accurately represent ambivalence or apathy. DPR still sounds like it suffers from all the problems of FPTP with regard to strategic voting and spoilers.
- grzm 10y ago
  In practice (outside the US) few people fully agree with one political party. I don't think people in the US fully agree with one political party, either. Unfortunately that tends to be forgotten when things get heated, especially around elections. The polarization is artificial.
- dane-pgp 10y ago
  I don't see why DPR would require or support a polarized two party system. The idea is that the secondary (party) ballot allows you to be completely honest and vote for the party you really prefer, even if that party would be considered a "spoiler" under FPTP. Because the secondary ballots are totalled nationally, there is no danger that your support of a smaller party ends up as a wasted vote. Of course, there are a few extra details to deal with, such as how to include independent candidates (with no party behind them) and whether to introduce a minimum threshold of support for a party to appear on the secondary ballot. These are relatively straightforward questions, though, and are covered by this website about the voting system: http://www.dprvoting.org/ http://www.dprvoting.org/

pluma 10y ago

This still sounds like it's based on a polarized two party system. In practice (outside the US) few people fully agree with one political party. In Germany I find most people I talk to don't fully support any party but partly agree with one or more parties on various issues. A scoring or approval system makes more sense in this situation because it would allow voters to express their tendencies towards each party individually rather than having to pick one compromise directly. It's also one of the few systems that allows voters to accurately represent ambivalence or apathy. DPR still sounds like it suffers from all the problems of FPTP with regard to strategic voting and spoilers.

grzm 10y ago
In practice (outside the US) few people fully agree with one political party. I don't think people in the US fully agree with one political party, either. Unfortunately that tends to be forgotten when things get heated, especially around elections. The polarization is artificial.
dane-pgp 10y ago
I don't see why DPR would require or support a polarized two party system. The idea is that the secondary (party) ballot allows you to be completely honest and vote for the party you really prefer, even if that party would be considered a "spoiler" under FPTP. Because the secondary ballots are totalled nationally, there is no danger that your support of a smaller party ends up as a wasted vote. Of course, there are a few extra details to deal with, such as how to include independent candidates (with no party behind them) and whether to introduce a minimum threshold of support for a party to appear on the secondary ballot. These are relatively straightforward questions, though, and are covered by this website about the voting system: http://www.dprvoting.org/ http://www.dprvoting.org/