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How about the CA State Senate? It's two waves of 20 members in overlapping 4 year terms. Electing a set of 20 doesn't sound so bad. Maybe the ballot winds up wi

How about the CA State Senate? It's two waves of 20 members in overlapping 4 year terms. Electing a set of 20 doesn't sound so bad. Maybe the ballot winds up with 60 or 80 people on it, but you only have to care about two or five that you like, or if you're a real politics nut maybe rank 10-20 of them. The great thing about that setup is that statewide any group that can organize itself for 5% of the vote gets a seat. The Greens get seats. The Libertarians get seats. New parties that haven't been invented yet get seats. People will run independent of any party and get elected if they have a big enough following. This would really broaden the membership of the legislature. Keep the 80-member Assembly to small local representative districts.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> How about the CA State Senate? It's two waves of 20 members in overlapping 4 year terms. Electing a set of 20 doesn't sound so bad. It doesn't? With only two parties, and assuming each only bother running 3/4 of a full slate,that requires voters to evaluate 30 candidates. But part of the point of STV is not supporting only two viable parties; realistically, 60+ is more likely. With STV or a similar candidate-centered proportional-ish system, I think 5 member districts are about ideal. Sure, the partisan proportionality is weaker, but it keeps it in the range where there is room for reasonable attention to individual candidates, and if you don't keep that you might as well go to a party list system.