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I think this indirectly hints at something much more fundamental: district based plurality does not make sense as an election system anymore. I think an eye op

I think this indirectly hints at something much more fundamental: district based plurality does not make sense as an election system anymore. I think an eye opening example is to consider a hypothetical single state with 10 representatives. This state has a population, perfectly well distributed, of 35% democrat, 30% republican, 20% libertarian, and 15% green. And we draw our districts up with absolutely no bias whatsoever. What 'should' the election results be? I think any logical person would say about 3.5 democrats, 3 republicans, 2 libertarians, and about 1.5 greens. What we get in reality? 10 democrats as they win a plurality in each and every district. 0 gerrymandering, 35% of the support, 100% of the seats. To get our above example to have the logical results we want, you end up having to create really absurd districts that would completely dwarf any sort of gerrymandering of today. So then the question is quite obvious. Why don't we do at large proportional elections instead of district based plurality elections? If a state has 10 representatives then any party is guaranteed at least 1 seat if they get 10% support, 2 for 20%, and so on. In the past when politicians and the people were much closer, I think districts made a lot more sense. You were voting for somebody who you knew or were at worst split by the most minimal degrees of separation. But today this isn't true. The average congressional district is now up to 710,767 people [1] (as of 2010). In 1790, at the time of the first US census, the average district size was 37,082. Times have changed, but our electoral system has not. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_congressional_districts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_congress...

bannus 9y ago
For an improvement on the "1 seat for every 10% of the vote you get" system you mention, take a look at the system Cambridge, MA uses for their at-large city council election [1]. Citizens cast ranked-choice ballots, and through an iterative process each of the 9 councilors are elected if they receive over 10% of the vote. (Excess votes for winners and votes for candidates below a certain threshold are transferred in each iteration.) [1] http://www.fairvote.org/cambridge-massachusetts-elections-a-model-for-america http://www.fairvote.org/cambridge-massachusetts-elections-a-...
- sova 9y ago
  Ranked choice ballots! Yes, that is a winning term.
dsfyu404ed 9y ago
Or just add more districts...
- sova 9y ago
  More districts means more people hanging out in the House of Representatives. Connecticut Compromise made sure there were also 2 people per state in the Senate.
andrewla 9y ago
What I don't like about this analysis is that it enshrines the notion of political parties. It makes individuals into automata that simply vote for whatever candidate is thrown at them. The ideal is that candidates can rest on their own merits, with the party mechanic existing to provide support to candidates who nominally align with the party's interests. People vote for candidates, not parties. Even the reality is that people are not determined by their party affiliation; New York City, for example, has repeatedly elected Republican mayors despite being overwhelmingly Democratic in state and national elections. This has even been used in a derogatory sense, as "Rockefeller Republicans" or "New York Republicans"; people affiliated with the national party but who skew to the preferences of voters in their region. In your hypothetical state, once you created the districts, then the competition inside that district is between candidates who try to align themselves with that region; people who, for example, can be a "green-republican" to draw voters from both blocks, or just a person who speaks to the needs of voters in that district, regardless of party affiliation. Using some sort of state-wide rank-preferential or approval system means that we remove a lot of the strategizing on the part of voters, which is a positive, but the strategizing on the part of political parties and individuals seeking office become much more complex, and not in a way that serves to present candidates that appeal to issues confronted by groups of people regardless of their party affiliation. Geography is just a heuristic for this, but not the worst one you could think of.
- indubitable 9y ago
  I think something you're fundamentally getting at is that in today's system people's views are not necessarily representative of their party's views. Ron Paul is not really what you'd call a republican, but he certainly ran as one. The reason is that in our current system, small parties cannot exist - or at least they can't get any representation in congress, but is there really any difference? So if you want to actually get a seat you put an R or a D by your name, or you run in a state like Maine or Vermont - both with total populations far smaller than many cities. The reason for this is because of our electoral system. Imagine we have 4 parties each with about a quarter of the support. One of those parties is going to get 100% of the representation, and the rest are going to get 0. This incentivizes these parties to begin to merge. Two parties go 'Hey I know we have nothing in common, but if we work together we can guarantee our voices are at least heard in congress.' And the other two also see this going on and does the exact same thing. Next thing you know it you have things like libertarians and evangelical Christians both being supposedly represented by the same party, and you get a congressional approval rating in the teens. Proportional representation changes this. Fractional support being more than sufficient to get seats in congress means people can break into parties that actually fundamentally represent their views - instead of being forced to clump up into super-parties. I think this effect would be particularly emphasized in our country. We have a phenomenally good system of checks and balances ensuring that even 'the little guy' in congress can have a meaningful effect. The problem is our electoral system all but precludes there being any little guys in congress.
crazygringo 9y ago
Correct. This was recognized a long time ago, starting in the late 1700's and gaining popularity in the 1800's, but it's never had much mindshare in the US, unfortunately. The solution is proportional representation [1], something much more common in Europe. Taken to its most extreme, it treats the entire country as a single district -- Israel is an example. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation#Hi...
KGIII 9y ago
Heh...I thought I'd seen that comment before. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15418907 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15418907
heisenzombie 9y ago
The way we tackle this problem in New Zealand is with the Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) voting system. Under MMP, you have two votes: 1) The delegate you want to represent your district (we call it an electorate) 2) The party you want to support. In addition there are two changes: 1) Each of the parties publishes a ranked list of their candidates. This is imaginatively called their "list". 2) There are more seats in the house (we call it parliament) than there are districts (electorates). We have 71 districts but nominally 120 seats in parliament. Once everyone has cast their two votes (quick brag: We had 92.4% of our population enrolled to vote, and of those enrolled, 79.8% voted -- which I think is pretty good going). The votes are counted like so: 1) The "electorate vote" determines the person who represents your district, in a simple most-votes-wins way. Anyone who wins a district is guaranteed a seat in the house (parliament). 2) The "party vote" is counted up nationwide, and each party gets that percentage of the total seats in parliament. If they won more seats with the party vote than the electorate (almost always), their seats are "topped up" from their list until they have the correct number. (There are some subtleties: The exact way we assign seats is http://www.elections.org.nz/voting-system/mmp-voting-system/sainte-lague-allocation-formula http://www.elections.org.nz/voting-system/mmp-voting-system/... ) This means that each electorate/district gets to choose its representative directly, so local representation is retained. At the same time, the house/parliament reflects the global percentage of votes, so smaller parties can still get proportional representation in government.
T-hawk 9y ago
> Why don't we do at large proportional elections instead of district based plurality elections? Because the seats going to the smaller parties would come at the expense of the parties currently in power, who are thus strongly disincentivized against changing the rules towards proportionality.

bannus 9y ago

For an improvement on the "1 seat for every 10% of the vote you get" system you mention, take a look at the system Cambridge, MA uses for their at-large city council election [1]. Citizens cast ranked-choice ballots, and through an iterative process each of the 9 councilors are elected if they receive over 10% of the vote. (Excess votes for winners and votes for candidates below a certain threshold are transferred in each iteration.) [1] http://www.fairvote.org/cambridge-massachusetts-elections-a-model-for-america http://www.fairvote.org/cambridge-massachusetts-elections-a-...

sova 9y ago
Ranked choice ballots! Yes, that is a winning term.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago

Or just add more districts...

sova 9y ago
More districts means more people hanging out in the House of Representatives. Connecticut Compromise made sure there were also 2 people per state in the Senate.

andrewla 9y ago

What I don't like about this analysis is that it enshrines the notion of political parties. It makes individuals into automata that simply vote for whatever candidate is thrown at them. The ideal is that candidates can rest on their own merits, with the party mechanic existing to provide support to candidates who nominally align with the party's interests. People vote for candidates, not parties. Even the reality is that people are not determined by their party affiliation; New York City, for example, has repeatedly elected Republican mayors despite being overwhelmingly Democratic in state and national elections. This has even been used in a derogatory sense, as "Rockefeller Republicans" or "New York Republicans"; people affiliated with the national party but who skew to the preferences of voters in their region. In your hypothetical state, once you created the districts, then the competition inside that district is between candidates who try to align themselves with that region; people who, for example, can be a "green-republican" to draw voters from both blocks, or just a person who speaks to the needs of voters in that district, regardless of party affiliation. Using some sort of state-wide rank-preferential or approval system means that we remove a lot of the strategizing on the part of voters, which is a positive, but the strategizing on the part of political parties and individuals seeking office become much more complex, and not in a way that serves to present candidates that appeal to issues confronted by groups of people regardless of their party affiliation. Geography is just a heuristic for this, but not the worst one you could think of.

indubitable 9y ago
I think something you're fundamentally getting at is that in today's system people's views are not necessarily representative of their party's views. Ron Paul is not really what you'd call a republican, but he certainly ran as one. The reason is that in our current system, small parties cannot exist - or at least they can't get any representation in congress, but is there really any difference? So if you want to actually get a seat you put an R or a D by your name, or you run in a state like Maine or Vermont - both with total populations far smaller than many cities. The reason for this is because of our electoral system. Imagine we have 4 parties each with about a quarter of the support. One of those parties is going to get 100% of the representation, and the rest are going to get 0. This incentivizes these parties to begin to merge. Two parties go 'Hey I know we have nothing in common, but if we work together we can guarantee our voices are at least heard in congress.' And the other two also see this going on and does the exact same thing. Next thing you know it you have things like libertarians and evangelical Christians both being supposedly represented by the same party, and you get a congressional approval rating in the teens. Proportional representation changes this. Fractional support being more than sufficient to get seats in congress means people can break into parties that actually fundamentally represent their views - instead of being forced to clump up into super-parties. I think this effect would be particularly emphasized in our country. We have a phenomenally good system of checks and balances ensuring that even 'the little guy' in congress can have a meaningful effect. The problem is our electoral system all but precludes there being any little guys in congress.

crazygringo 9y ago

Correct. This was recognized a long time ago, starting in the late 1700's and gaining popularity in the 1800's, but it's never had much mindshare in the US, unfortunately. The solution is proportional representation [1], something much more common in Europe. Taken to its most extreme, it treats the entire country as a single district -- Israel is an example. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation#Hi...

KGIII 9y ago

Heh...I thought I'd seen that comment before. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15418907 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15418907

heisenzombie 9y ago

The way we tackle this problem in New Zealand is with the Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) voting system. Under MMP, you have two votes: 1) The delegate you want to represent your district (we call it an electorate) 2) The party you want to support. In addition there are two changes: 1) Each of the parties publishes a ranked list of their candidates. This is imaginatively called their "list". 2) There are more seats in the house (we call it parliament) than there are districts (electorates). We have 71 districts but nominally 120 seats in parliament. Once everyone has cast their two votes (quick brag: We had 92.4% of our population enrolled to vote, and of those enrolled, 79.8% voted -- which I think is pretty good going). The votes are counted like so: 1) The "electorate vote" determines the person who represents your district, in a simple most-votes-wins way. Anyone who wins a district is guaranteed a seat in the house (parliament). 2) The "party vote" is counted up nationwide, and each party gets that percentage of the total seats in parliament. If they won more seats with the party vote than the electorate (almost always), their seats are "topped up" from their list until they have the correct number. (There are some subtleties: The exact way we assign seats is http://www.elections.org.nz/voting-system/mmp-voting-system/sainte-lague-allocation-formula http://www.elections.org.nz/voting-system/mmp-voting-system/... ) This means that each electorate/district gets to choose its representative directly, so local representation is retained. At the same time, the house/parliament reflects the global percentage of votes, so smaller parties can still get proportional representation in government.

T-hawk 9y ago

> Why don't we do at large proportional elections instead of district based plurality elections? Because the seats going to the smaller parties would come at the expense of the parties currently in power, who are thus strongly disincentivized against changing the rules towards proportionality.