4 ms·

Also want to add that's still better than the EU's parliament balance between its members; Malta has 81,000 citizens per MEP versus the UK's 925,000 per MEP.

Arnt 7y ago
This is HN, how about presenting an opinion about some preferable alternative? Do you think Malta's number of representatives should be cut to match the UK's, in which case it would have (less than) one member and any minority votes on Malta would be hopelessly lost and ignorable? Do you think the UK (and others) should be boosted to match Malta, in which case the EU parliament would have eleventy thousand representatives? Do you think some other scheme else would be better? We have a similar discrepance in Norway, BTW, where it basically doesn't matter. The least populous region has historically had less that 2% of the population and about 3% of the parliament seats, but the numbers are very small, haven't made a difference, and of course the issue exists precisely because the numbers are so small, so it can never grow to be a big discrepancy.
- tomatotomato37 7y ago
  If you want alternatives than Wyoming rule Malta; 1 MEP per 475,000. So what if they only get a single minority vote, its the rule of the people, not of the arbitrary administrative districts. The parliament building is already big enough for 750 people, so let the UK have 139 MEPs, their population deserves it.
- shaftway 7y ago
  I'm not fully aware of the politics involved in this, so there might be some faux pas in here, but could you balance the large states so that there's an even number of votes and then give the micro-states the tie-breaker? I'd assume that in the case of heavily skewed results the micro-states wouldn't matter either way. I suspect it wouldn't matter as much in the cases where the vote was close. But having an actual tie would give them their influence. I mean, I could see it being insulting. And I could see the argument that most of the time their vote doesn't matter, but most of the time most peoples' votes don't matter anyway.
  - Arnt 7y ago
    I think you're looking at the wrong aspect... consider two cases. First, suppose that in Malta, there is a political party that has majority backing, or near-majority. In this case, the Maltese will look at an EU election reform that gives Malta a single seat, realise that the big party will win every election in the coming decades, and say "WTF is this? Why should we even hold elections if we already know the outcome? This isn't democratic, I'll be no part of this." Second, suppose that in Malta, there is no political party close to majority backing. In this case, the Maltese will look at an EU election reform that gives Malta a single seat, realise that the winning candidate will never have wide popular support, and say "WTF is this? Why should we even hold elections if no winner will have popular backing? This isn't democratic, I'll be no part of this." Sometimes people suggest avoiding the problem by not having such small places. However, Malta does exist. If there were a reform proposing to merge Malta's EU votes with Italy's, the Maltese would look at it and say "WTF? Why should we even hold elections if the representative will always be a party hack from Rome who doesn't even speak our language?" AIUI the common way to solve this is to give really small places about five or six seats, so that winning 20% of the votes is enough. That transforms an existential problem of democracy in the small places into a small skew in the elected body.

Arnt 7y ago

This is HN, how about presenting an opinion about some preferable alternative? Do you think Malta's number of representatives should be cut to match the UK's, in which case it would have (less than) one member and any minority votes on Malta would be hopelessly lost and ignorable? Do you think the UK (and others) should be boosted to match Malta, in which case the EU parliament would have eleventy thousand representatives? Do you think some other scheme else would be better? We have a similar discrepance in Norway, BTW, where it basically doesn't matter. The least populous region has historically had less that 2% of the population and about 3% of the parliament seats, but the numbers are very small, haven't made a difference, and of course the issue exists precisely because the numbers are so small, so it can never grow to be a big discrepancy.

tomatotomato37 7y ago
If you want alternatives than Wyoming rule Malta; 1 MEP per 475,000. So what if they only get a single minority vote, its the rule of the people, not of the arbitrary administrative districts. The parliament building is already big enough for 750 people, so let the UK have 139 MEPs, their population deserves it.
shaftway 7y ago
I'm not fully aware of the politics involved in this, so there might be some faux pas in here, but could you balance the large states so that there's an even number of votes and then give the micro-states the tie-breaker? I'd assume that in the case of heavily skewed results the micro-states wouldn't matter either way. I suspect it wouldn't matter as much in the cases where the vote was close. But having an actual tie would give them their influence. I mean, I could see it being insulting. And I could see the argument that most of the time their vote doesn't matter, but most of the time most peoples' votes don't matter anyway.
- Arnt 7y ago
  I think you're looking at the wrong aspect... consider two cases. First, suppose that in Malta, there is a political party that has majority backing, or near-majority. In this case, the Maltese will look at an EU election reform that gives Malta a single seat, realise that the big party will win every election in the coming decades, and say "WTF is this? Why should we even hold elections if we already know the outcome? This isn't democratic, I'll be no part of this." Second, suppose that in Malta, there is no political party close to majority backing. In this case, the Maltese will look at an EU election reform that gives Malta a single seat, realise that the winning candidate will never have wide popular support, and say "WTF is this? Why should we even hold elections if no winner will have popular backing? This isn't democratic, I'll be no part of this." Sometimes people suggest avoiding the problem by not having such small places. However, Malta does exist. If there were a reform proposing to merge Malta's EU votes with Italy's, the Maltese would look at it and say "WTF? Why should we even hold elections if the representative will always be a party hack from Rome who doesn't even speak our language?" AIUI the common way to solve this is to give really small places about five or six seats, so that winning 20% of the votes is enough. That transforms an existential problem of democracy in the small places into a small skew in the elected body.