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I think there's two difference that make it less problematic in Australia: - The Australian Senate has significantly less influence on politics than the US Pre
by enjeyw 6y ago
I think there's two difference that make it less problematic in Australia:
- The Australian Senate has significantly less influence on politics than the US President
- Senate seats aren't distributed per-state on a "winner takes all basis" - rather in rough proportion to the number of votes each party gets. This means that smaller states with outsized influence are still going to be electing a mix of representatives from each party. (Compare Tasmania to Victoria here [1] - 10X different in number of votes per seat - similar outcome.
Even with that said, regardless of the material impact - on principle I don't think it's fair that a person in Tasmania has 10X more voting power than a person in Victoria.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2019_Australian_federal_election_(Senate) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2019_Australian...
- nl 6y ago> The Australian Senate has significantly less influence on politics than the US President This is true, but the non-representitive effects on the Australian senate are much higher than in the electoral college. > Senate seats aren't distributed per-state on a "winner takes all basis" - rather in rough proportion to the number of votes each party gets. No argument with this at all - I think most kinds of voting that aren't first-past-the-post (ranked choice etc) are better.
- enjeyw 6y ago> the non-representitive effects on the Australian senate are much higher than in the electoral college. Yeah not gonna lie, I was genuinely shocked to see that Tas holds as much votes as NSW and Vic. >I think most kinds of voting that aren't first-past-the-post Yep, I just wish they were easier to explain! Run-off voting is hard to justify to angry relatives who are incensed that the person who got the second (or third, god forbid!) most 1st pref votes somehow ended up winning.