7 ms·

Districts themselves are the problem. They can be more "fair" than they are currently, but they can't overcome the fact that common interests and voting alignme

Districts themselves are the problem. They can be more "fair" than they are currently, but they can't overcome the fact that common interests and voting alignment are not exclusively geographic. Removing districts, or enlarging them so the borders barely matter, and implementing ranked choice voting and proportional representation is a far, far better solution.

freeone3000 6y ago
How is that working out for the Senate?
- spankalee 6y ago
  Horribly. States borders are one of the worst districting systems imaginable, and the fundamentally undemocratic nature of the Senate makes it a huge, and basically insurmountable, problem.
  - sudosteph 6y ago
    States aren't supposed to be districting systems though - they're meant to be independent governing bodies that work under a set of shared constraints for a shared repbublic. The entire point of the Sentate is to give a representation to the need of the state as its own entity - not as a representation to the people in the state. It wasn't even intended to be an elected body. It may feel unfair, but it's intentional, and it does help ensure overall stability of the nation. The entire philosophy behind the US, right down to the the name of the nation, revolves around the fact that states are the fundamental unit and they have long-term needs which are not always understood or valued by the people. The house of reps is for the the needs of the people, not the Senate. This is why the US is a democratic republic, not a pure democratic state.
    - spankalee 6y ago
      I know it's intentional, but it's unfair and broken. There's no valid reason for a WY resident to have 60x the voting power of a CA resident.
      - totalZero 6y ago
        The reason is that WY would never become part of a federation where its partial sovereignty means nothing. Look up the Great Compromise.
        PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
        WY was created by the United States of America. It wasn't some pre-existing entity that opted to join the union.
        ndiscussion 6y ago
        That seems... like a creative way of putting it. Wyoming may not have existed as a state entity, but the people sure did. And they had their reasons for joining the federation - this is one of them.
        PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
        wikipedia: >The region acquired the name Wyoming by 1865, when Representative James Mitchell Ashley of Ohio introduced a bill to Congress to provide a "temporary government for the territory of Wyoming". > The region's population grew steadily after the Union Pacific Railroad reached the town of Cheyenne in 1867, and the federal government established the Wyoming Territory on July 25, 1868 > Once government-sponsored expeditions to the Yellowstone country began, reports by Colter and Bridger, previously believed to be apocryphal, were found to be true. That led to the creation of Yellowstone National Park, which became the world's first national park in 1872. Nearly all of Yellowstone National Park lies within the far northwestern borders of Wyoming. > In August 1886, the U.S. Army was given administration of the park > Democrats and Republicans alike in Wyoming Territory agreed by the late 1880s that it was time their territory became a state. Statehood was attractive to the territory’s businessmen and politicians, as it offered them much more local control over land and water issues https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/wyoming-statehood https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/wyoming-statehood > Gov. Warren called a special election for Nov. 5, 1889. The Constitution passed overwhelmingly by a vote of 6,272 in favor to 1,903 against. [ this at a time where the total population of the state was around 60,000 ] >Cheyenne businessman and rancher Francis E. Warren, was appointed to a second stint as territorial governor in 1889, replacing Moonlight. Warren strongly supported statehood. [...] (Territorial governors and other top officials were appointed by the president. ------ I don't find your view of Wyoming's history persuasive. The territories were created and managed by the US federal government, with every expectation that they would either become states or simply remain US-controlled territory. They were never independent pseudo-states, and if they remained a territory, they had even less control over their own destiny than if they became a state.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
      The concept of "a state as its own entity - not [ ... ] the people in the state" is so broken as to almost need no remark. What on earth does that even mean? How does a Senator represent "the state as its own entity - not [ ... ] the people in the state" ? Presumably the Senator responds to legislative proposals based on how their perceive them to affect the state, but what can it mean to say "how it affects the state" if that doesn't actually mean "how it affects the people of the state" ? Well, I'll suggest how: it makes sense only if you reinterpret "the state as its own entity - not [ ... ] the people in the state" as meaning "the existing distribution of power and resources within the state". That is, the role of the Senator from state XX is to ensure that the existing power structure of the state remains in place. I cannot imagine any other intepretation of "the state as its own entity" that can be offered. Do you have one? Also, this notion of "the states as the fundamental unit" is a concept that was certainly in place at the time of the DoI. It simply isn't how most Americans experience their citizenship or lives, and arguably it suffered a fatal blow post-civil war. You can argue, if you wish to, that the Constitution still reflects the old arrangement (there are some smart folk who will disagree with you). The de facto situation on the ground, however, is that Americans conceive of themselves living in a single nation with differences in laws and regulations from state to state. [ EDIT: clarify para 3 and drop word bombs ]
      - sudosteph 6y ago
        Perhaps I'm an idealist, but I see nothing broken about my understanding of statehood and it's more than an the existing distribution of power. If we're using the dictionary definition, a state is: "a nation or territory considered as an organized political community under one government." Which is exactly which each US State is. My home state, NC, is a territory which has a distinct culture and community, and it's own governing body. I'm a 10th generation North Carolinian, and I respect that fact that NC existed before I was born - and will continue existing after I'm dead. A state is more than the people who are currently residing in it or it's current power distribution - it's a long-standing culture, governing body and community of people that are inextricably tied to their own geography and their own decisions, past and future. I don't care about preserving the current power structure for future generations - but you can bet I care about preserving NC's culture, environment, and state sovereignty for future generations. Those things are all bigger than any individual, and I certainly still believe they are worth fighting for. NC has the world's first public university and an amazing state university system in general. We have amazing food and BBQ culture, we have 3 different unique dialects of American English, we have our own tradition of folk music, we have our own religious traditions and our own way of going through our lives. Also, FWIW - if you think Americans think of themselves as a single nation with minor variations - you really haven't spent enough time in the South.
    - chx 6y ago
      > States aren't supposed to be districting systems though https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/when-adding-new-states-helped-republicans/598243/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/when-addin... disagrees
  - totalZero 6y ago
    The advantage of state borders is that they are static and precede many years of polity shift and demographic migration. Districts, on the other hand, are drawn to serve the drawer.
    - scarmig 6y ago
      States are also drawn to serve the drawer. Why do we have a North Dakota and a South Dakota? It's not because we had a North Dakota Territory and a South Dakota Territory; it was because they would enter the Union as solidly Republican states, cementing Republican dominance in the Senate and in the Presidency, and admitting two states instead of one doubles the effect. There's no particular reason to treat the current boundaries as holy writ.
      - rayiner 6y ago
        There is a reason, which is that regardless of how and why states were created, they are legally sovereign entities with their own separate governments. A bunch of countries in the world were drawn on a map with boundaries set by the UN or the British. That doesn’t make them any less sovereign entities.
walshemj 6y ago
PR unfortuetly can give the extremes kingmaking powers which can go against the well being of the majority. The German greens forcing Angel Merkle into shutting nuclear energy early and having to use more ghastly lignite coal.
- obelos 6y ago
  It depends on the voting system. Some methods like Proportional Approval Voting are less prone to this kind of gaming in PR/MMD settings: https://electionscience.org/problem-solution/ https://electionscience.org/problem-solution/
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  I think that similar "kingmaking" problems can exist in non-PR systems, but the effect is obscured by how unrepresentative the parties are. For example, instead of a small party forcing one unpopular policy on a coalition, you end up with a single large party that only 25% of the population voted for, running the government without any accountability (because of "safe" gerrymandered seats). Moreover, these large parties usually contain multiple competing wings, and so are effectively coalitions themselves, except their "coalition agreements" are done behind the scenes, and then internal party discipline mechanisms are used to force all the politicians in that party to follow the party line, even if that party line is set by a minority of a minority.
- chalst 6y ago
  The Greens actually had little parliamentary influence then: the CDU could have counted on the support of their coalition partners, the pro-nuclear FDP, at the time. Merkel went with massive anti-nuclear sentiment post-Fukushima to pass legislation with over 80% Bundestag support to phase out nuclear power.
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
What's really needed to fix this is to switch from first the post to range voting: https://rangevoting.org/ https://rangevoting.org/ Then where you draw the district lines doesn't matter nearly as much because no matter where you put them, the candidate that pleases more of the voters in their district has the advantage, which makes it hard to disenfranchise anybody. By removing spoilers from the equation you can have two highly similar candidates running against each other without splitting the vote and both losing, so a candidate that satisfies more of the district defeats one that disregards the concerns of 49% of the voters. It also makes it much harder to gerrymander for the advantage of a particular party because it would make third party candidates and independents viable, and shifting voters around would have hard to predict results on party balance. Moving some Democrats you "didn't need" from a Democratic district to one that used to go to the Republicans might make the first district go to the Libertarians and the second to the Greens.
- ttyprintk 6y ago
  rangevoting.org also provides interesting redistricting boundaries: https://rangevoting.org/SplitLR.html https://rangevoting.org/SplitLR.html Colorado is an interesting case because it accidentally reveals a degenerate solution. Geography and population form boundaries in the denser areas, but not the sparser ones. See the special section on rangevoting.org and the follow-up link: http://bolson.org/dist/ http://bolson.org/dist/
mcguire 6y ago
At-large elections are also a good way to avoid having minorities elected to office. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  That's at-large FPTP elections, which basically guarantee the statewide plurality gets all the seats. At-large STV, guaranteeing that a faction which got floor(1/n+1)+1 votes in a district with n seats (to make balloting manageable, you probably want 3≤n≤7) provide representation to significant minority interests regardless of geographical distribution.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    This may be clear, but: > guaranteeing that a faction which got floor(1/n+1)+1 votes in a district with n seats should be: > guaranteeing that a faction which got floor(1/n+1)+1 votes in a district with n seats gets a seat
- spankalee 6y ago
  That's why you need proportional representation. Various minorities, not just racial, can form blocs that ensure a fair chance of representation.
dane-pgp 6y ago
A voting system which leads to more proportional outcomes is probably the correct solution here, but there is a "hack" which could fix gerrymandering specifically (if implemented) without changing the ballots, the size of districts, or the counting process. The idea is to look, after an election, at the proportion of seats won by each party, and the proportion of votes won (in aggregate) by each party, and ask "Could these two sets of proportions be brought more into line by appointing a different winner in one of the districts?". If a change to some winner could improve the proportionality, then a rule would say that this change to the results should be imposed (on the district where the losing party came closest to winning). Of course, overriding the true result in a district would be hugely controversial, but the idea is that the rule would act as a deterrent and never need to be invoked, because the districts would be drawn in a proportional way to begin with.
andrewla 6y ago
You have to be very cautious with this approach. The intent is not that you are nominating a faceless member of a party to the office, but an individual that you hold personally accountable for their political actions. Removing districts means that you are moving to statewide elections, and then it becomes a statewide office rather than a local office, which is not the intent. The better solution is to make the scarce resource less so; limit districts to 60k people (i.e. pre-Reapportionment Act levels) and expand the house of representatives correspondingly. Then this problem mostly becomes moot. The other problem, of having ~5000 people in the house of representatives, presents additional challenges, naturally, but the house has the power to set its rules so it can put more work on committees (which can have additional specialization levels) and less work on floors.
- scarmig 6y ago
  > The intent is not that you are nominating a faceless member of a party to the office The "intent"? Whose intent? Regardless, that's not how modern elections work. The strongest predictor of vote, by a wide margin, is partisan affiliation. Candidates (on both sides!) who are known for exceptional constituent services are regularly voted out for faceless party hacks. When people do switch their votes, it's a consistent shift up and down the ballot. The days when representatives carefully pursued their local constituents' interest are long gone: consider how Californian Republican representatives voted to hike their own property owning constituents' taxes in 2017. It doesn't make sense to have local elections, because politics isn't local now.
  - andrewla 6y ago
    > The strongest predictor of vote, by a wide margin, is partisan affiliation I mean, I guess I think this is a problem, rather than something that we should encode structurally into the system. I personally would prefer reforms that push back in the local direction. Right now there is a very small number of heterodox senators (Manchin, maybe Sanders, any others?) and a larger number of heterodox reps. To lower those barriers to make it more feasible for people to run for national office as a representative would be a vast improvement.
specialist 6y ago
PR seems like the ultimate end goal. Especially for assemblies. Ideally, eliminating districts. Because of path dependencies (the legal version of technical debt), we gotta start where we're at. So I support any and all reforms that move us in that direction. I've long advocated approval voting for executive and single member districts. But since I support any move away from FPTP, I support my friends working on RCV. (Don't let perfection be the enemy of good enough.) I'm newly curious about multimember districts. I don't really get the math (details) yet. I read that Illinois' state house had multimember districts and that it was more effective and less polarized today. And this reform might be an easier lift. I'm also newly curious about unicameral legislatures. Especially at the state level. Meaning no upper houses aka senates. Or maybe giving the senates different responsibilities. Like the lower house controls the budget and appropriations whereas the upper house does more meta stuff like democratic and governmental reforms. I like the notion of a fast changing lower house and a slower changing upper house. One of the stated intents of the US Senate. But without a more clear division of labor (balance of powers), it hasn't seemed to work out.
- ttyprintk 6y ago
  Maybe less theoretically, the US Senate does fulfill a perspective on food security: cows are better represented than people.

freeone3000 6y ago

How is that working out for the Senate?

spankalee 6y ago
Horribly. States borders are one of the worst districting systems imaginable, and the fundamentally undemocratic nature of the Senate makes it a huge, and basically insurmountable, problem.
- sudosteph 6y ago
  States aren't supposed to be districting systems though - they're meant to be independent governing bodies that work under a set of shared constraints for a shared repbublic. The entire point of the Sentate is to give a representation to the need of the state as its own entity - not as a representation to the people in the state. It wasn't even intended to be an elected body. It may feel unfair, but it's intentional, and it does help ensure overall stability of the nation. The entire philosophy behind the US, right down to the the name of the nation, revolves around the fact that states are the fundamental unit and they have long-term needs which are not always understood or valued by the people. The house of reps is for the the needs of the people, not the Senate. This is why the US is a democratic republic, not a pure democratic state.
  - spankalee 6y ago
    I know it's intentional, but it's unfair and broken. There's no valid reason for a WY resident to have 60x the voting power of a CA resident.
    - totalZero 6y ago
      The reason is that WY would never become part of a federation where its partial sovereignty means nothing. Look up the Great Compromise.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
        WY was created by the United States of America. It wasn't some pre-existing entity that opted to join the union.
        ndiscussion 6y ago
        That seems... like a creative way of putting it. Wyoming may not have existed as a state entity, but the people sure did. And they had their reasons for joining the federation - this is one of them.
        PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
        wikipedia: >The region acquired the name Wyoming by 1865, when Representative James Mitchell Ashley of Ohio introduced a bill to Congress to provide a "temporary government for the territory of Wyoming". > The region's population grew steadily after the Union Pacific Railroad reached the town of Cheyenne in 1867, and the federal government established the Wyoming Territory on July 25, 1868 > Once government-sponsored expeditions to the Yellowstone country began, reports by Colter and Bridger, previously believed to be apocryphal, were found to be true. That led to the creation of Yellowstone National Park, which became the world's first national park in 1872. Nearly all of Yellowstone National Park lies within the far northwestern borders of Wyoming. > In August 1886, the U.S. Army was given administration of the park > Democrats and Republicans alike in Wyoming Territory agreed by the late 1880s that it was time their territory became a state. Statehood was attractive to the territory’s businessmen and politicians, as it offered them much more local control over land and water issues https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/wyoming-statehood https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/wyoming-statehood > Gov. Warren called a special election for Nov. 5, 1889. The Constitution passed overwhelmingly by a vote of 6,272 in favor to 1,903 against. [ this at a time where the total population of the state was around 60,000 ] >Cheyenne businessman and rancher Francis E. Warren, was appointed to a second stint as territorial governor in 1889, replacing Moonlight. Warren strongly supported statehood. [...] (Territorial governors and other top officials were appointed by the president. ------ I don't find your view of Wyoming's history persuasive. The territories were created and managed by the US federal government, with every expectation that they would either become states or simply remain US-controlled territory. They were never independent pseudo-states, and if they remained a territory, they had even less control over their own destiny than if they became a state.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    The concept of "a state as its own entity - not [ ... ] the people in the state" is so broken as to almost need no remark. What on earth does that even mean? How does a Senator represent "the state as its own entity - not [ ... ] the people in the state" ? Presumably the Senator responds to legislative proposals based on how their perceive them to affect the state, but what can it mean to say "how it affects the state" if that doesn't actually mean "how it affects the people of the state" ? Well, I'll suggest how: it makes sense only if you reinterpret "the state as its own entity - not [ ... ] the people in the state" as meaning "the existing distribution of power and resources within the state". That is, the role of the Senator from state XX is to ensure that the existing power structure of the state remains in place. I cannot imagine any other intepretation of "the state as its own entity" that can be offered. Do you have one? Also, this notion of "the states as the fundamental unit" is a concept that was certainly in place at the time of the DoI. It simply isn't how most Americans experience their citizenship or lives, and arguably it suffered a fatal blow post-civil war. You can argue, if you wish to, that the Constitution still reflects the old arrangement (there are some smart folk who will disagree with you). The de facto situation on the ground, however, is that Americans conceive of themselves living in a single nation with differences in laws and regulations from state to state. [ EDIT: clarify para 3 and drop word bombs ]
    - sudosteph 6y ago
      Perhaps I'm an idealist, but I see nothing broken about my understanding of statehood and it's more than an the existing distribution of power. If we're using the dictionary definition, a state is: "a nation or territory considered as an organized political community under one government." Which is exactly which each US State is. My home state, NC, is a territory which has a distinct culture and community, and it's own governing body. I'm a 10th generation North Carolinian, and I respect that fact that NC existed before I was born - and will continue existing after I'm dead. A state is more than the people who are currently residing in it or it's current power distribution - it's a long-standing culture, governing body and community of people that are inextricably tied to their own geography and their own decisions, past and future. I don't care about preserving the current power structure for future generations - but you can bet I care about preserving NC's culture, environment, and state sovereignty for future generations. Those things are all bigger than any individual, and I certainly still believe they are worth fighting for. NC has the world's first public university and an amazing state university system in general. We have amazing food and BBQ culture, we have 3 different unique dialects of American English, we have our own tradition of folk music, we have our own religious traditions and our own way of going through our lives. Also, FWIW - if you think Americans think of themselves as a single nation with minor variations - you really haven't spent enough time in the South.
  - chx 6y ago
    > States aren't supposed to be districting systems though https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/when-adding-new-states-helped-republicans/598243/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/when-addin... disagrees
- totalZero 6y ago
  The advantage of state borders is that they are static and precede many years of polity shift and demographic migration. Districts, on the other hand, are drawn to serve the drawer.
  - scarmig 6y ago
    States are also drawn to serve the drawer. Why do we have a North Dakota and a South Dakota? It's not because we had a North Dakota Territory and a South Dakota Territory; it was because they would enter the Union as solidly Republican states, cementing Republican dominance in the Senate and in the Presidency, and admitting two states instead of one doubles the effect. There's no particular reason to treat the current boundaries as holy writ.
    - rayiner 6y ago
      There is a reason, which is that regardless of how and why states were created, they are legally sovereign entities with their own separate governments. A bunch of countries in the world were drawn on a map with boundaries set by the UN or the British. That doesn’t make them any less sovereign entities.

walshemj 6y ago

PR unfortuetly can give the extremes kingmaking powers which can go against the well being of the majority. The German greens forcing Angel Merkle into shutting nuclear energy early and having to use more ghastly lignite coal.

obelos 6y ago
It depends on the voting system. Some methods like Proportional Approval Voting are less prone to this kind of gaming in PR/MMD settings: https://electionscience.org/problem-solution/ https://electionscience.org/problem-solution/
dane-pgp 6y ago
I think that similar "kingmaking" problems can exist in non-PR systems, but the effect is obscured by how unrepresentative the parties are. For example, instead of a small party forcing one unpopular policy on a coalition, you end up with a single large party that only 25% of the population voted for, running the government without any accountability (because of "safe" gerrymandered seats). Moreover, these large parties usually contain multiple competing wings, and so are effectively coalitions themselves, except their "coalition agreements" are done behind the scenes, and then internal party discipline mechanisms are used to force all the politicians in that party to follow the party line, even if that party line is set by a minority of a minority.
chalst 6y ago
The Greens actually had little parliamentary influence then: the CDU could have counted on the support of their coalition partners, the pro-nuclear FDP, at the time. Merkel went with massive anti-nuclear sentiment post-Fukushima to pass legislation with over 80% Bundestag support to phase out nuclear power.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

What's really needed to fix this is to switch from first the post to range voting: https://rangevoting.org/ https://rangevoting.org/ Then where you draw the district lines doesn't matter nearly as much because no matter where you put them, the candidate that pleases more of the voters in their district has the advantage, which makes it hard to disenfranchise anybody. By removing spoilers from the equation you can have two highly similar candidates running against each other without splitting the vote and both losing, so a candidate that satisfies more of the district defeats one that disregards the concerns of 49% of the voters. It also makes it much harder to gerrymander for the advantage of a particular party because it would make third party candidates and independents viable, and shifting voters around would have hard to predict results on party balance. Moving some Democrats you "didn't need" from a Democratic district to one that used to go to the Republicans might make the first district go to the Libertarians and the second to the Greens.

ttyprintk 6y ago
rangevoting.org also provides interesting redistricting boundaries: https://rangevoting.org/SplitLR.html https://rangevoting.org/SplitLR.html Colorado is an interesting case because it accidentally reveals a degenerate solution. Geography and population form boundaries in the denser areas, but not the sparser ones. See the special section on rangevoting.org and the follow-up link: http://bolson.org/dist/ http://bolson.org/dist/

mcguire 6y ago

At-large elections are also a good way to avoid having minorities elected to office. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965

dragonwriter 6y ago
That's at-large FPTP elections, which basically guarantee the statewide plurality gets all the seats. At-large STV, guaranteeing that a faction which got floor(1/n+1)+1 votes in a district with n seats (to make balloting manageable, you probably want 3≤n≤7) provide representation to significant minority interests regardless of geographical distribution.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  This may be clear, but: > guaranteeing that a faction which got floor(1/n+1)+1 votes in a district with n seats should be: > guaranteeing that a faction which got floor(1/n+1)+1 votes in a district with n seats gets a seat
spankalee 6y ago
That's why you need proportional representation. Various minorities, not just racial, can form blocs that ensure a fair chance of representation.

dane-pgp 6y ago

A voting system which leads to more proportional outcomes is probably the correct solution here, but there is a "hack" which could fix gerrymandering specifically (if implemented) without changing the ballots, the size of districts, or the counting process. The idea is to look, after an election, at the proportion of seats won by each party, and the proportion of votes won (in aggregate) by each party, and ask "Could these two sets of proportions be brought more into line by appointing a different winner in one of the districts?". If a change to some winner could improve the proportionality, then a rule would say that this change to the results should be imposed (on the district where the losing party came closest to winning). Of course, overriding the true result in a district would be hugely controversial, but the idea is that the rule would act as a deterrent and never need to be invoked, because the districts would be drawn in a proportional way to begin with.

andrewla 6y ago

You have to be very cautious with this approach. The intent is not that you are nominating a faceless member of a party to the office, but an individual that you hold personally accountable for their political actions. Removing districts means that you are moving to statewide elections, and then it becomes a statewide office rather than a local office, which is not the intent. The better solution is to make the scarce resource less so; limit districts to 60k people (i.e. pre-Reapportionment Act levels) and expand the house of representatives correspondingly. Then this problem mostly becomes moot. The other problem, of having ~5000 people in the house of representatives, presents additional challenges, naturally, but the house has the power to set its rules so it can put more work on committees (which can have additional specialization levels) and less work on floors.

scarmig 6y ago
> The intent is not that you are nominating a faceless member of a party to the office The "intent"? Whose intent? Regardless, that's not how modern elections work. The strongest predictor of vote, by a wide margin, is partisan affiliation. Candidates (on both sides!) who are known for exceptional constituent services are regularly voted out for faceless party hacks. When people do switch their votes, it's a consistent shift up and down the ballot. The days when representatives carefully pursued their local constituents' interest are long gone: consider how Californian Republican representatives voted to hike their own property owning constituents' taxes in 2017. It doesn't make sense to have local elections, because politics isn't local now.
- andrewla 6y ago
  > The strongest predictor of vote, by a wide margin, is partisan affiliation I mean, I guess I think this is a problem, rather than something that we should encode structurally into the system. I personally would prefer reforms that push back in the local direction. Right now there is a very small number of heterodox senators (Manchin, maybe Sanders, any others?) and a larger number of heterodox reps. To lower those barriers to make it more feasible for people to run for national office as a representative would be a vast improvement.

specialist 6y ago

PR seems like the ultimate end goal. Especially for assemblies. Ideally, eliminating districts. Because of path dependencies (the legal version of technical debt), we gotta start where we're at. So I support any and all reforms that move us in that direction. I've long advocated approval voting for executive and single member districts. But since I support any move away from FPTP, I support my friends working on RCV. (Don't let perfection be the enemy of good enough.) I'm newly curious about multimember districts. I don't really get the math (details) yet. I read that Illinois' state house had multimember districts and that it was more effective and less polarized today. And this reform might be an easier lift. I'm also newly curious about unicameral legislatures. Especially at the state level. Meaning no upper houses aka senates. Or maybe giving the senates different responsibilities. Like the lower house controls the budget and appropriations whereas the upper house does more meta stuff like democratic and governmental reforms. I like the notion of a fast changing lower house and a slower changing upper house. One of the stated intents of the US Senate. But without a more clear division of labor (balance of powers), it hasn't seemed to work out.

ttyprintk 6y ago
Maybe less theoretically, the US Senate does fulfill a perspective on food security: cows are better represented than people.