7 ms·

Proportional representation is great when the population is fairly homogeneous with similar political issues and goals, and you don't need a union of different

by belorn 3y ago

Proportional representation is great when the population is fairly homogeneous with similar political issues and goals, and you don't need a union of different independent regions and groups. The European Union would not work with proportional representation, and countries like Iceland would struggle with their very large difference between city population and country population. The point of disproportional representation is to reduce the political power imbalance between of high population areas with low population areas. The alternative is to split up the country or union so that each unique area and demographic govern themselves in isolation. Few people want that outcome so a compromise has to be chosen. In iceland as an example, the combined country districts has a majority if they all band together, while the Reykjavík district is by size the absolute single biggest and has well above 50% of Iceland population. Its a compromise that while political power is still very much centered in Reykjavík, they can't blindly ignore the country population.

esteth 3y ago
I'm not sure I understand the "why" here though. Why should you get more of a say because you want something different than the majority? Why should the majority be beholden to the political view of the minority because of the geographic distribution of the minority?
- arrozconcosas 3y ago
  Ask someone from an urban area any basic question about a rural area, and they will be clueless about some simple things. I once had a friend who grew up in Chicago ask me if a cow was a Buffalo because it was brown and he thought cows were into black and white. That’s a silly example but it applies even more so to more meaningful policy decisions that happen is rural areas.
  - School-Cotton 3y ago
    The states in the US aren’t divided on urban/rural lines though. They are divided arbitrarily. Someone from Hoboken, New Jersey has a lot more in common with someone from Brooklyn than the latter does with someone from a farm in rural upstate NY.
    - giantg2 3y ago
      Exactly. In theory this is not a big deal because of the 10th amendment and the states having legislatures that provide some level of urban/rural balance. In practice, it's more complicated.
    - rayiner 3y ago
      Maybe, but someone from a farm in rural upstate New York is also quite different from someone from a farm in Georgia. Because of mass media and news, Americans aren’t necessarily attuned to their cultural differences. Anecdote: my parents moved to the Virginia side of the DC suburbs in 1989. In 2018, they moved 50 miles to the Maryland side, to be near my wife and our kids. I moved around a lot between high school and now so I didn’t notice it. But my dad (he travels all over the developing world for his career) immediately noticed. (And they both hate Maryland, lol.) He can tell the accents are different. The way people make small talk is different. In his view (as a Bangladeshi and then a Virginian) people are less courteous. When he pointed it out, I couldn’t unsee it. Maryland is the southernmost part of the mid-Atlantic (NJ/DE/PA). Virginia is the northernmost part of the south. Even just looking at places 25 miles on either side of DC, the Maryland side has way more Jewish people and Catholics, and way fewer Asians. (Growing up in northern Virginia in the 1990s, I don’t think I ever met a Catholic. Apparently, Virginia is only 8% Catholic compared to 20% for Maryland.)
      - School-Cotton 3y ago
        I have no reason to disbelieve your anecdote, but I think even if true, it’s a bit of a special case. Most Americans’ culture is determined by the metro area they live in (or lack thereof), rather than by state boundaries.
  - techdmn 3y ago
    Having lived in both urban and rural areas, I don't think either has a monopoly on ignorance of the other.
    - giardini 3y ago
      Having lived in both urban and rural areas, I don't think either has a monopoly on ignorance. FTFY
  - brookst 3y ago
    Sure, but the same is true of rural peoples’ understanding of urban areas. Given that no policy can be perfect for everyone, why do we think that votes should be proportional to land area and not number of people affected?
  - dfxm12 3y ago
    It's a silly example, because it doesn't really apply to the situation at all, unless your friend in Chicago happens to be Tammy Duckworth.
  - Vvector 3y ago
    Isn't the converse true as well? Rural people lack basic understanding of urban issues.
- rayiner 3y ago
  Because humans aren’t atomized individuals, and instead belong to communities that themselves have a political identity. Therefore there’s a multi-dimensional optimization space, which involves not just how to make the decision (majority vote, etc.) but where to make the decision. For example, if you had a national majority vote to decide Puerto Rico’s political status (independence or statehood), Puerto Ricans probably wouldn’t be happy about that. There is a reason that virtually every country has some form of multi-level government. And in a multi-level government, non-majoritarian voting at higher levels can help protect the integrity of the multi-level system.
  - lapcat 3y ago
    > For example, if you had a national majority vote to decide Puerto Rico’s political status (independence or statehood), Puerto Ricans probably wouldn’t be happy about that. "Two in three Americans (66%) in a June Gallup survey said they favor admitting Puerto Rico, now a U.S. territory, as a U.S. state. This is consistent with the 59% to 65% range of public support Gallup has recorded for Puerto Rico statehood since 1962." https://news.gallup.com/poll/260744/americans-continue-support-puerto-rico-statehood.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/260744/americans-continue-suppo...
    - foolswisdom 3y ago
      The point is of course not whether the national vote would happen to agree with what the puerto Ricans would want, but the fact the whatever they want (which may or may not be statehood, don't forget a lot of people there are against statehood) would be drowned out by the rest of the country, and despite being ostensibly democratic, that doesn't mean it (nation vote) is the best solution.
      - lapcat 3y ago
        The majority of Puerto Ricans and the majority of Americans both support Puerto Rican statehood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Puerto_Rican_status_referendum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Puerto_Rican_status_refer... The only thing stopping Puerto Rican statehood is the lack of majority rule in the US, and the fact that Republicans are heavily against Puerto Rican statehood. It's a partisan issue: "The majority of Democrats showed support for statehood for both D.C. (61.8%) and Puerto Rico (69.7%)" while among Republicans, only 26.7% supported D.C. statehood and 34.8% supported Puerto Rican statehood.
- netbioserror 3y ago
  Why should the minority be beholden to the political view of the majority because of the geographic distribution of the majority?
  - brookst 3y ago
    Because it’s the majority, which is true regardless of geographic distribution? If 10 people want A, and 3 people want B, how does geographic distribution even enter into the equation? Are you suggesting that the minority should rule because of the majority’s “geographic distribution”.
    - pseg134 3y ago
      And what do you supposed we do if the A that the 10 people want is for the 3 people who want B to pick their cotton for free?
      - brookst 3y ago
        The same thing you do if 3 people want 10 people to pick their cotton for free. I can’t even tell what you’re advocating for. Minority rule? Anarchy? Democracy were you always win? No system is perfect. Much control should be local. In zero sum situations, there isn’t a better answer than majority rule. That can be imperfect or even evil, but so can every other approach.
        CRConrad 3y ago
        > I can’t even tell what you’re advocating for. Minority rule? Anarchy? Democracy were you always win? Slavery, AFAICS.
      - LanceH 3y ago
        You're not understanding. The "correct" people have the majority numbers now, so we should embrace the tyranny of the majority.
    - netbioserror 3y ago
- jtbayly 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - nocoolnametom 3y ago
    Speaking for the US, but as long as Monsanto and Tyson make money selling the food their farms grow in the cities I'm not worried about a John Galt-style "strike" of agriculture. Doesn't make the existing system fair or right (it's honestly disturbing to me how much agribusiness is centralized), but I honestly have no concerns about the rural food going away because the rural population is upset with the urban population.
  - wocka 3y ago
    Do you want roads in the country?
    - nec4b 3y ago
      Do you think people from the cities build roads in the country? Would you rather have your food shipped by air?
      - CRConrad 3y ago
        Do you think only people from the countryside pay the taxes that finance the roads? Or even mainly?
  - lkbm 3y ago
    "Most people in food-growing regions are conservative, so we all must bow down to conservative interests" is a tiresome and ridiculous ultimatum that American politics needs to get past. Obstetricians are strongly left-leaning. Do we need to bow down to them if we want babies? Should they get 5x the vote because otherwise women and babies will all die in droves in childbirth? Most people benefit from and choose to participate in society, and in exchange each person should get the same voice as the rest. We don't need to grant them any special political status above everyone else in order to entice them to do their chosen jobs. If someone decides they won't sell food in a city that voted for Biden or deliver babies for people from a Trump county, great have fun with that. Most people are less mindkilled on politics and will fill in the gap.
- hammock 3y ago
  Curious (not trying to be snarky), where and when did you grow up? Because I am grateful I was taught the answers to these questions in elementary school civics lessons
- belorn 3y ago
  The simple answer is that there is no natural law that dictate that people work together. Getting people to cooperate involve compromises. Taken to an extreme, would you want a global government that had proportional representation? Most of the worlds population is not located in the geographic location of north America. With large international agreements, should EU, US and China get one vote each, or should it be based on populations? To take a other perspective, is populate based voting the best system? In the past we had systems based on wealth or families, with the concept being that fairness is about stakes in the political outcome. Why should anyone get a vote if they don't have a stake in the outcome, and if they do have a stake, shouldn't votes be proportional to that stake? Populate based voting makes more sense in time with military drafts where every individual has an identical stake in the political outcome. Looking at the EU the answer is both more simplistic and more complex. The reason the majority is beholden by the minority is that otherwise it would just be the German empire under a different name. German votes get slightly less power than citizens of other nations, and in return we have a union. It doesn't make Germany powerless, as they have more representatives than any other country, which also make other people upset. Why should Germany get more votes than Luxembourg? Is a system of one country one vote more fair?
  - jabradoodle 3y ago
    > In the past we had systems based on wealth or families, with the concept being that fairness is about stakes in the political outcome. Why should anyone get a vote if they don't have a stake in the outcome I would think those with no/ little wealth have a large stake in the outcome of politics. Exactly what are you advocating for here?
    - belorn 3y ago
      I am not advocating, and if I were to extract some form of advocacy from it it would be that cooperation generally require compromises in order for people to feel that it is worth it. Fairness is based on when everyone involved feel that things are fair enough to participate. What "between the lines" stuff are you trying to find?
- sieabahlpark 3y ago
  [dead]
arnsholt 3y ago
Both the EU and Iceland have proportional electoral systems, with districts having several seats. But the way seats are allocated to the districts in both systems isn't strictly proportional, with less populous districts having fewer electors per seat than the more populous regions.
jcfrei 3y ago
I think you and OP are talking past each other. A purely proportional voting system is not a good idea for the reasons you mentioned. That's why a lot of countries including the US have a bicameral system: One where regions/states are represented proportionally and one where seats are distributed equally. I believe OPs critic is wrt the district based voting system of the House of Representatives. Having a winner takes it all system per district seat is a really bad idea and just a result of a limited understanding of election dynamics at that time and some restrictions how election results could be communicated before the advent of telegraphy: A proportional system forces states to first collect all votes from all districts (a huge task for a state like Texas when only horses and a few rail roads are available for transportation) then collecting and counting the votes at the capital of the state and then sending messengers back to each district to announce results. When each district calculates their winner independently this problem is alleviated. Nowadays it's clear that such a system will inevitably create a two party system. The fact that the president is also elected by an electoral college (which in most states is also a winner takes it all system) further enforces an effective two party system.
- foolswisdom 3y ago
  Just a nit, strictly speaking, the electoral college is just a system where states must delegate the power to vote for president to a group of people (the expectation being that they should make an informed decision to further their interests based on facts on the ground in the capital). It's also a form of indirection: you don't vote for president, the best you can do is appoint people you can trust to make a good decision (similarly, there was originally a layer of indirection for senators, who were appointed by state legislatures, not by state vote). Of course, this is essentially abolished because people wanted more direct control over the government. Regarding district level representation being obviously a bad idea - not necessarily. Since senators represent the state (and wasn't even voted upon directly by the people), representatives are the way local (populist) interests get represented. This only breaks down once when people start having general party allegiance (both at the ballot and in mind share), which I'd argue is itself caused by the fact that we vote directly on appointments which are far beyond our locality (senators but mainly the president), which then spills over to our choices of representatives.
ajross 3y ago
> Its a compromise that while political power is still very much centered in Reykjavík, they can't blindly ignore the country population. I don't understand arguments like this. This logic is symmetric! Can't Reykjavík residents equally claim that their interests are being "blindly ignored" by the rural population who rule them? Isn't there a "power imbalance" at work already? Why does cutting the population based on location make sense to "reduce the political power imbalance" but not by other demographic metrics like gender or age or religion which also correlate with political preference? This argument[1] seems to take as a prior that not just any minority group, but specific minority groups[2] need to be given power disproportionate to its population? If someone tried to deploy this logic in favor of another minority group (Catholics? Men? Trade workers?) you'd agree that would be wrong, right? [1] Which we all know isn't about Iceland at all. [2] Suspiciously, always groups aligned with the person making the argument.
- rayiner 3y ago
  Iceland has multiple levels of government (national and municipal). A wide range of things are handled at the municipal level. Folks in Reykjavík can govern themselves by simple majority vote. What they need more than a majority for us to govern folks outside Reykjavík. Location is special—because it’s special. It’s incorrect to think of it as just another characteristic of individuals. Humans live in their geographical surroundings, and location creates natural boundaries and limits on people. I’m from Bangladesh, which in my parent’s lifetime declared war on Pakistan—a country where people share the same race and religion—so it could govern itself instead of being a far-flung province. In that case Bangladesh actually had a slight majority of the combined population, but it wouldn’t have been any different if it had 1/4 of the population. The point was to make to make the voting more closely associated with the land.
  - ajross 3y ago
    > Iceland has multiple levels of government (national and municipal). A wide range of things are handled at the municipal level. Folks in Reykjavík can govern themselves by simple majority vote. What they need more than a majority for us to govern folks outside Reykjavík. Again: Rural Iceland can govern itself at the municipal level. Folks outside Reykjavík can govern themselves. What they need more than a majority for is to govern folks in Reykjavík. Get the point? It's symmetric! Why is one direction right and one wrong? Why do rural Icelanders[1] matter more in your calculus? If the population inversion flipped and there were fewer Reykjavíkers than outsiders, would you really be making the same argument to reduce the voting power of the rural population? So we get arguments like this: > Location is special—because it’s special. Yeah, pretty much. This is just a losing argument, logically, and you know it. This is like when left wingers try to go to bat for affirmative action as a permanent policy instead of a temporary workaround: it just doesn't work. We all agree that everyone should be equal, right? Right? So one person, one vote is the clear goal here. Trying to construct policy arguments around bad logic is poor governance. [1] And, again, we all know we're not talking about Iceland.
flopriore 3y ago
The European Union does already have proportional representation. In addition, reducing the size of multi-member districts (see Spanish electoral system) and increasing the threshold (Germany) are ways to reduce the number of very small parties in Parliament.
jmyeet 3y ago
This is completely backwards. The most charitable interpretation is you're thinking the entire country would have proportional representation? You can still have proportional representation on a state level. This allows minorities who might be 10% or less of the population to have some representation. Instead we have situations like North Carolina where the GOP won by 1-2% but has a supermajority or in 2018 in Wisconsin where the GOP got 38% of the vote yet got a supermajority. The other issue here, particular to the US, is that small states have disproportionate power. No one really predicted 200+ years ago that one state would have 40 million people and another 500,000 yet both have equivalent power in the Senate. So for the European Union, proportional representation would most sensibly be done on a country-level, not over the entire EU.

by belorn 3y ago

esteth 3y ago

I'm not sure I understand the "why" here though. Why should you get more of a say because you want something different than the majority? Why should the majority be beholden to the political view of the minority because of the geographic distribution of the minority?

arrozconcosas 3y ago
Ask someone from an urban area any basic question about a rural area, and they will be clueless about some simple things. I once had a friend who grew up in Chicago ask me if a cow was a Buffalo because it was brown and he thought cows were into black and white. That’s a silly example but it applies even more so to more meaningful policy decisions that happen is rural areas.
- School-Cotton 3y ago
  The states in the US aren’t divided on urban/rural lines though. They are divided arbitrarily. Someone from Hoboken, New Jersey has a lot more in common with someone from Brooklyn than the latter does with someone from a farm in rural upstate NY.
  - giantg2 3y ago
    Exactly. In theory this is not a big deal because of the 10th amendment and the states having legislatures that provide some level of urban/rural balance. In practice, it's more complicated.
  - rayiner 3y ago
    Maybe, but someone from a farm in rural upstate New York is also quite different from someone from a farm in Georgia. Because of mass media and news, Americans aren’t necessarily attuned to their cultural differences. Anecdote: my parents moved to the Virginia side of the DC suburbs in 1989. In 2018, they moved 50 miles to the Maryland side, to be near my wife and our kids. I moved around a lot between high school and now so I didn’t notice it. But my dad (he travels all over the developing world for his career) immediately noticed. (And they both hate Maryland, lol.) He can tell the accents are different. The way people make small talk is different. In his view (as a Bangladeshi and then a Virginian) people are less courteous. When he pointed it out, I couldn’t unsee it. Maryland is the southernmost part of the mid-Atlantic (NJ/DE/PA). Virginia is the northernmost part of the south. Even just looking at places 25 miles on either side of DC, the Maryland side has way more Jewish people and Catholics, and way fewer Asians. (Growing up in northern Virginia in the 1990s, I don’t think I ever met a Catholic. Apparently, Virginia is only 8% Catholic compared to 20% for Maryland.)
    - School-Cotton 3y ago
      I have no reason to disbelieve your anecdote, but I think even if true, it’s a bit of a special case. Most Americans’ culture is determined by the metro area they live in (or lack thereof), rather than by state boundaries.
- techdmn 3y ago
  Having lived in both urban and rural areas, I don't think either has a monopoly on ignorance of the other.
  - giardini 3y ago
    Having lived in both urban and rural areas, I don't think either has a monopoly on ignorance. FTFY
- brookst 3y ago
  Sure, but the same is true of rural peoples’ understanding of urban areas. Given that no policy can be perfect for everyone, why do we think that votes should be proportional to land area and not number of people affected?
- dfxm12 3y ago
  It's a silly example, because it doesn't really apply to the situation at all, unless your friend in Chicago happens to be Tammy Duckworth.
- Vvector 3y ago
  Isn't the converse true as well? Rural people lack basic understanding of urban issues.
rayiner 3y ago
Because humans aren’t atomized individuals, and instead belong to communities that themselves have a political identity. Therefore there’s a multi-dimensional optimization space, which involves not just how to make the decision (majority vote, etc.) but where to make the decision. For example, if you had a national majority vote to decide Puerto Rico’s political status (independence or statehood), Puerto Ricans probably wouldn’t be happy about that. There is a reason that virtually every country has some form of multi-level government. And in a multi-level government, non-majoritarian voting at higher levels can help protect the integrity of the multi-level system.
- lapcat 3y ago
  > For example, if you had a national majority vote to decide Puerto Rico’s political status (independence or statehood), Puerto Ricans probably wouldn’t be happy about that. "Two in three Americans (66%) in a June Gallup survey said they favor admitting Puerto Rico, now a U.S. territory, as a U.S. state. This is consistent with the 59% to 65% range of public support Gallup has recorded for Puerto Rico statehood since 1962." https://news.gallup.com/poll/260744/americans-continue-support-puerto-rico-statehood.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/260744/americans-continue-suppo...
  - foolswisdom 3y ago
    The point is of course not whether the national vote would happen to agree with what the puerto Ricans would want, but the fact the whatever they want (which may or may not be statehood, don't forget a lot of people there are against statehood) would be drowned out by the rest of the country, and despite being ostensibly democratic, that doesn't mean it (nation vote) is the best solution.
    - lapcat 3y ago
      The majority of Puerto Ricans and the majority of Americans both support Puerto Rican statehood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Puerto_Rican_status_referendum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Puerto_Rican_status_refer... The only thing stopping Puerto Rican statehood is the lack of majority rule in the US, and the fact that Republicans are heavily against Puerto Rican statehood. It's a partisan issue: "The majority of Democrats showed support for statehood for both D.C. (61.8%) and Puerto Rico (69.7%)" while among Republicans, only 26.7% supported D.C. statehood and 34.8% supported Puerto Rican statehood.
netbioserror 3y ago
Why should the minority be beholden to the political view of the majority because of the geographic distribution of the majority?
- brookst 3y ago
  Because it’s the majority, which is true regardless of geographic distribution? If 10 people want A, and 3 people want B, how does geographic distribution even enter into the equation? Are you suggesting that the minority should rule because of the majority’s “geographic distribution”.
  - pseg134 3y ago
    And what do you supposed we do if the A that the 10 people want is for the 3 people who want B to pick their cotton for free?
    - brookst 3y ago
      The same thing you do if 3 people want 10 people to pick their cotton for free. I can’t even tell what you’re advocating for. Minority rule? Anarchy? Democracy were you always win? No system is perfect. Much control should be local. In zero sum situations, there isn’t a better answer than majority rule. That can be imperfect or even evil, but so can every other approach.
      - CRConrad 3y ago
        > I can’t even tell what you’re advocating for. Minority rule? Anarchy? Democracy were you always win? Slavery, AFAICS.
    - LanceH 3y ago
      You're not understanding. The "correct" people have the majority numbers now, so we should embrace the tyranny of the majority.
  - netbioserror 3y ago
jtbayly 3y ago
[flagged]
- nocoolnametom 3y ago
  Speaking for the US, but as long as Monsanto and Tyson make money selling the food their farms grow in the cities I'm not worried about a John Galt-style "strike" of agriculture. Doesn't make the existing system fair or right (it's honestly disturbing to me how much agribusiness is centralized), but I honestly have no concerns about the rural food going away because the rural population is upset with the urban population.
- wocka 3y ago
  Do you want roads in the country?
  - nec4b 3y ago
    Do you think people from the cities build roads in the country? Would you rather have your food shipped by air?
    - CRConrad 3y ago
      Do you think only people from the countryside pay the taxes that finance the roads? Or even mainly?
- lkbm 3y ago
  "Most people in food-growing regions are conservative, so we all must bow down to conservative interests" is a tiresome and ridiculous ultimatum that American politics needs to get past. Obstetricians are strongly left-leaning. Do we need to bow down to them if we want babies? Should they get 5x the vote because otherwise women and babies will all die in droves in childbirth? Most people benefit from and choose to participate in society, and in exchange each person should get the same voice as the rest. We don't need to grant them any special political status above everyone else in order to entice them to do their chosen jobs. If someone decides they won't sell food in a city that voted for Biden or deliver babies for people from a Trump county, great have fun with that. Most people are less mindkilled on politics and will fill in the gap.
hammock 3y ago
Curious (not trying to be snarky), where and when did you grow up? Because I am grateful I was taught the answers to these questions in elementary school civics lessons
belorn 3y ago
The simple answer is that there is no natural law that dictate that people work together. Getting people to cooperate involve compromises. Taken to an extreme, would you want a global government that had proportional representation? Most of the worlds population is not located in the geographic location of north America. With large international agreements, should EU, US and China get one vote each, or should it be based on populations? To take a other perspective, is populate based voting the best system? In the past we had systems based on wealth or families, with the concept being that fairness is about stakes in the political outcome. Why should anyone get a vote if they don't have a stake in the outcome, and if they do have a stake, shouldn't votes be proportional to that stake? Populate based voting makes more sense in time with military drafts where every individual has an identical stake in the political outcome. Looking at the EU the answer is both more simplistic and more complex. The reason the majority is beholden by the minority is that otherwise it would just be the German empire under a different name. German votes get slightly less power than citizens of other nations, and in return we have a union. It doesn't make Germany powerless, as they have more representatives than any other country, which also make other people upset. Why should Germany get more votes than Luxembourg? Is a system of one country one vote more fair?
- jabradoodle 3y ago
  > In the past we had systems based on wealth or families, with the concept being that fairness is about stakes in the political outcome. Why should anyone get a vote if they don't have a stake in the outcome I would think those with no/ little wealth have a large stake in the outcome of politics. Exactly what are you advocating for here?
  - belorn 3y ago
    I am not advocating, and if I were to extract some form of advocacy from it it would be that cooperation generally require compromises in order for people to feel that it is worth it. Fairness is based on when everyone involved feel that things are fair enough to participate. What "between the lines" stuff are you trying to find?
sieabahlpark 3y ago
[dead]

arnsholt 3y ago

Both the EU and Iceland have proportional electoral systems, with districts having several seats. But the way seats are allocated to the districts in both systems isn't strictly proportional, with less populous districts having fewer electors per seat than the more populous regions.

jcfrei 3y ago

I think you and OP are talking past each other. A purely proportional voting system is not a good idea for the reasons you mentioned. That's why a lot of countries including the US have a bicameral system: One where regions/states are represented proportionally and one where seats are distributed equally. I believe OPs critic is wrt the district based voting system of the House of Representatives. Having a winner takes it all system per district seat is a really bad idea and just a result of a limited understanding of election dynamics at that time and some restrictions how election results could be communicated before the advent of telegraphy: A proportional system forces states to first collect all votes from all districts (a huge task for a state like Texas when only horses and a few rail roads are available for transportation) then collecting and counting the votes at the capital of the state and then sending messengers back to each district to announce results. When each district calculates their winner independently this problem is alleviated. Nowadays it's clear that such a system will inevitably create a two party system. The fact that the president is also elected by an electoral college (which in most states is also a winner takes it all system) further enforces an effective two party system.

foolswisdom 3y ago
Just a nit, strictly speaking, the electoral college is just a system where states must delegate the power to vote for president to a group of people (the expectation being that they should make an informed decision to further their interests based on facts on the ground in the capital). It's also a form of indirection: you don't vote for president, the best you can do is appoint people you can trust to make a good decision (similarly, there was originally a layer of indirection for senators, who were appointed by state legislatures, not by state vote). Of course, this is essentially abolished because people wanted more direct control over the government. Regarding district level representation being obviously a bad idea - not necessarily. Since senators represent the state (and wasn't even voted upon directly by the people), representatives are the way local (populist) interests get represented. This only breaks down once when people start having general party allegiance (both at the ballot and in mind share), which I'd argue is itself caused by the fact that we vote directly on appointments which are far beyond our locality (senators but mainly the president), which then spills over to our choices of representatives.

ajross 3y ago

> Its a compromise that while political power is still very much centered in Reykjavík, they can't blindly ignore the country population. I don't understand arguments like this. This logic is symmetric! Can't Reykjavík residents equally claim that their interests are being "blindly ignored" by the rural population who rule them? Isn't there a "power imbalance" at work already? Why does cutting the population based on location make sense to "reduce the political power imbalance" but not by other demographic metrics like gender or age or religion which also correlate with political preference? This argument[1] seems to take as a prior that not just any minority group, but specific minority groups[2] need to be given power disproportionate to its population? If someone tried to deploy this logic in favor of another minority group (Catholics? Men? Trade workers?) you'd agree that would be wrong, right? [1] Which we all know isn't about Iceland at all. [2] Suspiciously, always groups aligned with the person making the argument.

rayiner 3y ago
Iceland has multiple levels of government (national and municipal). A wide range of things are handled at the municipal level. Folks in Reykjavík can govern themselves by simple majority vote. What they need more than a majority for us to govern folks outside Reykjavík. Location is special—because it’s special. It’s incorrect to think of it as just another characteristic of individuals. Humans live in their geographical surroundings, and location creates natural boundaries and limits on people. I’m from Bangladesh, which in my parent’s lifetime declared war on Pakistan—a country where people share the same race and religion—so it could govern itself instead of being a far-flung province. In that case Bangladesh actually had a slight majority of the combined population, but it wouldn’t have been any different if it had 1/4 of the population. The point was to make to make the voting more closely associated with the land.
- ajross 3y ago
  > Iceland has multiple levels of government (national and municipal). A wide range of things are handled at the municipal level. Folks in Reykjavík can govern themselves by simple majority vote. What they need more than a majority for us to govern folks outside Reykjavík. Again: Rural Iceland can govern itself at the municipal level. Folks outside Reykjavík can govern themselves. What they need more than a majority for is to govern folks in Reykjavík. Get the point? It's symmetric! Why is one direction right and one wrong? Why do rural Icelanders[1] matter more in your calculus? If the population inversion flipped and there were fewer Reykjavíkers than outsiders, would you really be making the same argument to reduce the voting power of the rural population? So we get arguments like this: > Location is special—because it’s special. Yeah, pretty much. This is just a losing argument, logically, and you know it. This is like when left wingers try to go to bat for affirmative action as a permanent policy instead of a temporary workaround: it just doesn't work. We all agree that everyone should be equal, right? Right? So one person, one vote is the clear goal here. Trying to construct policy arguments around bad logic is poor governance. [1] And, again, we all know we're not talking about Iceland.

flopriore 3y ago

The European Union does already have proportional representation. In addition, reducing the size of multi-member districts (see Spanish electoral system) and increasing the threshold (Germany) are ways to reduce the number of very small parties in Parliament.

jmyeet 3y ago

This is completely backwards. The most charitable interpretation is you're thinking the entire country would have proportional representation? You can still have proportional representation on a state level. This allows minorities who might be 10% or less of the population to have some representation. Instead we have situations like North Carolina where the GOP won by 1-2% but has a supermajority or in 2018 in Wisconsin where the GOP got 38% of the vote yet got a supermajority. The other issue here, particular to the US, is that small states have disproportionate power. No one really predicted 200+ years ago that one state would have 40 million people and another 500,000 yet both have equivalent power in the Senate. So for the European Union, proportional representation would most sensibly be done on a country-level, not over the entire EU.