New electoral system for the United States [Archive]

Kotze

6th April 2011, 18:10

Tsk, tsk, Dimentio. Of course that would be better, but pfff, making it less representative is the real intellectual challenge :P

Where's the elegance in what's proposed here, the simplicity? Going to vote twice just to elect 1 person is annoying. Saying Gerrymandering is made illegal doesn't tell me anything about how to get rid of it, are algorithms to be used for district boundaries or juries? Another way to curb distortions is to have multi-winner districts. MMP is hardly elegant, because you need a rule to deal with divergence of a party's list-votes and candidate-votes.

Voting and counting is easier with a simplified STV system where each candidate publishes a ranking, each voter marks 1 candidate, these direct votes are counted by hand, each candidate's ranking gets multiplied by marks received, and these multiplied rankings are used to determine the seat distribution, this step is done by computer. (The usual caveat against voting computers being a black box doesn't apply here because the data is public.) This system is less rigid than open list in the sense that the individual candidate doesn't need to be part of any specific group to rank other candididates in this or that way.

Demogorgon

6th April 2011, 18:50

Can you explain this?
He means that in the House of Representatives each state would return its members at large from lists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party-list_proportional_representation) and the Senate would have states represented a bit more proportionately with states being divided up in single member districts using the French style two round system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-round_system).

I back his suggestions in so far as they go, but there are a number of weaknesses in it all but one of which involve his proposals for the Senate. In the first instance I object to its existence (and as an aside the American constitution contains an odd clause which makes it considerably easier to abolish the Senate rather than reform it, so purely on practical terms we might simply say get rid of it) and even if it did continue to exist its powers should be curtailed so it was just an advisory body (like the Spanish Senate to pick a random example).

As for the other weakness, the one to ten range still isn't entirely satisfactory because the largest to smallest state ratio is about seventy so the smallest state would still have seven times the representation per capita as the largest state. I recognise he is attempting a compromise between excessive malapportionment and extra representation for small states (a fairly common compromise as it happens, Germany for instance uses the compromise of representation in the upper house being proportionate to the square route of the states population), however it is still necessary to ask why there should be any over representation at all.

The other problem is of course the retention of single member districts for the upper house-not just because they are undemocratic in of themselves but because the use of such an electoral system will all but guarantee different majorities in the two chambers and hence deadlock and built in conservatism.

The only non Senate related weakness is a relatively minor one in that pure lists may not suit the American political culture so MMP should really be used. Also-and this isn't a weakness just an alternative proposal-I am personally of the opinion that the proportionality should ultimately be determined nationally. This could of course easily be done with pure lists, just use the Swedish system of having 10-15% of seats be adjustment seats, but as noted I prefer the MMP system proposed by Dahl where all list seats would come from a single nation-wide list.

Also we should probably mention the Presidency. I doubt anyone here would entertain the retention of the Electoral College but alternatives are less obvious. Robert Dahl is pretty interesting here because he doesn't like presidential Government at all but says America is almost certainly stuck with it so the Electoral College should be abolished (he also says if the amendment can't be made to elect it by PR in the meantime) and the President elected on a two round basis. However he argues-convincingly I think-that having the separation of powers is simply causing deadlock and it would be for the best if the President was simply elected by Congress so that he or she could Govern with a majority or coalition behind him or her. Effectively a Parliamentary system.

Dimentio

6th April 2011, 18:51

Instead of gerrymandering, just have permanent districts drawn up by a non-political committee and stick with them, like in the UK.

Demogorgon

6th April 2011, 18:59

Instead of gerrymandering, just have permanent districts drawn up by a non-political committee and stick with them, like in the UK.
That's not how it works here. They change regularly, particularly as the number of MPs keeps getting changed. The boundaries are drawn on a non-partisan basis but severe biases still creep in because it is impossible not to in FPTP.

You can only really have fixed boundaries with lists where you can just vary the number of seats they return, though funnily enough in the Scottish Parliament elections next month we are going to be using new redrawn boundaries for those too. As an aside we are also getting a new ballot design yet again. I don't think we've had one last more than one election. :lol:

DrStrangelove

6th April 2011, 18:59

Instead of gerrymandering, just have permanent districts drawn up by a non-political committee and stick with them, like in the UK.
Gerrymandering is the most useless political action I can think of. "Now that you're in power, you know have the jurisdiction to redraw political lines to benefit your party interest. This power is completely necessary and doesn't rig the elections at all.":rolleyes:

graymouser

6th April 2011, 19:23

Instead of gerrymandering, just have permanent districts drawn up by a non-political committee and stick with them, like in the UK.
That would never, ever work. The problem is, populations move and the whole reason why gerrymandering happens is that the location of the population changes over the years. And states have the right to draw districts, fundamentally. You'd have to amend the Constitution to take it away.

Overall, leaving aside the "deck chairs on the Titanic" aspect of the whole thing for a revolutionary, I don't think your proposal would go nearly far enough. For instance, the District of Columbia should really be a state, it has a larger population than Wyoming and is currently unrepresented. And Puerto Rico should be an independent nation with development aid and reparations for a century of colonialism from the US; the same for Guam.

Gorilla is right about the House and the Senate - the former should be abolished, the latter expanded. The Senate is undemocratic in many ways and if we just held a constitutional convention it could be wiped away altogether.

From my perspective, the biggest problem with your plan is the wild unevenness of state ballot access laws. For instance, in New Jersey it would take 1,500 signatures to get on the ballot; everybody who runs shows up on the ticket here. Across the river in Pennsylvania it will take 67,000 signatures to run for President next year - an insurmountable hurdle without a full time staff, considering on average you need about 35-50% more signatures to avoid getting disqualified.

Unless you made ballot access a right for political parties, the party list concept would be virtually meaningless - you'd just have a slightly better method of picking Democrats and Republicans.

All told, I think this would take more time and energy than organizing the revolution.

Dimentio

6th April 2011, 19:28

In Sweden, all parties are making their own ballots. You just take the ballot with the party name and stick it into an envelope and stick it into a box. You need 1500 signatures to protect your party "brand" and get the municipalities to put your ballots up (though all parties who get over 1,5% of the votes are getting funded by the state to cover their expenditures).

Baseball

6th April 2011, 19:31

Instead of gerrymandering, just have permanent districts drawn up by a non-political committee and stick with them, like in the UK.

Ahhh! You endorse "rotten boroughs"

Baseball

6th April 2011, 19:34

[
QUOTE=Dimentio;2070516]House of Representatives - Candidates are elected on a proportional basis state-wise from party lists.

How does placing more power in the hands of a political party, make things more representative?

Demogorgon

6th April 2011, 20:00

[

How does placing more power in the hands of a political party, make things more representative?
Why does a party list have to place power in the hands of political parties? They can be open lists, or be chosen by primaries or a whole variety of other possibilities.

Besides first past the post is just a closed list in a single member constituency, it can (and usually does) put just as much and usually more powe rinto party hands.

Incidentally America having more cohesive and smaller partis would do it a lot of good.

Baseball

6th April 2011, 20:20

[QUOTE=Demogorgon;2070695]Why does a party list have to place power in the hands of political parties? They can be open lists, or be chosen by primaries or a whole variety of other possibilities.

How does a "party list" make things more representative?

RATM-Eubie

6th April 2011, 20:38

I think we need to get rid of the elctorial college
Get campaign finance reform like already stated
Then i think it would be a lot better.

Dimentio

6th April 2011, 20:48

[QUOTE]

How does a "party list" make things more representative?

It doesn't. Proportional representation is doing that.

Agent Ducky

6th April 2011, 20:50

I think we need to get rid of the elctorial college
Get campaign finance reform like already stated
Then i think it would be a lot better.
The reasoning behind the electoral college never made sense to me.

Demogorgon

6th April 2011, 20:54

How does a "party list" make things more representative?
Because all parties are getting seats based upon the number of votes they get. It is not a very complex concept.

GPDP

6th April 2011, 20:57

I think more than anything, party lists make elections a hell of a lot simpler than voting for individual candidates. Having a system of multiple programmatic parties would mean that instead of having to research each and every individual candidate's positions, all you have to do is research the party's program, and no matter where you are in the country, the program is the same.

Exceptions may be made for local elections, but even then, maybe it'd be better for candidates to simply create their own party program and have the party stay at the local level.

Sure, people then like to point out that this would lead to tons of parties vis a vis Weimar Germany, but then again, isn't that what coalition governments are for? And I guarantee you'd still have less parties than effectively independent politicians like we do now in the States.

RATM-Eubie

7th April 2011, 05:28

The reasoning behind the electoral college never made sense to me.

Because apparently and i quote many professors and other "knowledgeable people" that the people are "two dumb to elect the leader themselves"....

Democracy?
i think not

GPDP

7th April 2011, 09:25

Because apparently and i quote many professors and other "knowledgeable people" that the people are "two dumb to elect the leader themselves"....

Democracy?
i think not

The more common and less outright reactionary argument for the EC that I hear is that it forces candidates to campaign in many states rather than just go to the places with the biggest population centers. It still doesn't help the fact that it's still undemocratic.

Demogorgon

7th April 2011, 11:27

The more common and less outright reactionary argument for the EC that I hear is that it forces candidates to campaign in many states rather than just go to the places with the biggest population centers. It still doesn't help the fact that it's still undemocratic.
The trouble is that it doesn't do that. Most rural states aren;t swing states after all.

The reason the electoral college exists has nothing to do with the rationale for keeping it today. At the constitutional convention they could not agree how to elect the President. Proposals for direct election were rejected outright and they seemed to be edging towards election by Congress but then the suggestion was to use an Electoral College elected by State legislatures. For the sake of breaking deadlock that was more or less adopted except the part that it had to be elected by State legislatures was dropped and each state could choose its electors however they wished. At the time however it was suspected that most States would elect them through their legislatures rather than popular vote and that is indeed what happened for the first few elections.

The electoral college being elected by popular vote wasn't really envisaged beyond a few states using it so the phenomenon of the popular vote being filtered through a bizarre state by state contest was a complete accident with literally no rationale behind it.

graymouser

7th April 2011, 11:52

We should remember, despite the absolute reverence there is for the US constitution today, that the people who wrote it were basically punting on very important national questions - particularly the relationship between the states and slavery - that would simmer under the inadequate foundations they laid until it erupted in civil war. The correct thing to do, really, would have been to open a new constitutional convention in 1865 and rationalize the whole system now that the federal government had shown, through force of arms, that it was the real power in the country. However, there were issues that they didn't want to solve at that point, so what happened instead was a de facto increase of the federal government's power while leaving intact the institutions of state power.

This was really a tragedy, as the former Confederate states used this to put themselves in a position where their Black populations would count as individuals to be "represented" but the white citizens were the only ones allowed to vote. (This was actually worse than under slavery; each slave only counted as three fifths of a citizen to be voted against.) For the period 1877-1966, begun by the "Compromise of '76" and ended with the 1965 Voting Rights Act, there was a very real sense in which every successive United States government was illegitimate and undemocratic by any reasonable standard.

It is totally irrational to have an Electoral College - although at least there the District of Columbia has a vote. There are so many better systems that don't produce bizarre outcomes, whether we're talking about the prime ministerial system where the head of government is always the leader of the legislature, or the runoff system where you have all the candidates in a race and if there is no clear majority the two highest vote-getters face off, or even ranked voting systems like instant runoff voting. I think part of it is that in a case where the country votes the "wrong" way (say, the democratic election of a socialist), the elites have at least a chance to prevent that vote from being recognized.

Kotze

7th April 2011, 13:52

There are so many better systems that don't produce bizarre outcomes, whether we're talking about the prime ministerial system where the head of government is always the leader of the legislature, or the runoff system where you have all the candidates in a race and if there is no clear majority the two highest vote-getters face off, or even ranked voting systems like instant runoff voting.Using IRV also makes it more likely that voting computers are used, which makes elections less transparent. I don't think it's a good idea to argue here with undefined terms like bizarre. The runoff systems fail mono-raise (meaning examples can be constructed where improving a candidate's position on some ballots can change that candidate from a winner to a loser), and reversal symmetry (inverting input can return the same winner, even if the inverse isn't identical to the original), which some people call bizarre. If you care a lot about specific criteria, better state them explicitly.

Gorilla

7th April 2011, 17:13

Demogorgon

7th April 2011, 18:25

Just to note: all suggestions so far presume suffrage that is universal, direct and geographic in nature (either district- or nation-wide).

We have not so far discussed limiting suffrage to workers only for some or all bodies of government, or a delegative structure of "indirect" elections where neighborhood or factory councils elect regional ones which elect national ones, or representation based on e.g. industry rather than geography. Historically I think most socialist plans of government have included one or more of these features.
Well the latter system for all its surface appeal is not a good one because a delegate model as well as actually making higher levels of government more remote makes individual votes less valuable. There was a good article showing that a while back, but I don't have a link.

As for limiting suffrage to the working class. Apart from anything else that opens the can of worms as to how exactly to define the working class. Besides denial of the franchise will always harm the liberty of those to whom it is denied and while certain members here will just love the notion of inflicting misery on those they wish to define as "class enemies", history shows that does not lead to happy endings. Also if you are defining "working class" in too narrow a manner, people who most need the franchise (those who cannot work for a variety of reasons) will have it denied.

All elections should be universal and direct. Plenty of other systems have been tried throughout history and that one has the best track record.

apawllo

7th April 2011, 21:35

Using IRV also makes it more likely that voting computers are used, which makes elections less transparent. I don't think it's a good idea to argue here with undefined terms like bizarre. The runoff systems fail mono-raise (meaning examples can be constructed where improving a candidate's position on some ballots can change that candidate from a winner to a loser), and reversal symmetry (inverting input can return the same winner, even if the inverse isn't identical to the original), which some people call bizarre. If you care a lot about specific criteria, better state them explicitly.

The fact that computers and progression of technology in general exist on such a wide scale makes it more likely that voting computers will be used. Stopping such things is about as likely as moving back to landlines at this point, regardless of what voting method is used.

Also, I recall people arguing that Al Gore lost FL in 2000 due to his position on the ballot there which wasn't consistent with regulations or whatever. The third party got an unusually large amount of votes because it was listed second on the ballot. So, that's probably the case with most voting systems.

Kotze

7th April 2011, 23:08

The fact that computers and progression of technology in general exist on such a wide scale makes it more likely that voting computers will be used. Stopping such things is about as likely as moving back to landlines at this point, regardless of what voting method is used.Computers and machines are used to do stuff cheaper. It's an empirical question whether doing something by hand instead is more expensive. Oddly enough, counting votes is a type of calculation that may be cheaper if done by hand. It's like this: What's more efficient, copying text from a page with a pen or using a copying machine? Seems like a no-brainer at first. But what if you copied only one page once a year? Voting computers are not in use for most days of the year, that's why buying them can be a waste of money. What kind of voting method is used can be pivotal in the decision whether to count by hand or not, since some methods are hard or impossible to do by hand in certain situations, because the complexity of the count doesn't always just rise linear with the number of candidates and/or seats.

Another reason not to buy voting computers is that they are a black box, something I already addressed in my first post in this thread. Their usage for voting is completely different from using computers for banking or whatever because of the secrecy of the vote. So if you want to use them, but don't want to make massive fraud much easier than with paper, how do you do that without dropping the secrecy of the vote?
Also, I recall people arguing that Al Gore lost FL in 2000 due to his position on the ballot there which wasn't consistent with regulations or whatever. The third party got an unusually large amount of votes because it was listed second on the ballot.That doesn't quite capture how insidious the design of the butterfly ballot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Butterfly_large.jpg) was. That wasn't an accident.

You are right that there is a known bias how people answer questions when they aren't sure. When you ask them verbally to make a decision between two things and they aren't very sure, there is some bias that they pick the option you mention later. When it comes to filling out forms and some people aren't sure how to choose, they have a tendency to pick the earlier options. If you don't want to discriminate against people whose name starts with Z, it's better to assign each candidate a number via lottery instead of using an alphabetical ordering. But this fairness for candidates makes filling out a ranked ballot with many candidates even harder than it already is. That's another reason why I proposed a simplified method in my first post in this thread.

Baseball

8th April 2011, 22:43

It is totally irrational to have an Electoral College - although at least there the District of Columbia has a vote. There are so many better systems that don't produce bizarre outcomes, whether we're talking about the prime ministerial system where the head of government is always the leader of the legislature, or the runoff system where you have all the candidates in a race and if there is no clear majority the two highest vote-getters face off, or even ranked voting systems like instant runoff voting. I think part of it is that in a case where the country votes the "wrong" way (say, the democratic election of a socialist), the elites have at least a chance to prevent that vote from being recognized.

In the USA, only three times has the president not had the majority of the popular vote. How many countries in Europe can say their head of government (or their party, which is more exact) received 50%+1 of the vote? Coalition governments are the rule, rather than the exception.
How democratic is that (particularly when most of the electorate will not have the opportunity to vote for the prospective head of government)?

Kotze

8th April 2011, 23:13

Coalition governments are the rule, rather than the exception. How democratic is thatIf you mean democratic in the sense of majoritarian, I'd say neither Europe nor the US have particularly democratic voting methods. Claiming coalitions are evidence for a voting system failing to respect majorities strikes me as absurd. (If you want an explanation rep me first :P)

RGacky3

8th April 2011, 23:45

How democratic is that (particularly when most of the electorate will not have the opportunity to vote for the prospective head of government)?

Its actually way more democratic because people's ACTUAL opinions are being represented, rather than just getting to choose from one of 2 corporatist parties that won't listen to shit you say anyway unless you are the head of a major corporation or have a couple billion net worth.

Hell, the USSR had a 50% + 1 system too, just add one pro-life party and you have the US.

Baseball

9th April 2011, 00:58

Its actually way more democratic because people's ACTUAL opinions are being represented, rather than just getting to choose from one of 2 corporatist parties that won't listen to shit you say anyway unless you are the head of a major corporation or have a couple billion net worth.

Hell, the USSR had a 50% + 1 system too, just add one pro-life party and you have the US.

Democracy is not about representing an opinion, but about how government rules. Heck! In the USA system at least one can actually a result of a vote. Where is the democracy in a coalition, where the government is formed a a result of backroom deals and the head of government is somebody very people had the opportunity to vote for or against?

Demogorgon

9th April 2011, 08:58

Democracy is not about representing an opinion, but about how government rules. Heck! In the USA system at least one can actually a result of a vote. Where is the democracy in a coalition, where the government is formed a a result of backroom deals and the head of government is somebody very people had the opportunity to vote for or against?
Coalitions are rarely formed as a result of "backroom deals". Normally parties say before the election which parties they will go into coalition with and a vote for any party in a proposed coalition is a vote for that coalition.

Compare that with America where negotiations between the White House and Congress and between the two branches of Congress means that everything is a constant coalition negotiation with more "backroom deals" than just about anywhere.

Incidentally I fail to see how anything you said amounts to a defence of the electoral college.

RGacky3

9th April 2011, 08:59

Bud Struggle

9th April 2011, 17:52

Democracy means people rule, a functioning democracy has public policy that is close to public opinion, aka not the USA.

Pubilc policy is represented by voter opinion, not magazine polls--or even scientific polls.

Dimentio

9th April 2011, 19:05

Pubilc policy is represented by voter opinion, not magazine polls--or even scientific polls.

Public policy is actually more influenced by:

Powerful lobby organisations - Political ambitions - the framework of the economic and cultural systems - the people.

Arilou Lalee'lay

9th April 2011, 20:07

How about a delegative democracy + Schulze method for issues?

From Wikipedia:
The prototypical delegative democracy has been aptly summarized by Bryan Ford in his paper, Delegative Democracy, as containing the following principles:

1. Choice of Role: Each member can choose to take either a passive role as an individual or an active role as a delegate, differentiating this from representative forms in which only specified representatives are allowed. Delegates have further choices as to how active they are and in what areas.
2. Low Barrier to Participation: The difficulty and cost of becoming a delegate is small, and in particular does not require campaigning or winning a competitive election.
3. Delegated Authority: Delegates exercise power in organizational processes on behalf of themselves and those individuals who select them as their delegate. Different delegates, therefore, can exercise varying levels of decision power.
4. Privacy of the Individual: To avoid social pressures or coercion, all votes made by individuals are private, both from other individuals and from delegates.
5. Accountability of the delegates: To ensure the accountability of delegates to their voters and to the community at large, all formal deliberative decisions made by delegates are public.
6. Specialization by Re-Delegation: Delegates can not only act directly on behalf of individuals as generalists, but through re-delegation they can also act on behalf of each other as specialists.

The Schulze method is a Condorcet method (meaning the most preferred candidate is chosen, unlike plurality voting or IRV). It is also independent of Smith-dominated alternatives, meaning the green party won't weaken the democratic party (or candidates or policies, whatever is being voted on).

RGacky3

9th April 2011, 20:18

Pubilc policy is represented by voter opinion, not magazine polls--or even scientific polls.

Public policy is represented by voter opinion? Really, not bankers opinon, executives opinion? Your living in a dream world.

BTW, do you still think the US economic fundementals are fine?

Dimentio

9th April 2011, 21:16

Public policy is represented by voter opinion? Really, not bankers opinon, executives opinion? Your living in a dream world.

BTW, do you still think the US economic fundementals are fine?

You two are like cat and dog.

Demogorgon

10th April 2011, 22:47

Pubilc policy is represented by voter opinion, not magazine polls--or even scientific polls.
That really isn't true, public policy comes from a number of sources and bottom up pressure isn't the main one.

Leaving that aside, even if vote opinion is important then it is of the most vital importance how that opinion is translated into political offices at elections. An electoral system based around single seat districts cannot translate voter opinion into a representative body except under very special circumstances (to the best of my knowledge these have only been observed in rural Africa), so the current American electoral cannot accurately reflect voter opinion. Dimentio's proposal to make the system more like continental Europe (though as I say, his suggestions for the Senate remain a problem) is intended to make elections more representative.

Bud Struggle

10th April 2011, 23:31

That really isn't true, public policy comes from a number of sources and bottom up pressure isn't the main one.

Leaving that aside, even if vote opinion is important then it is of the most vital importance how that opinion is translated into political offices at elections. An electoral system based around single seat districts cannot translate voter opinion into a representative body except under very special circumstances (to the best of my knowledge these have only been observed in rural Africa), so the current American electoral cannot accurately reflect voter opinion. Dimentio's proposal to make the system more like continental Europe (though as I say, his suggestions for the Senate remain a problem) is intended to make elections more representative.

I think there a reason that things are a bit off kilter. frankly our founding fathers never intended the US government to get so powerful. they just intended it to be a defense against foreign threats and a way to regulate trade between the states.

The power seems to have crept up on the government. Rep Paul Ryan seems to want to turn things back to the individual citizens. Interesting (though dated) proposals on his part.

RGacky3

11th April 2011, 06:41

I think there a reason that things are a bit off kilter. frankly our founding fathers never intended the US government to get so powerful. they just intended it to be a defense against foreign threats and a way to regulate trade between the states.

The power seems to have crept up on the government. Rep Paul Ryan seems to want to turn things back to the individual citizens. Interesting (though dated) proposals on his part.

A, No they did'nt, just intend the government to be that.

B. Representative Paul Ryan wants to turn things over to corporations.

What government power? Where are the republicans decrying the patriot act? As far as I remember it was only leftists. The bigest threat to individual freedom and democracy now is corporate America and the buisiness class.