[Population: One] <A HREF="http://popone.innocence.com/ar

[bryant]

So we're gonna do the elections differently in 2008. I've been thinking about it. I have a plan.

We're not going to vote for candidates. We're going to vote for parties. You'll cast one vote for a party, and you'll be done. That will simplify things. Every party puts together a list of candidates, with their top candidate at the top and so on. Individuals can run too, but as you'll see in a moment, it's not a very good idea.

After everyone votes, we'll total up the votes. X% of the people on each party's list will be elected to Congress, where X% is the percentage of the total vote going to that party. So if 55% of the people vote Democratic, then 55% of Congress will be Democrats. Easy and simple. See why it's bad for an individual to run? If you vote for an individual, then you're only voting for one person and you have no say in the rest of Congress. Better to vote for a party.

This is not a parable.

Comments

[olofd.livejournal.com]

There are several acceptable ways of doing proportional elections. In Sweden we have a system that combines constituencies with proportionality:
http://www.val.se/allmant/elections_in_sweden.html
(There are probably better ways of doing it, but this is one way.)

Also, I found this list of links to election websites from different countries, and thought you might be interested.
http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/election.htm

[bryant]

I'm not a big fan of proportional elections, but I like that in Sweden you can affect which candidates are elected. It seems to make sense.

[rfrancis]

I am nearly speechless (but am I ever entirely? not really) that now that we're shoving democracy off on Iraq, we're shoving off SOMEONE ELSE'S, effectively. That's bizarre, although less bizarre than causing them to have a national health care plan, I suppose.

-R

[chadu.livejournal.com]

Freaking weird.

CU

[tayefeth.livejournal.com]

Nor is it as ridiculous as you make it sound. Sure, you don't have a great chance of winning election to the national legislature as an individual under proportional schemes, but face it, you don't have a chance of winning election to the national legislature as an individual under the US first-past-the-post, single-member-district scheme, either.

[bryant]

I'm not sure I made it sound ridiculous; I thought it was a pretty straightforward explanation myself. Note that I am not a big fan of our first-past-the-post scheme either. (Although, hey, Bernie Sanders!)

I think any sense of ridiculousness comes from the thoughts expressed by Random, a couple of comments up. It's not that proportional representation is inherently bad, although the pure form Iraq will use greatly enhances the power of parties, it's that it's somewhat odd that we've decided to use a different scheme than the scheme we like for ourselves.

The neo-cons are using Iraq as a laboratory for social changes, though. Flat tax and so forth. I suspect this is just another manifestation of that tendency.

[tayefeth.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't think one of the problems with using our single-member-districts in Iraq is that the district boundaries are sure to be extremely, violently contentious. Personally, I doubt that any sort of proportional representation is in the neo-cons' plans for the US. It tends to give greater power to minority groups than first-past-the-post systems do.

[bryant]

Giving power to minority groups is OK as long as they're the right minority groups -- one of the things about proportional representation is that it gives extreme parties on both sides a place to go. So you get this situation where the Republicans (say) can appeal to the middle without having to worry about losing the far-right nutjobs.

Interestingly, they aren't districting Iraq for this election. It's one big district.

[tayefeth.livejournal.com]

Giving the nutjobs a place to go makes it easier to show them as the headcases they are, IMO.

Right: they aren't districting Iraq because doing so would cause explosions about where the district lines are drawn. You can't have single-member-districts if you can't draw district lines, so you're left with electing 400+ members across the board, and proportional representation is the simplest way to go for that situation.

[tayefeth.livejournal.com]

Gah... I just noticed that in the comment you're replying to here, I changed horses in mid-thought-stream and fell off.

It should read "I do think" they're not doing PV-SMD is because of the districting difficulties they're certain to run into, not "I don't think" etc...

[bryant]

Heh! That's how I read it and I agree with you.

[tayefeth.livejournal.com]

I don't think the electoral scheme proposed for Iraq is a neo-con trial balloon for social change. I think it's the only chance they have to hold elections in Iraq, claim they've succeeded in bringing stability and democracy to Iraq, and move on to their next target.