Proportional Representation

BasketCase said:

Proportional representation is impossible.

In any election, there must be at least one loser. And all citizens who voted for the loser get no representation at all. Do away with government completely, and power reverts to whoever is physically strongest.

Democracy is as close as we can get. Deal with it and quit whining.

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So what's your assertion, every form of representation which purports to be proportional is not in fact so?

If so, perhaps you need to consider whether your personal use of the word 'proportional' should be given more weight then how it is used by millions of other people.

We do have proportional representation. It's the House of Representatives. I vote for the man or woman I want to represent me. If those of like mind hold the day, my guy or gal wins. One person, one vote, for one person. All of those other ridiculous systems for counting votes or voting have no place in America, period.

VRWCAgent said:

We do have proportional representation. It's the House of Representatives. I vote for the man or woman I want to represent me. If those of like mind hold the day, my guy or gal wins. One person, one vote, for one person. All of those other ridiculous systems for counting votes or voting have no place in America, period.

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What exactly is it about America that makes it unsuitable for proportional representation to have a place, as opposed to other places?

Because I don't want it here. I really don't care what other places do as I am not a citizen of those other places.

lovett said:

So what's your assertion, every form of representation which purports to be proportional is not in fact so?

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Pretty much. Right now white people are getting zero representation by the President. A month ago conservatives had nearly zero power in Congress (that changed after Brown got elected). Four years ago the opposites were true.

And when we try to gerrymander the system and get proportional representation, we merely end up giving disproportionate power to people who know how to gerrymander the gerrymandering.

Democracy is simply the least-imperfect way to give a mostly-equal voice to most of the voters.

VRWCAgent said:

Because I don't want it here. I really don't care what other places do as I am not a citizen of those other places.

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Ok, fair enough. Although I don't see how giving representation proportional to the vote garnered by a party is ridiculous, whilst a winner-takes-all-despite-not-taking-all-of-the-vote-system isn't.

Double Post.

Proportional representation over a period of time will lead to no party ever having the majority and having to make compromises or coalitions with regional based parties or single issue ideologue parties. Green parties are a good example of a single issue party (as perceived by the public at least, although in reality they usually are very leftwing parties) getting influence in parliaments and causing good governance to be difficult. A way of limiting this is to keep multimember electorates to a smaller number of representatives, maybe 3 to 5 representatives.
In Australia most states and the federal government have proportional representation in the upper house. This prevents a primeminister or premier becoming too dictatorial without handicapping the governments ability to govern too much.
Proportional representation in the main governing house leads to too many obstacles to good government. Having 3 divisions of government such as in the US, with a President or Governor, a House of Representative and a Senate also makes governing very difficult and is a cause of many problems in the US.
Reform of America should begin with the President elected by the House of Representative and able to be replace by that House at any time. This of course increases the power of Congress, but appropiate proportional representation in the Senate can be used to balance that.

BasketCase said:

Pretty much. Right now white people are getting zero representation by the President. A month ago conservatives had nearly zero power in Congress (that changed after Brown got elected). Four years ago the opposites were true.

And when we try to gerrymander the system and get proportional representation, we merely end up giving disproportionate power to people who know how to gerrymander the gerrymandering.

Democracy is simply the least-imperfect way to give a mostly-equal voice to most of the voters.

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Why do you think that proportional voting, or any other method of voting that is not already used in the US, is not democracy?

Proportional voting allows minor parties to gain some sort of vote in line with the number of people who actually want the party to have a vote. (and by party, I mean people in the party)

There is a valid argument to be made for districts, which I think is what VRWC is referring to. Most states are sufficiently large to have a fairly diverse population, and by making the constituency smaller, you can in some sense guarantee a more accurate representation. In my [formerly] home state of Georgia, for example, there is the metropolis of Atlanta, a few smaller cities, and a bunch of farmland/nothing depending on the area. It would be difficult to argue that the people who grew up in cities and live in cities could truly represent the rural districts; the opposite is also true. Thus by limiting the area, in many areas you can effectively exclude the other.

If there were a party list, my concern would be that wherever the power center is, that kind of politician would be overrepresented. To some extent, you might be able to offset this with different 'lifestyle' parties (e.g., a farmers' party) but this is the US we're talking about so I do not really see that happening.

Pretty much. Right now white people are getting zero representation by the President.

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This needed to be quoted.

PiMan said:

Why do you think that proportional voting, or any other method of voting that is not already used in the US, is not democracy?

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I don't. I think that proportional voting is not POSSIBLE. When a person votes for health care reform and loses, there is no health care reform. The loser gets nothing. If a hundred million voters vote for health care reform and two hundred million vote against it, a hundred million people just had their votes thrown in the toilet.

Capiche?

Just FYI for everyone, but even if your guy or gal loses, you still have representation. He/She is still YOUR representative even if you don't vote for them. Just like Obama is still MY President even though I didn't vote for him.

BasketCase said:

I don't. I think that proportional voting is not POSSIBLE. When a person votes for health care reform and loses, there is no health care reform. The loser gets nothing. If a hundred million voters vote for health care reform and two hundred million vote against it, a hundred million people just had their votes thrown in the toilet.

Capiche?

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It's entirely possible. It may not function, but it is certainly possible.

I think you're getting confused between the system of proportional representation and actual real representation on the basis of the proportion of vote won. The second may not result from the first, no, but the first aims to get closer to the second than a first past the post system.

I think theres some people taking the term "proportional representation" a bit too literally.

I don't think its possible to introduce it in a country that has FPTP electoral system without some kind of wholesale political change, like a new constitution or something.

BasketCase said:

I don't. I think that proportional voting is not POSSIBLE. When a person votes for health care reform and loses, there is no health care reform. The loser gets nothing. If a hundred million voters vote for health care reform and two hundred million vote against it, a hundred million people just had their votes thrown in the toilet.

Capiche?

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When you vote, you're not voting for a healthcare reform, your voting for a person who you will expect will vote on legislation in line with how they campaigned and hopefully that is in line with why you voted for them.

Example in a perfectly even vote between three candidates, where there are at least two issues to be decided:
Person 1 gets 33% of the vote, and supports issue A and B
Person 2 gets 33% of the vote, and supports issue A but not B
Person 3 gets 33% of the vote, but supports neither issue A nor B

Proportionately speaking, all three people got elected, issue A passes, issue B does not.

Lets add a fourth person, but they only get 10% of the vote, and they support issue B but not A.

Depending on how the representation is implemented, the fourth person may or may not get in, but even though issue B has two supporters now, it still wouldn't get passed because it is apparently supported by only 40% of the voting population.


When there are dozens of issues and dozens of candidates, it gets far more complicated to explain, but it is still proportional.

Where proportionality doesn't work, and you seem to be confusing it with, is referendums.

Range voting is better.

I think range voting is too complicated for widespread use, and there is no existing use of it that I know of to prove otherwise.

Preferential voting (aka instant runoff) is a nice balance between the simplicity of proportional systems and FPTP systems, and the effectiveness of range voting. All while avoiding the expensive idiocy that is the run-off election.

Two things.

First, prop-rep is impossible for a position like the presidency. It's, by definition, winner takes all. It works better in parliamentary systems where the legislative house is not seen as a stupid corrupt joke by most people.

Second, a lot of places, such as Tasmania, the Australian Senate and Spain, use multi-member districts within a territory, where members are elected based off getting a quota of total votes. That's a little different to prop-rep at large over an entire country, you still get your local member, in fact you get many of them (5 in Tasmania, 12 in the Senate, between 3 and 35 in Spain).

I have an idea that I believe really might fly here in the states.

Currently there are 100 senators, 2 from each state.


Lets try this:
1 from each state
and
50 from proportional representation - i.e. your party needs 2% of the national vote to assign members to the Senate.