Fixing Congress with Fair Representation Voting
Вставка
- Опубліковано 4 лис 2013
- FairVote's Krist Novoselic narrates animated video showing why reforming congressional elections with fair representation voting (FairVoting.us) will make winners of all Americans.
Lol I was so shocked when I saw Krist Novoselic's face. Like I was just watching a video with some anonymous voice in the background, and out of nowhere, oh shit it was the bassist from Nirvana the whole time!
Otherwise known as Single Transferable Vote
It sounds like it, but he says that voters would have one vote. Also, it seems to imply that a party could only potentially win 2 of 3 seats in a district. In STV a party could possibly win all the seats in a district still.
falsehero2001 no.
Take a look at where STV is used. For example the election to the Scottish Parliament or to the Dail in Ireland.
paintedpilgrim In the Scottish parlament MMP is used
I believe the video limited itself to examples where the parties split the district's vote, just to make it clear to the viewer that it CAN happen. But the FairVote people push for STV (the video just didn't explain the mechanics).
This system would help Third party like Libertarian and Green Party to gain more suporters.
The main reason many people refused to vote for 3rd party is because they know with electoral college, their vote would disappear into the thin air if the 3rd party didn't get 51% in their state.
People who support Bernie Sanders are forced to vote for Hillary, people who support Gary Johnson are forced to vote for trump.
PR- STV just like here in Ireland. It doesn’t produce majority government, but it is the fairest and most representative electoral system in the world.
it's not
>It doesn’t produce majority government
That’s a good thing isn’t it? That would encourage compromise with other parties right?
@@inkigaming4279 yes, to prevent extremist parties from gaining too much power. similarly, mainstream parties will lose support from its partners if it tries anything funny
It's not.
@TheRenaissanceman65 yes but stv promotes choice
"Congress is dysfunctional, polarized, and paralyzed."
So, a pretty accurate portrait of the people. then?
@mighty mouse "DEMOCRATS ARE TRYING TO TAKE OVER OUR GOVERNMENT ONE STATE AT A TIME"
Lol, also known as "winning elections", and "politics"
I kind of agree with you, but I feel like if ALL of our elections operated this way, it would help mitigate the polarization among the people too. And for offices that can only have one winner (i.e. Governor, President), RCV (ranked choice voting) would go a long way.
Multi-member districts WITH RCV forces candidates to move towards the center and even spend less time attacking each other. They must appeal to a broad spectrum of voters instead of a "base" that might give them the slimmest of pluralities.
It’s actually not very polarized. The Republican side is polarized, but the democratic politicians like Pelosi are bridgebuilders are eager to work with Republicans. They just won’t compromise. However Nancy is toxic because we have a centrist consensus in American politics among Dems and Reps that doesn’t actually represent the voters who are much more to the left in what they want done, than in who they vote for.
One has to understand that this polarization of the society could also be caused by the two-party system.
Not at all. If you see the general public in that light it's largely because of the polarized politics which has tainted the discussion so deeply that we have no way to assess people's views other than in line with the two main partisan perspectives. But talk to non-partisan people and you'll get a smorgasbord of views that don't align with hidebound Dem or Rep dogma.
I like Single Transferable Vote, but 5-7 representatives should be the average amount in each district. 3 can be gerrymandered so it should be the exception not the rule.
@TheRenaissanceman65 In proportional systems gerrymandering is more difficult
If you can change the districts all willy-nilly like that, then, I hate to tell you, you still have gerrymandering
With 3 seat districts yes, but beyond that it’s practically impossible, also in Ireland for example constituencies have to stick to county lines as best as possible which helps
I'd go with 4-6 representatives as the average amount in each district.
Would a bi-partisan polarized congress change the election system that brought it into existence? Aren't they going to keep the system that caused them to win the seats?
it's the states themselves, not the federal government that determines what process the representatives are elected by.
and the states are ruled by this party or that... the US is now under a weird two-party dictatorship!
Emil Auadisian 1st, I know the point is semantic but, dictatorship refers to rule by one person. What we're currently experiencing is an oligarchy.
2nd, there are some states where where you can just amend the state's Constitution by petition and popular vote, like California where you only need 8% of people who voted for governor to agree to sign a petition.
Yeah, "Oligarchy" is the word....
yup... America needs to amend to stay cool!!
Even those ignorant bufoons know that the people are angry and a revolution is coming. If they don't want to get primaried out, they better change the current system asap
No one could be against this system as it benefits both parties, Democrats in Louisiana and Texas, but also Republicans in Massachusetts and California
In any case, if they don't do it now, we'll primary them all out in 2018 and do it with PRESIDENT SANDERS or WARREN in 2020!
The voting system you've proposed, known as Single Transferable Vote, requires more than three seats per district in order to avoid gerrymandering. The magic number is usually five seats per district.
Private Account you can have three
3 seats can be used sometimes, but it should be used sparingly. 4, 5, and 6 seat districts are better. 5-9 is the best. Provided you have an independent commission, this should work OK. Ireland does OK with having about 1/4 of the seats being 3 seat districts and the others split roughly halfway between 4 and 5 seat districts. It does work although you must be very careful.
@@joekelly9755 the reason why it's better to have 5 or more seats is because having 3 seats can basically make a district susceptible to gerrymandering
Smash-ter I know. I’m Irish (we love STV lol) and this happened in the 1977 General Election. The guy who drew up the boundaries hoped that the main opposition would get the 3rd seat in a lot of districts/constituencies. Thankfully his party were resoundingly defeated. But in Ireland we do have some 3 seat constituencies to avoid them getting too big as I’m sure you would you know- Robert Jarman pointed that out.
@@joekelly9755 Ireland adopted a separate commission to draw up the maps. In America these would likely be made and maintained by state constitutions and arbitrated over by the state top court, and state legislatures, if adopting STV in their own right, would be politically diverse and it would be feasible to have some larger districts, typically between 4 and 7 members not between 3 and 5, as the state legislature can have a better population to people ratio than even the biggest Congress feasibly could.
California has such a commission, and a few other states have been adopting their own in recent years. They have a list of criteria to follow too so as to ensure that they are what they purport to be, and commissioners with as little bias as you can get. Even if they have flexibility to determine where the lines go and how many members are elected in a district, they are more likely to have larger districts as much as they can and avoid 3 and 4 member districts when they can. With STV lowering incentives to gerrymander and make the legislative leaders less able to rely on a partisan majority to maintain their power, they probably will also have a harder time being as biased as they are today with the appointment of any commissioners they even could name.
3 seat districts are still gerrymanderable. You would need to have say the whole of Louisiana as one district that elected 6 representatives and Massachusetts split into 2 districts of 5 and 4 instead of 3
Tekkogs Steve took the words right out of my mouth
Yeah but people in Florida are not going to run down a list of 27 people in a ballot that’s too much work also what about California there not going to pic 53 people that’s a lot of work and people might not want to vote
@@angelogiusti5283 They would obviously divide the states in smaller constituencies, with 4-6 seats each. Florida would have about 5 constituencies and California would have about 11 constituencies.
Henri Like in Britain ?
@@angelogiusti5283 No, britain uses the exact same system now than the US
Great video! We need a reform like this to deal with the impact of partisanship in our elections!
Three seat STV is the easiest form of STV to gerrymander...
Can you give an example of somewhere that that happened?
nagdeolife The less seats the easier it is to gerrymander.
why not 10 seats per state?
Alfonso Kuschel because that leads to ridiculously complex elections that will have too many candidates for the average person to keep track of, so there's a trade off either way. The generally accepted middle ground is to have districts with 5-8 seats if possible. At least according to CGP Grey
51% -> 67% is better than 51% -> 100%
Now I know what Krist Novoselic is up to. Good stuff.
Winner-take-all is a fundamental problem in ALL elections. It's also what broke the Electoral College in presidential elections (cheers for Maine and Nebraska switching _back_ to a more proportional method).
@TheRenaissanceman65 Hah, I'm not disagreeing with the video....
@TheRenaissanceman65 At @1:37 "The root cause is our winner-take-all system".
When people are voting only on single seats at a time, the result is _(by definition)_ winner-take-all, and that's a problem.
As for how it relates to the Electoral College, all but 2 states allocate 100% of their electors to a single winner of the statewide popular vote, which does not represent the actual tallies at all.
@TheRenaissanceman65 Well, that would be "all" elections _as the US runs them currently_ (i.e. single-seat vote-for-one plurality-based)
@TheRenaissanceman65 Yes (hence the quotation marks) ... it's one of THE few elections not decided directly by an at-large plurality of citizens.
I wouldn't advise using 3 seats as a minimum. 4-5 would basically be better. Also, expanding the number of seats within the House of Representatives from the current 435 to 597
That wouldn't even be as large as the UK House of Representatives which has 650 for a country with 65 million. The EU has 751 members of their parliament. The US could use that. With 597, the US would go down to about 552 thousand people per congressperson. With 751, the US would have 439 thousand people per congressperson. Add in a senate reform, maybe giving each state 9 senators, of whom 3 are elected every second year, using single transferable vote, for a total Senate size of 450, and the US would have one legislator for every 275 thousand people.
@@robertjarman3703 That's actually a pretty good idea of the Senate. But I used the cube root rule and I got a member size of 692. So the House would jump from 435 to 692.
@@theyoungcentrist9110 I would prefer something like 7 senators elected per state simultaneously for 4 year terms, and 4 years for the House, to coincide a 4 year term for president elected by rank choice voting.
@@robertjarman3703 I would behind that because I believe federal elections in the US should always be every four years; so individual members of Congress have some wiggle room to actually legislation & build relationships with other members of Congress. I would 100% get behind ending midterm elections for US Congressional elections for both chambers & just hold it the same year as the president is up.
How would this work for states that only have one or two congressional seats Like Vermont or Rhode Island? Or states with a number of congressional seats indivisible by three?
In the UK you don’t even need to get a majority to win a seat. Because we have many parties (although only 2 main ones) there are some constituencies (districts) which elect an MP with maybe just 40% of the vote because the other 60% were split.
Great video and important stuff for reformers to know.
This is brilliant. Please make this work!
I'll admit that I was confused listening to this video. But then I looked up STV and now I understand and fully support it
I wish you made politics accessible and easily understood for people over here in Britain. You're doing a good job!
Uk and US have the same voting system. First Past The Vote is undemocratic
Aug 16: FairVoteAction.org has a "Join Us" link on the home page, which is broken and just redirects to salsalabs.com (a generic umbrella organization).
I don't think this will work. House seats are supposed to represent local interests. Not just overall political interests. For example, a democrat congressman who represents Florida's coastline isn't necessarily going to be the same as a democrat congressman who represents a large urban area inland in the state of Florida. These representatives still have political interests that are based on location and geography. That gets removed if we push the districts down to 2 or 3 per state.
I'd say that gerrymanderring makes the idea that these districts represent a particular community a bit hard to believe when they just take slices off everywhere else
The two major parties comes from the definition that one group forms the government and the other are the opposition. In this case there is a mostly static divide between two sides for an election cycle, with the future depending on how well the government did in this time. If you look at Switzerland where all major parties are represented in the government an the coalitions are forming diffidently on each topic there is a change for multipel diverse political landscape, because the difference in the opinions on topics have an effect on the policies and the it is easier to find the right mix of opinions for a voter, who feels better represented in the end. The main problem is that the government is based on who get the a slight majority of votes and not that the government is representing most of the population and if the government just represents about half of the population the parties mostly try to change what the previous governments did and not bring that many new ideas. So my theory is if MMP is used and t a similar system is used to fill cabinet seats from the government the policies would be more stable and improving the country and not end up with two parties mostly trying to make the other look bad and only fighting in some parts of the country for votes. The focus would be on what values the parties represent and you wouldn't have two sets from which you can choose from but a variety of of collections which you could support. What if you want half of what the Republicans want and half of the Democrats, there would probably one party in my proposed system that represents you far better. So if you want more than two parties that are competing you would need to make the government based on votes and not majority as well.
Assuming the cabinet and government is made up of 25 positions (as the cabinet + president is at the moment) The party if the most votes could choose first which position they want and the loose 1/25th of all votes cast from there total vote count for the next round. The the party with the largest remaining vote count would be able to choose the next position, it might still be the same party. The loose the 1/25th of there votes and it goes around until all positions are filled. In the end most people would be represented by there party executive and legislative branch and most likely from the judiciary as well as the legislative is electing them. The stronger parties would be able to get the position they want to and the weaker one would still be able to get one, even if it is not their favorite one.
I'm so confused, the bass player behind albums like Nevermind and In Utero is now teaching history and politicts
very great porpotional representation and sweet lecture🐷🐃🐃🐂🐩🗻🌍🏔🌏🌎🌋🏕🏝
So, for U.S. representatives and Senators you could just use the whole state as a voter district. You don't need a local voter district, because it is the federal congress. The state is already a voting district. If you are talking about state congresses then splitting the states into voting districts may make sense. My state didn't have U.S. congress voter districts like other states, so doing so also just seems strange.
I agree that states should each be single constitutecies, I also think that the number of seats a state will elect to Congress should be determined by how many electoral college points that state it worth. If California has 55 electoral votes they should send 55 reps to Congress. If North Dokata has 3 electoral votes they should send 3 reps to congress.
@@rickenman9844 wtf the number of electoral votes is based on reps + senators of a state lol
The way to make that work is simple. Take the population of the smallest state and use thatva reference point to determine the overall size of the House. Smallest state gets one rep and largest gets 1 fir every # EQUAL to smallest state. I did the numbers that would mean a house of 570.
@TheRenaissanceman65 Not necessarily. If the total is high or low just set a rule that each party elects their speakers/spokesmen who enter debate fir others. The entire bunch serves as a representative vote needed to win on bills.
@TheRenaissanceman65 That is true. But the federal government should make all criminal law as a uniform code for all states while leaving civil law to the states. Since government is economics each has their area Congress for international interstate intrastate rules n regs states for intrastate not interfering with federal n local rules. Local fir local development n rules to not violate state or federal.
Right on!
would it be possible to implement something like this on a state level?
No for national elections
The congress must allow states to have multi member districts. The ranked ballots will work for a single winner, but to get proportionality, you need multiple members per district. The states themselves and localities could use STV on their own though.
Well done!
we have to give incentives to make sure that representatives of the same state or who happen to be of opposing parties, still work together
Right on! 👍
Problem sort of: what about states with not enough house seats? Montana, Wyoming, NH, Rhode Island, Delaware, etc.
In states that aren't large enough to have multiple House seats, the Fair Representation Act currently in Congress has them use single-winner RCV for their House election: bit.ly/2Tz34cs
Enlarge the size of the house.
That mustache is glorious
We definitely Need Change Like this
If someone can explain this to me, I would be most grateful.
In the Louisiana ranges, why have two 3 seat ranges rather than 1 6 seat range?
with 6 seats, it means the elected representatives would each only have to represent ~16%, where as with 3 seats each representative would represent ~33%.
6 Seats would provide more opportunities for proportional representation with a guess of on average only 12 people running for the voters to have to come to terms with.
As mentioned below of AdolphusOfBlood, STV is not immune from gerrymandering, but rather more resilient than FPTP, and it becomes more resilient with the more seats available to run for.
I agree with CGP Grey that on average a range should have between 5-8 seats available, since too many seats means a glut of running representatives for the voters to have too deal with, and fewer seats means less proportional representation and a easier task of gerrymandering the ranges.
The only reason I can imagine why you would want the two 3 seat ranges, would be because all of Louisiana is too large for local election to be "local", but then why not simply expand the number of representatives to either double or triple the original number?
Yes it would mean more salaries to pay (not just the politicians but also all the staff each politician would need to operate), but democracy isn't free.
Paying slightly higher taxes (like 10c more) to pay for the expanded number of representatives is a small price to pay for what is dramatically much more proportional representation.
For example if we only take the doubling of the available seats, we go from each representative of lousiana representing 33% of their half of the state (or roughly everyone being represented as 1/6th) to each representative representing 16.5% of their half (roughly every 1/12th of the population have an elected representative).
Now obviously I am missing something, or this simple mathematic proof would have already be shown and the proper changes been made, so what am I missing?
It is just one proposal for how many each would have. More is much better if you can get it.
Also, 16% for 6 seats is not what STV usually uses. Most STV systems use Droop quota, which is the number of actual votes divided by the number of seats to fill plus one to the divisor, and to the quotient you add a one. EG for 10000 votes and 6 seats open, it's actually 1429 votes to win one. There are good math reasons as to why, but it is usually more proportional when allocating the last seat.
Here's my question: what do you do with all of the states that can't be divided into districts with 3 or more representatives because they only have 1 or 2? You could theoretically triple the number of Congressmen, allowing every state to have at least 3, but a House with 1035 representatives seems somewhat absurd. If the House stays the same size, however, then the smaller states don't get the full benefits of the FRV/STV system, since there's no way to have truly proportional representation with less than 3 members per district. In theory, there could still be some benefit, with the minority party voters potentially being able to help elect a more moderate, rather than a more extreme, member of the majority party. However, those voters would still have no representation from their party, and these states would not have the same proportionality of larger ones.
Maybe a mmp system
It'll take a lot of work to make this happen as it will require a constitutional amendment. It could be done at state level though.
How about STV in a single State? Whoever wins the STV in that state, gets the electoral votes?
You could in theory use STV to choose presidential electors, but really that doesn't help much.
STV is by far more influential when we are picking a group of people to fulfil some function that is exercised collectively, primarily deliberative assemblies like Congress and sometimes other functions like advisory councils to something.
Some states would work as a single district with STV like Utah, but larger ones like New York, Texas, Massachusetts, California, etc, would be really bad under this system. You subdivide them into districts such that each has a similar ratio of population to representatives.
That's a nice plan.
Why not use state STV, where the seats in each state is based on population
The congressional House seats are allocated that way. Allowing the number of reps to rise, perhaps to about 650, would make it better though.
2:26 which cartoon is this????
Betty Boop for President
why not let the counties decide which district to be in, and then use the population of each district to determine the number of congressmen?
Counties have self interest issues. An independent commission can do that better.
The information is interesting. The background "pounding drum beat" is more than distracting, it is a complete turn off. Solution? Decrease the background "noise" by 20%. Music and a drum beat are fine; they just shouldn't be overwhelming.
I don’t see how this would stop gridlock
2:30 that’s 80 years aged well
How about Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming which only have one seat each and Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire and Rhode Island which have only 2 seats each. Seems to me that the solution would be to increase the minimum number of seats each state would get, say to 6 (yeah, I know, it would raise the number of members of Congress to something like 2,610) but each member of the US House would still be representing more people than each member of the UK House of Commons. (The USA would have to increase the membership of the US House 8-fold to achieve the representation that the British have.) Have multi-member districts with no fewer than 6 seats. Sure, it would mean challenges, especially infrastructure challenges but if we can send a man to the moon...why not all of them?
It’s an interesting idea. The FRA doesn’t currently include House expansion, but it’s something members of Congress could add in if they want to
Just so we're clear, the bill introduced would impact ALL STATES? That's pretty incredible, but how does that not require a constitutional amendment?
I'm assuming that it only applies to federal elections, which any reasonable reading of the Elections Clause (Article I) would already permit.
This plan moves all the voting power to the large cities. One of the stabilizing factors in the US system is the ability to grant the less populous areas an actual voice in running the country. This creates the gridlock.
The Fair Representation Act (a bill based on this plan that is currently in Congress) doesn't change how many seats each state gets, it just changes how those seats are elected. It will likely give rural / small areas an even stronger voice, because there will be competitive seats in all regions of the country, so candidates and parties will finally have a reason to work hard for those votes
You make it must harder than it needs to be. Districts are fine, it's the gerrymandering that isn't. You even said an impartial group cannot create a fair district. Well you can with 4 straight lines. Just like expanding a graphic. You grab one corner and pull until it has the requisite amount of people. Then the next 4 straight lines begin and so none. The best idea is then to proportion the electoral votes like Nebraska does for every state.
I just found you. Nice idea, I like it. I have a question.
Why did you leave Alaska and Hawaii off your map?
How many States in your America?
Oh, and it is NOT 51%. It is 50%+1.
Looks like your research staff let you down again.
Doesn't even have to be 50%, you just have to get the most votes.
@@jesusthroughmary In other words, anywhere between 2 and 50%+1.
Three sits per district isn't enough, it should be at least five (if possible) and no more than nine. That means that Louisiana and Massachusetts should have one district each, with all of the sits of the state in it. Three sits is too gerrymanderable.
Have you watched CGP Grey?
I did a thought experiment about that. I did sometimes have to use less than 9, for example Alaska only has one house rep and so cannot have STV, but the vast majority of the US would use at least 4, often 5, and up to 9.drive.google.com/open?id=18FYqc5Lz7jOgZVJo3hIgi0dHxPZQ2Vgi&usp=sharing
@@robertjarman3703 What if they amended the constitution to give states a statutory 2 representatives? The first and most obvious thing is it would double the representation (and voting power) of currently single-rep states (and at the expense of large states -- e.g. California would be reduced from 55 to probably 43 reps), BUT! said states could be more likely to have a bipartisan pair of representatives, encouraging more coalitions and bridge-building instead of rivalries and opposition.
@@Stratelier There are only a few states with this level of representation, 7. Doubling it needs to reallocate 7 seats, so it would be more like California now having 51 seats as the other states split the decrease not just the biggest.
@@robertjarman3703 Thank you. I definitely had a wrong formula in mind when I guessed at the numbers...
hmm ... I kinda want to intentionally experiment with it now, based on current state populations and whatever the apportionment ratio is....
Somewhat minor point: who says gridlock is bad? Why is it a bad thing for it to be difficult to pass a federal law?
I think it's kind of a major point, a reason why this system won't necessarily appeal to small government advocates, and why the founders came up with the electoral college, the senate and so one: More legislation is generally a bad thing.
So if efficiency was their prime objective, why did they create checks and balances at all? The Senate, the House, SCOTUS, decentralized government, all of that makes it more difficult to create and enforce legislation. So, why didn't they just crown Washington as king?
Yet, precisely they way to make government accountable is to make legislation more difficult. And considering the sizable fraction of the founders that were anti-federalists, I'd say many of them understood that quite well.
Besides the more issues you legislate on, the more conflict ridden your government can get.
I'd highly recommend Bastiat's 'The Law' on that one.
I'll read it again if you promise to read the law ;)
Well Nevada just decided to try it, we'll see how it works.
I propose that we vote for representatives like we rate Amazon products: 1 to 5 stars. Any ballots with only 1-star and 5 star selections would be thrown out. I would also make 2 other changes: 1.) congressional votes would be blind, and only the final vote tallies would be published. 2.) we would follow the constitution and have true proportional representation to our state's populations, and not artificially cap out at 435 house members.
The first part of your recommendation describes something close to STAR voting, and it's a very interesting method I personally prefer over STV
Instead of Ranked voting, how about Ranged voting. That would better fine tune the results.
I mostly agree. Pure Score Voting, while practically perfect in every other way, is actually worse than anything else when it comes to Strategic Voting. But a binary version (aka Approval Voting) gets rid of that.
@@alanivar2752
Actually, I went to a better Score voting system in the 4 years since. Score Then Automatic Runoff (STAR) Voting. The score is 0 to 5. The two with the topmost scores go to the runoff round. The one you scored higher gets your full vote for that round. If they scored the same then you abstained in that vote. This prevents vote burying and discourages dishonest or strategic voting since near 75% would have to vote the same to effect/game the system. It is also useful in multi-seat systems as well.
@@theatheistpaladin I am familiar with, and a fan of, STAR Voting. I am fearful, however. If people don't understand HOW their voting method works, then there will be fear of corruption and voter mistrust.
By all means, I hope we get to try it out, but I'm skeptical it will pan out well.
The electoral turnout in average by electoral district is of at least 280000. A super district could have on average turnout of 800,000-1,700,000. Counting those votes would be a gigantic logistical problem
Imagine an electoral district with a turnout of 10 million voting for 1116 candidates to take 150 seats. Now that's a logistical nightmare. No matter though, it's the usual practice here in the Netherlands. If we can do it, you can deal with a tenth of what we do.
@@Quintinohthree Netherlands use party list proportional representation that is simpler because don't have to deal with analyzing the votes in order of determinate the transfer of vote from one candidate to another and that takes a lot of time. In Maine for example it takes them two weeks to count all the votes, and they use Instant run off for one district seat. For STV with a super district of 6 seats, I think it would take a month.
>when in order to create a political climate that's more inclusive to political and racial minorities you create an electoral system that would make Richard Spencer and the NPI an actually powerful political party
stv basically
This is all fine and dandy but.. what are we going to do about those escalators?
ROFL
I think 5 would be better left,left center, center,right center,right
WAIT KRIST IS HERE???
This method seems to exclude minor parties. How does anyone who isn't a republican or democrat win in a system like this?
The use of ranked choice voting means that candidates from minor parties could compete fairly. Then they would need about 17% of the vote in a five-seat district, rather than having to achieve a majority in a single-seat district. Any minor party that really represents a substantial number of people should be able to win more seats than they do now.
With your example of Louisiana I think it should be 3 Districts because you’re not taking into account historic cultural regions. Continue having that eastern voting district but separate the western district so that Acadiana has it’s own district.
That would mean the district magnitude would be 2 members each, not 3, and so it would be harder for proportionality to work.
You could expand the size of the congress, so that each state has more representatives and can divide itself up more to account for issues of this nature.
That just sounds like gerrymandering with extra steps
I like the idea of a "super-district" but the problem is every "super-district" in a state should have equal representation. If a state has 6 house seats, you can create 3 super-districts of 2 seats each or 2 super-districts of 3 seats each.
But what if a swing state, such as Ohio has 19 House seats? Could there be 4 super-districts of 4 seats each and 3 seats elected by the state at-large?
With the creation of super-districts, we would still have the parties try to gerrymander in favor of their party candidates. There might be less "ad hominem" attacks because the odds of obtaining a seat are greater. It's also harder to "throw the bums" out.
What if the legislature decided to scrap gerrymandering for a decade and make every House seat "at-large" ? In California, there are 53 house seats. A voter would cast his or her vote for 53 people.
There would probably be some set limits, such as maximum magnitude of districts. In Ireland, where this electoral system is used, locally the maximum is 10 seats in a district. In Ireland for national elections, the number must range from 3 to 5 members in a given district. And you can require that they are all local and that not some of them are reserved for the state as a whole.
Also, we actually do see a lot of throwing bums out where this really does happen. Almost 30% of the Irish parliament failed to win reelection in 2016. 27% lost their seats in 2011, the previous election. In 2016, the coalition that was in power just before the election, Labour and Fine Gael, had won 76 seats for Fine Gael and 37 for Labour out of 166 seats in the previous election. Some members of the party quit because the party was becoming too overbearing or wasn't respecting their views, so they actually had 66 seats for Fine Gael and 33 for Labour. Of them, Fine Gael lost 16 seats (or 24%) and Labour lost 26, or 78.9%.
Just think how huge a loss that is. A coalition that used to, combined, have 68% of the seats when it was elected and 59.6% just before the next election then had just 36% of the seats in the next parliament. This would be like going from 295 seats in the US House of Representatives to just 157 seats, and also you would lose the ability to put your majority on committees, you lose the chairs of the committees, you very likely lose the speakership, you lose a lot of experienced members, and you lose the ability to control the legislative house in general, and in Ireland, you lose the executive, in the US, this would be the equivalent of losing the power to confirm or deny executive appointments.
Ireland already does this. Each district has between three to five seats each. They don't necessarily have to be the same size.
Whatever happened to this organization? The web site hasn't been updated in a couple of years, but the ideas are more important than ever.
Vivian Ruth Sawyer Funding I bet
Centrism still exists in the house
So it's 2020 and...
We have Maine at the very least :)
Steve Brule is a lot smarter than I remember
I don't think the federal government has the authority to tell State Governments how to hold their elections (barring racial discrimination thanks to the 14th amendment). Personally I am in favor of something like a Single Transferable Vote, but it has to come through the State Governments.
But the video is talking about the federal election. So in that case, yes, the government has a say
Why not just get rid of districts entirely and give all the votes to their respective parties regardless of were the voters live?
Becuase of the concept of local representation and having the representative caring about their constituents desires, basically is to anchor the politicans, rather than them just being representative A or B from party X or Y, they care for the interests of the people in their districts and are supposed to defend those interests, at least that's the theory.
Kamiel Heeres while I agree with you, people still want representatives to turn to
Germany has both as mixed member proportional. The Representative with most votes from each of the 299 districts gets a seat in parliament and the overall proportions are decided by a second vote.
@@stuttgartpio Yes, this is without a doubt thd best system around for the US. All the benefits of proportional representation without watering it down while retaining local representatives.
Krist Novoselic just fucking appeared out of nowhere.
I think DMP would make an ultimately a better system
DMP would make a better system for the US Senate.
STV at its finest
1:37 winner-take-all system ☹️
The Fair Voiting method is synonymous with Proportional voting found in Europe & some other countries. See my comment on Ranked Choice Voting aka Non Partisan Primaries. 50% of us are now Independents & the Republican party is trying to steal our voice.
Interesting idea, but I don't see anyone talking about this. I wish they would.
so is this just stv
If only South Africa has true proportional representation, the ANC is too powerful.
South Africa has a very pure form of proportional representation with seats allocated according to the share of the vote received across the country. The ANC still just gets a lot of votes.
If you watch this comment in 2020, please do something about this electoral system in America. People need to take action. We shouldn’t accept ‘lessor of two evils’ anymore.
Or the old Spoiler and Wasted vote propaganda.
I would also like to see Senate Reform: each state has two Senators represent their pop.... so a citizen in Wyoming (pop 550K) will have 70x the voting power of a citizen in CA (pop. 39.5 M). Thus, the current vote for the next Supreme Court Justice, does not truly reflect the will of the people.
It's possible to have a senate based on this model still, but perhaps changed so as to be more reflective of people. For instance, giving every state say 8 senators, you vote for four of them by single transferable vote every two years for a four year term, is likely to give each side good representation in every state and makes it necessary to appease your party's supporters in every state to win majority control of the Senate.
In addition, you can change the powers of the senate to be more helpful. Give most of the confirmations to the House of Representatives for instance. Some appointments might happen differently though, perhaps needing 2/3 of the Senate and the House for certain special positions meant to be more independent like judges, and a two thirds requirement in the Senate with proportional voting like this is very likely to assure that no party has serious objections to a judge. You might also allow voters to recall the president just like many states allow for governors who dissatisfy them, and allow the supreme court to hold a trial for presidents or other executive officers who illegally abuse their power or are violating the constitution, leaving the senators to know that they aren't the only way to remove a president.
That's exactly how it was intended to work in the senate. 2 people per state regardless of population. Don't you know why we have 2 legislative branches? Because the 13 colonies couldn't agree if the congress members should be done by the same number per state or based on state populations. So they did both.
@@Knightmessenger Yes, I understand the history behind the two Houses, but I disagree with the type of issues the two Senators from each state will vote on. E.g. Impeachment (basically the jury process of the impeachment), selecting a supreme court justice, approve or reject presidential appointees, treaties made by the executive branch, etc... so, I don't feel the voice of the American people is proportionately represented in these decisions. So I understand the representation (House of Reps based on state pop. and House Senate two for each state), but I feel it's the type of responsibilities they will vote on that I find an issue with.
We should keep our normal districts and have extra representatives to shift control to the party with more votes like Germany's Bundestag does.
Bryant Donner the problem is that in order to have effective STV (the system suggested) but the same number of districts we would have to quadruple or pentuple the number of Representatives.
Bryant Donner also the bundestag uses Mixed Member Proportional voting which is fairly different.
Check out the good work that the Electoral Reform Society is doing there!
Anything that's not First-Past the Post should be tried! If some states want Mix Member Proportional and others want some other voting system, fine let them have that! But the federal government needs a change and I think Rank Choice Voting should be given a chance nationality, meaning several elections have to happen under it before coming to any conclusions, not just one or a few!
Thanks -- the United States is an outlier in so many ways - low registration, low participation, low representation of women and ideological minorities, the use of the antiquated Electoral College and winner take all voting with single member districts and of course, most recently, a dangerous emphasis on partisan politics at the expense of sensible legislation. Thanks for watching the video!
STV
when both parties vote together to pass legislation that's when you know something is wrong, get money out of politics, then we'll see
The video is truthful, but strategically, it doesn't help to pit Dem vs Rep and left vs right. Ironically, polarisation is exactly the problem, but your audience are fish who can't see beyond the water.
please correct me if I'm wrong, but..: at first you complain about partisanship in politics (~ 0:30 ) yet not even 10 seconds later it appears as if you fall for partisanship yourself by completely disregarding that folks vote for people and not for political parties. don't get me wrong, I wouldn't be particularly happy about how democracy is implemented myself if I'd live in the US, but I smell bullshit.
The only way to have open and free elections is to have clear and concise ballots with a simple ncr second page. The original goes to the ballot box the back page goes with the voter. No mail in votes, no remote boxes. All votes are retained for two full years. All voters will have voter I.d. All voting locations will have representation from each party. Ballots will be secured at the end of each day. No electronic ballot counters ever.
In Athenian democracy, senators were selected by lot for a set term. Senators were paid a stipend during their term. Any senator that had more wealth at the end of his term than at the start was subject to banishment (sans wealth) or death. Bribery was greatly reduced. Now think of the wealth accumulated by Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi, Obama and others on a government salary.
Great video! Here in Europe it's obvious that your coutry needs some changes...
Combine this with increasing the size of the House to at least 1,500, and have regions with 5-10 seats, and we're in business.
Great video, but is "proportional representation" (PR) really too complex a term for Americans to understand? It doesn't seem to be a problem in any other country. The irony is that what's being proposed here is the most complex of PR systems! Oh well.
GreggTO The traditional Proportional Representation system only allows people to choose parties, not candidates, so it lacks the traditional direct connection between voters and candidates. While I would support PR (it would lead to the U.S. having more than two parties!), I would prefer the system in this video - or even better, some form of Direct Representation: qism.blogspot.com/2015/04/enjoy-true-democracy-with-sdr.html
I think you have a good point about complexity; a referendum about a similar system to the one in this video was defeated by voters in BC, Canada after a negative ad campaign scared voters with warnings about how complex the system was (IIRC, the majority voted "yes", but not a supermajority as was required to pass it.)
+GreggTO Mixed-member proportional representation is better. You vote for individual people to represent your local issues, and then vote for parties to fill in the rest, so that the parties in congress match that of the population.
this is only fair in so far as there are still only 2 parties. 3 at a push.
***** because if there are only 3 seats per constituency, those 3 dominant parties in a nation will obviously dominate - there would only be rare exceptions to this in a country like the US; what I would promote is a genuine multi-party system where even tiny parties can still achieve the representation that they are entitled to as a matter of mathematics (seats/votes) and there are so many countries that pull these kinds of systems off very well, like iceland, and denmark in particular, with mechanisms for balancing local and national level representation. e.g. even if a small party in denmark couldn't satisfy a local representation quota, if, nationally, they satisfied a national representation quota via those local election results, they'd still get a proportional number of seats
Alex R The third seat will not be won by the same party everywhere. Sometimes the third seat will be Libertarian, sometimes Green, sometimes Dem or Rep, sometimes a fringe party.
But you are right in that more seats would be even more proportional. Ideal would be 5-8 seats per constituency.
Celadrial yeah I'm just saying that only 3 seats means that it will be limited to biggest 3 parties, or even simply two parties - 2 seats for 1 and 1 for the other. it would be rare otherwise with a threshold of 33%~ - and even still, it wouldn't be too accurate - what if the third party always was a few %s shy of the 33% threshold? it might cause further disproportionalities in the seat results just like in FPTP "multi-party" countries (like the UK - it's not a multiparty system necessarily)
+Alex R Unless you also changed to an instant runoff voting system you would still tend to only have two parties, maybe three... Generally speaking, any group that isn't large enough to win a seat will naturally ally itself with other groups until they have a large enough base to win a seat. (One solution to this is instant runoff elections, since it allows people to vote for the party they prefer, but if their party is eliminated their vote gets transferred to their next choice.)
nacoran the only favourable factors of an instant run off system are that there is no spoiler effect, candidates technically get a majority of support and there is no wasted vote (technically) - but what about the fact that there will still be a 2 party system? what about the lack of proportionality? that's why I'm pretty indifferent to IRO systems - they are better than single member plurality systems (first past the post) in obvious ways, but they aren't *that* much better - it is setting the bar of "improvement" very low in my honest view. also, with this system in the video, it is true that it will be proportionate to an extent (a low extent), it is, again, just setting the bar of improvement *very* low - it's not calculating the "best" system - it's just putting forward a "better" system - but there are so many kinds of "better" systems because the american voting system is by far the worst system
Third parties getting seats in America is the most important part. Breaking the Repulicrat dictatorship is a must
He neglects to mention that the unconstitutional Uniform Congressional District Act has forced the States to adopt the current single-member constituency system. Similarly, the Supreme Court has ruled in Inc. vs Thornton (1995) that States cannot impose consecutive term limits (or any qualifications beyond those mentioned in the Constitution) on their Congressional delegation. It is only through the States standing up for their Rights, not through the federal government, that this problem will be solved.
Canada has to get rid of treaudeau as fast as we can.We need O'Leary .
Nah, RCV is better.
This is RCV. You rank the ballots in the same way. Just that RCV is usually meant to be single winner. If you have multiple winners, 3 at a minimum, ideally 5-9 (4 is possible though), this makes it much more proportional. RCV in the single winner form would be more so for trial courts where there is only one judge, sheriffs, governors, the president ideally, mayors, DAs, etc.
God you can tell this idea is from an American. Smh theres more than the left, middle and right.
No that's the oversimplified way of thinking about it by saying there's more than just what simply is. There is only a left, middle and right no others. There is no middle left and middle right because if there was then it would defeat the purpose of being called a middle. Also there is no far right or near right and far left or near left. The left is the left and only one left no matter which way you try to diversify it. The same is true how there is only one right that is called the right and one middle that is called the middle. It's that simple. Your mistake is thinking of it as if it's a color wheel when it's not. It's not the same and it would be best not to confuse the two.
Well at least those groups could actually be represented when they do come up
@@kvm1992 you are the one who is oversimplifying. Here in the Netherlands we have several leftwing parties who disagree on some things, several rightwing parties who disagree on some things, some christian parties who disagree on some things, some populist parties who disagree on some things...
It doesn't matter how you play. One who scores the most votes wins! I love FPTP system. Rest are for cheaters.
Being forced to pick just one person for a small part of a legislature is not reflective of the society we live in. We do not live in a world that is so black and white.
if you like systems that dont represent the people move to the saudi arabia
You lost me at "National Popular Vote." You're proposing single party rule upon all Americans.
not at all, learn what STV is before you say dumb shit
This idea of elections, where seats are grouped up and divided up so that they can be proportionally divided, say 5 seats open to anyone who can get enough votes so that 6 people can't each have seats, and for singular offices, a majority to win, with the ability to rank the candidates in the event that your favourite has more than they need to win or that your favourite has too few votes to win and so you can transfer the support to the next best option, creates a lot of different parties that can potentially win. Ireland has Michael D Higgins from the Labour Party, a Taoiseach, or prime minister, from Fine Gael, and a confidence and supply agreement (before the February election) with Fianna Fail giving them support for their legislative program.
Parties are likely to be born in this system or become popular so the Democrats and Republicans will not be your only options. They could even win, and even if they don't, they will depend on having some quite popular programs for more supporters than just their own party, as their party might only be 35 or 40%, maybe even less, of the voters on their own and need to get support outside to reach a majority. They may form an agreement with other parties to get closer to that goal and name a vice president, who by being nominated independently and who gets the job on their own characteristics and likely to be given roles by the law, will represent a basic coalition behind a presidency.
And a president or governor or whatever is not supposed to hold power alone. The president will be dependent on budgets approved in both houses, as well as tax revenue raised by the same. They will be dependent on this support for passing the laws the president wants. The president will have to propose candidates for executive and judicial appointment acceptable to each party, and for independent bodies such as the FEC and the FCC, the FTC, the NLRB, and others, they will not be dependent on the president for their tenure. The parties voting in favour of a candidate will not always be the same ones for all of the executive appointments and so different coalitions of parties and independents will approve of them.
And at the state and local level, a wide variety of governors, executive officers, judges, legislators and the majorities in each house of the state legislature, the cities and counties and all of their district attorneys, judges, mayors, sheriffs, auditors, election officials, and hundreds of thousands of others will be involved in policy making, and will represent different majorities. You might have 4 Libertarian governors, 13 Democratic governors, 10 Republican governors, 6 Green governors, 7 independent governors, 3 Working Families governors, 3 populist governors, and 4 maybe Constitutionalist or more Conservative governors like who Ted Cruz is. You have 99 state legislatures who all have presiding officers, majority and minority leaders for each party represented, and so many more. If anything this turns American politics on it's head with so much choice and decentralization of power that you probably never realized was possible before.