One rep per 50,000 AND Proportional Representation
Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2014 11:02 am
The single member district is inherently unfair unless you believe the absurdity that a liberal Democrat can truly "represent" a conservative Republican and vice versa. Single member (aka winner-take-all) elections often award 100% of the representation to a narrow majority, as little as a 50.1% majority, or even to the winner of a minority of the votes where there are three or more candidates in an election and the plurality candidate wins. The people who vote for the losing candidate or candidates are left with no one to represent their views.
Here's the problem: there is no way to draw a single member district (and let's face it, most districts in the U.S. are gerrymandered) which does not leave some people without a voice in government. Real democracy is having a representative who represents your views. That's why most democracies which have emerged since ours have some form of proportional representation.
The single member district often leaves up to 49.9% of people without representation in government. Is that fair? What happened to "no taxation without representation?" And it's probably the biggest single reason a lot people don't vote: they live in a district which is almost certain to elect someone from the other party. So why should they care about voting?
To put it most succinctly, should your representative be determined more by your street address than by what you believe?
Like-minded voters in a geographical area should be able to elect candidates in proportion to their share of the vote. For example, in a five-seat district, like-minded voters with 20% of the votes should win one out of five seats and like-minded voters with 51% of the vote should win three of five seats. This voting method is perfectly constitutional and requires only that a federal law requiring single member districts be repealed.
In addition, ranked choice voting virtually insures that you will be represented by someone who YOU ACTUALLY VOTED FOR, unlike our present system where you can be "represented" by someone you didn't vote for and would never vote for. Voters simply rank candidates in order of preference, putting a 1" by their first choice a "2" by their second choice and so on. Voters can rank as few or as many candidates as they wish. More candidates with more varied views will be encouraged to run under this system.
Here's how we get there from where we are now in a six minute video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS62N5b5L7Y
Of course combined with the increase in the number of congresspeople as advocated on this site, which I fully agree with, the multi-seat districts will be much smaller than the examples given in the video.
Here's the problem: there is no way to draw a single member district (and let's face it, most districts in the U.S. are gerrymandered) which does not leave some people without a voice in government. Real democracy is having a representative who represents your views. That's why most democracies which have emerged since ours have some form of proportional representation.
The single member district often leaves up to 49.9% of people without representation in government. Is that fair? What happened to "no taxation without representation?" And it's probably the biggest single reason a lot people don't vote: they live in a district which is almost certain to elect someone from the other party. So why should they care about voting?
To put it most succinctly, should your representative be determined more by your street address than by what you believe?
Like-minded voters in a geographical area should be able to elect candidates in proportion to their share of the vote. For example, in a five-seat district, like-minded voters with 20% of the votes should win one out of five seats and like-minded voters with 51% of the vote should win three of five seats. This voting method is perfectly constitutional and requires only that a federal law requiring single member districts be repealed.
In addition, ranked choice voting virtually insures that you will be represented by someone who YOU ACTUALLY VOTED FOR, unlike our present system where you can be "represented" by someone you didn't vote for and would never vote for. Voters simply rank candidates in order of preference, putting a 1" by their first choice a "2" by their second choice and so on. Voters can rank as few or as many candidates as they wish. More candidates with more varied views will be encouraged to run under this system.
Here's how we get there from where we are now in a six minute video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS62N5b5L7Y
Of course combined with the increase in the number of congresspeople as advocated on this site, which I fully agree with, the multi-seat districts will be much smaller than the examples given in the video.