Would you support Proportional Representation for US Congressional Elections?

I've been wondering this for some time, and decided to put a poll up to see how much traction the idea could get.

Under our current system, the winner of the election is the person who gets the most votes, regardless of whether or not they actually get the majority of the votes in the election. In fact, if three candidates get almost identical numbers but one candidate gets the most votes, that candidate will be elected even if the candidate's opponents received a majority of votes.

Under a PR system, everyone's vote has the potential to contribute to a candidate being elected, thus ensuring that there is a broader swath of opinions represented in Congress.

 

Would this, then, result in more politicians being elected to office - more than the 535 Congressional members that we already have? Maybe I'm misunderstanding the purpose of a PR system, but I can't imagine having to subsidize even more congressional salaries for these "representatives" that never represent. An already bloated government becoming even more bloated?

 

Under the current system, proportional representation would be within the current Congressional delegation size and it would only be within the House of Representatives. A PR system in the US Senate would be difficult to implement due to the makeup of that chamber.

How PR works is very complicated for the average American to understand because the system is so different from what we have, a district's seated representative is not always the winner of the district's election, it'd be reliant on the proportion of the vote each party received in the election. There would be a threshold that, if any party gets more nationwide votes than that, they automatically seat a member from that party. The threshold would be equal to the smallest constituency in the House of Representatives. Most people who vote would end up having a representative of the party they voted for, though that particular representative may not be in their own district.

It's something that I am still trying to figure out how to explain in layman's terms. I can only really explain it right now in either really technical electoral/political language or in terms of computer programming. I'm working on a computer model, it'll be imperfect, but would give an idea as to how fast we could see the People's House return to the people.

A PR system, as long as it's properly implemented will mean Congress is more accountable to the people. Even a half-ass PR system could see more members of Congress listening to their constituents because they'd be more likely to be booted out of office. Thus, the representatives would have to represent the people, lest they lose their coveted seats.

In the best system, the House of Representatives would have an average constituency size under 250,000 which would be around 1,250-1,350 representatives. Yes, a mind-boggling amount, but at the same time, it'd be incredibly difficult to screw off in Washington and then be reelected with a constituency that small. Of course, the congressional compensation would be lowered because the constituency is smaller. My full proposal idea hinges on a wholesale modernization of the system.

 

That is incorrect and contradictory. In a Congressional race, the person who gets the most votes wins. I know of no state that subdivides its districts into sub-districts the way happens during Presidential elections. I believe one or 2 places like Louisiana require run-offs with the winner required to have a majority.

Regardless, no. I would sooner support state governments deciding how the state's representatives shall vote on any particular piece of federal legislation. We need to pack the House of Representatives, and perhaps add a 3rd Senator for each state, but it should remain most votes win. I would only support a PR system if we went to a parliament with them choosing a Prime Minister as opposed to a president. One of the ironies is that there are many more members of the UK parliament than Americans realize because they only see Prime Minister questions on TV. I think there are something like 650 MP's in the UK which is a fraction of the size of the US.

 

I'm intrigued, but admittedly, I'm still finding it difficult to wrap my head around the idea. I suppose you're talking about creating more districts than we already have, since different segments of each district is composed of a majority of Dems or Reps. For instance, I live in the 11th District of Virginia. The 2010 election saw a very narrow victory for Gerry Connolly (49.22% of the vote) to Keith Fimian (48.79%). Are you suggesting that the 11th District be segregated into possibly two new districts, so that the Republican population is represented, in addition to the Democratic population?

 

No, since it would never work. I already understood PR, and I can see that it would NEVER work in the United States.

In 2012, the Republicans and Democrats received a total of 96.4% of the vote and 100% of the seats. Now, all countries that have PR have a threshold a party must pass to get seats. For example, 5% in Germany. If we set a 1% threshold, the Republicans and Democrats would still control 431 of the 435 seats, since the Libertarian Party received 1.1% of the vote and thus would be entitled to 4 seats.

As you see, a Proportional Representation system would not end the two party system. It would weaken it a tiny bit, but it would not end it.

 

My only problem with the House is that PR has been subverted by gerrymandering. Draw the lines so that all Dems live in one district and Republicans have control in three other districts. I don't care which party draws the lines, it's the WRONG way to run a railroad. I think the bigger problem is the Senate where two senators from North Dakota or Wyoming have as much clout as two senators from Texas or Florida or California.

 

Electoral precincts exist throughout the country that in effect subdivide the districts into more manageable chunks to ease vote tabulation.

The Senate was supposed to be the States' voice in Congress. That was eliminated with the Seventeenth Amendment. I oppose the Seventeenth Amendment because we are supposed to be a federation of sovereign states. However, I do not believe we should have a 50-50 split wherein the States can block something if the People want it.

To that end, I actually support a tricameral legislature. Three Houses of Congress, the two current ones, and the "Council of States" that would fulfill the initial role of the Senate. The legislative process would be a bit more complicated because of the added complexity of the tricameral system.

I believe you may be misunderstanding the point behind PR as well. PR can exist within a presidential system, we don't have to have a parliamentary system, though having a semi-presidential system would be something I would support, something along the lines of the French Fifth Republic. The party that gets the most votes in an election cycle would still get the most seats, but they would not be able to get 30 seats when proportionally they only received enough votes to get 16 seats.

I would like to see more members in Congress because then the constituencies would be smaller. Smaller constituencies would mean more accountable representatives.

Say three candidates are in an election.

Candidate A gets 31% of the vote
Candidate B gets 30% of the vote
Candidate C gets 30% of the vote
9% of the votes are either write-ins or rejected votes

Candidate A would be elected because of the plurality, despite Candidates B and C getting more combined votes. Everyone who voted for B or C is basically unrepresented. Eventually it will become a two-party system owing to Duverger's Law.

No, it wouldn't necessarily create more districts. It would be nice if there were more districts, because the more districts there are, the less constituents are in each district. The less constituents in a district, the easier it is to get to the threshold to have a smaller party's candidate elected.

I believe you are referring to the process of "gerrymandering" whereby electoral districts are drawn in a way as to make safe seats. I oppose that on principle as it essentially disfranchises voters in a two-party system and then has a detrimental impact on voter turnout.

In some states such as South Carolina, one party has a disproportionate number of representatives. South Carolina, in the past election had a popular vote split between the Republicans and Democrats of 53% Republicans and 43% Democrats, but the Democratic Party only has one South Carolinian seat. Using a PR system, they would have had two Democratic Representatives under the current system.

When I get the program written and debugged, I will find a way to host a download link on the internet so that you could see for yourself the different ways elections work under different systems. I've written the pseudocode already, but without an understanding of coding, it'd be Greek to most people. Even if you understood the code, to do it longhand would be a nightmare.

I welcome the dialogue, because it is only by asking questions and getting answers can you truly learn about the system's advantages and disadvantages.

 

Congressional salaries are actually pretty miniscule in the grand scheme of taxation and government spending in this country Besides, with better representation we might actually be able to get those salaries limited as they should be, instead of the system being what it is now, where they just vote for themselves whatever they like

 

That does not mean that those districts result in a person with fewer votes winning. Whoever gets the most votes wins regardless of how many voter precincts there are. Ease of election administration does not result in altering outcomes.

Essentially I assume your position is that you are a democrat who is unhappy that democratic over performance in blue areas does not entitle them to greater representation because they elected not to field a viable candidate in a republican stronghold. I assume that you think House of Representative elections should be national elections with the hope that the urban democrats can disenfranchise the rural republicans. I oppose any such strategy. If you want the United States to remain a single nation, you would oppose such a strategy as well.

 

Speak for yourself. When you live in a region of the country inhabited by people with inflated salaries that they vote for themselves, you're forced to deal with inflated costs of living. $100,000/yr in Northern VA barely gets you by with a family of 4. Maybe we should move the capital to South Dakota. Then you can enjoy the influx of wealth due to government. Congress members, alone, are paid $93,167,600. In comparison to our deficits and debt that's a pittance... but it's still a grandiose amount of money and they're not worth it.

 

It sounds like they manage to singlehandedly distort the local economy and drain the nation dry, then, like a bunch of fattened parasites. It also sounds like the problem with pay is not limited to just the congress critters.

What can we do about this, then? Short of getting better representation in this joke of a government, I for one don't know what we could do short of a revolution to tear it all down.

 

No, I know what gerrymandering is (and I don't approve of it), I'm just trying to figure out how the new system would work within the existing system. However, you'd have to dismantle the current system and basically start over, if you're going to do what you're suggesting. So, what I'm grasping from your previous statement, is that we would need one House member per 250,000 citizens, based on our population. So, if VA has 50 million people, we'd need 200 house members, but not 200 districts. Do districts even exist at this point? Is there just a general state-wide vote for party and not candidate? For instance, you vote Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, etc. instead of Candidate #1, Candidate #2, etc, then the percentages are taken and the amount of house members are divied up by percentage of party representation in the state.

Am I finally getting it? lol

 

I'm with you, brother. I'm at my tipping point. I'd have moved years ago, but my wife loves it here and has a cushy job with the NRA.

 

No, it means that if the Democrats got 52% of the total vote, and the GOP got 48% of the total vote, the Democrats would get 52% of the seats, even if they didn't win in 52% of the individual elections. It makes gerrymandering useless, and makes every vote count, even votes in safe districts are counted in the total.
It changes the whole election strategy, it makes it more of a national election.
There are a lot of potential variants on the results
Now, if you have a party like the GOP that's in an electoral sweet spot now, where even though more people voted Democratic, the GOP won more individual House races, it's tempting to say , lets stick with first past the post, but what happens if you have proportional representation, is you can run real conservative teaparty types, who can't win head to head, but can get 20% of the vote nationwide, and end up with a hundred seats in congress, even though they lost every race, so instead of two parties balanced on a razor's edge, you get 3 or 4 parties, that have to compromise and form coalitions.
It's a different game.

But I don't think it makes any difference in the long run, as long as you have democratic input, the people will influence the politics.
The more the better, but as long as you have some input, things will work out.

 

It can work within the United States. That there is already a strong enough Libertarian presence within the United States proves that a third party could be nationally viable given an equitable chance at election.

They got 96.4 of the vote, yet controlled 100% of the seats, that is, itself disproportionate.

Now, let's say that four Libertarian candidates were elected to four separate districts in the United States. At the next cycle, they proved themselves competent, capable, and approachable leaders. In the subsequent election, they win their districts with a majority of first-place votes. Other districts, seeing how successful the Libertarian candidates were, get a higher percentage of Libertarian first-place votes. Suddenly, the Libertarians now have 6% of the nationwide vote and thus 24 seats in Congress. Twenty-four seats in Congress could be more than enough to require a coalition to form between two parties to gain the majority required to select a Speaker.

It wouldn't end the two-party system immediately. But it would more than likely lead to a snowball effect that I have termed "partisan decompression".

The way I see it is a two-party system is basically a pressure vessel. It keeps the money amongst the parties and keeps the people out of government. If there is a crack in the pressure vessel, it can leak somewhat, but the vessel is somewhat self-repairing, so the only way to cause the vessel to fail is if the crack is big enough that the vessel cannot repair itself.

PR systems, by their nature tend toward nullifying gerrymandering attempts. Apportionment of seats to the parties would be dependent on either the state or national popular vote percentage. Districts would cease to be the sole determiner of an election.

Precincts have no determining factor on whether a person wins or not. Precincts are solely to break down a district into a smaller area to make vote tabulation easier.

Let me try to explain it, I think I can explain it a bit better after I thought about it for a bit.

Campaigns would happen within the district as they do under the current system.

On Election Day, the voters are given a ballot with all candidates for the district. They must then rank the candidates in order of preference, with 1 being their first choice, 2 being their second choice, and so on and so forth.

Now, the ballots are tabulated locally before being sent to the State Election Board or what-have-you. From there, they add up all the first place votes for each party in the state and transmit that to the Federal Election Commission. The FEC takes all of the numbers from the states and determines the proportion of representatives each state gets and the partisan proportion for each state.

At the state level, the State would look at the numbers given them by the FEC and then they would determine which districts had the best showing for each Candidate. Those Candidates would then be declared the winners for their districts.

If five different districts have a candidate from Party A win the district, but the state only has four seats for Party A, the person with the lowest percentage of first place votes is not seated. Instead, the runner-up in first-place votes for that district is seated.

To make the partisan decompression happen even faster, all Independent candidates and candidates from parties who did not themselves reach the threshold can be lumped into an affiliation to better their chances at getting a seat.

Your assumption would be wrong. I am not a Democrat and have never voted Democratic in my lifetime. As it currently stands I am apartisan. The system itself disenfranchises a great majority of Americans by only allowing two viewpoints to be represented in Congress. It is made all the more worrisome when it is not the people who are the motivating factors behind the political parties but large and moneyed interests of various stripes.

This system is not about the Democrats or the Republicans winning at the expense of the other, this is about both of them losing at the expense of Americans being able to choose their own candidates freely. If you want to vote Libertarian, you should be able to have your voice heard. If you want to vote Tea Party in a blue state, you should have to have your voice heard. If you vote Green, you should have your voice heard. We are a beautiful and diverse country, but you wouldn't be able to tell by looking at the parties in the House. There is no way in HELL 300 million Americans can only have two political ideologies.

I would vote for a Tea Partier if the Tea Partier said he'd make that his top priority.

In fact, my proposed ideas would ensure that every area, rural or urban, rich or poor would be represented by politicians who care about their constituents needs year-round and not just during campaign season.

Yep, the whole system would have to basically be dynamited. Oh, and don't count on the Dems or the GOP to take too kindly to the whole idea. It'll be like trying to get a cat to take a bath.

There would be one district per Representative, and each district would function very similarly to the way they do today. The main difference would be that the district does not determine the winner itself. The winner is determined by the proportion at either the State or National level.

Voters would select local candidates from within their district. Party affiliation only comes into play at the state level and the national level for determining the proportion each party receives in the end.

You are touching on state seat apportionment. Under my system, there would be no hard cap on the size of the House. Each state would get enough representatives so that they would have enough so that each Representative has a constituency smaller than 250,000. Once the constituency size is below 250,000 they do not get any more than that. I designed it so that there is as much parity between the large states and the small states.

This would require a remodel of the Capitol building itself though. I do not believe the House of Representatives Chamber is anywhere near capable of holding three times the number of legislators. Small price to pay for a more democratic system though.

You're getting it. I suspected you were getting it from the start, and were asking questions to get clarification. I like people like you.

 

Ahh, I got it. So where does this pool of representatives come from? How do we divvy up the states? Are there still congressional elections or is it just one national election for a President and Congress members, at the same time?

 

This was all extremely helpful. I appreciate your time and willingness to explain this to us. It turns out that I would actually be in favor of such a system, because like many Americans, I do feel disenfranchised. I no longer consider myself a Republican, but a Conservative, because I don't feel they represent many of my political ideologies.

So, I chose "Yes, but I'm not sure which method." I would love to see your program in action, so please keep us apprised of your efforts. If you need a place to host it (and can't find one), just let me know. I'll host it for free.

 

That depends on how you set it up, it's how most democracies are organized.
They may have two houses of congress or just one, the idea is that even a group that can only poll 10% or 20% can get a sizable bloc of seats, and form a coalition to get some of their agenda realized.
With three or four parties splitting the vote, there will usually not be a clear majority, so whoever can form a coalition can drive a hard bargain.
If the Democrats had 48% and the GOP had 45% and the Teaparty had just 7%, the Teaparty forms a coalition with whoever gives it the best deal.

Or say it's the Green Party, you see a broader range of ideas, and coalitions become very practical.

But the result is the same, in the the people want some sort of universal health scheme, and they now have it, it will be improved, modified, but it will move forward, because that's what the people want, not in a poll someone took last week, but over the years and especially when they elected the supermajority to put it in place.
Over time people influence Democracies.

 

Elections would happen the same way they have for the past two hundred years. Every other November on the first Tuesday after the first Monday, you go to the polls and select your Representatives. Every other Election would be the Presidential election, and the Senate would be divided up as they currently are into the three classes that get elected every six years.

To entice more people to vote, I'd even suggest having elections start the Friday before the First Monday in November and continue through to the First Tuesday after the First Monday and then making Election Day as it is a holiday the way Christmas or Thanksgiving is. Fewer people would then have an excuse that they couldn't get time off to vote. It's sickening to me that voter turnout hovers around 55-60% of the voting-age population for a general election and around 30-45% for a midterm election. That says to me that Americans don't have faith in the system. When faith in the system is lost, we must determine why that is.

I appreciate your questions and I am always happy to answer questions.

You are the kind of American I want to reach out to, those who realize they aren't getting the most out of their government as they should whether Conservative or Liberal. It is only by uniting as Americans can we better our system. We need the kind of unity that led to the Constitution.

My political ideology is of a capitalist libertarian Liberal, but I believe that is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things so long as the system disenfranchises as many Americans as it does. Once we have a working system of democracy, we'll be adversaries, but adversaries that would be forever bonded by the fact that we fought for the system, and that bond will make it easier for us to work together.

Call me an idealist, but I don't automatically consider Conservatives as so diametrically opposed that Liberals and Conservatives cannot work together. As long as we're both using intelligible logic and open to compromise, anything is possible.

I'd love to see my program in action too, lol. I'd have it written already if I had a computer that could run VB6. I'm having to learn a newer dialect of Visual Basic to be able to write the program on a computer that isn't ten years old. Once I get a new reference book for the language, I should be able to pound it out in a matter of weeks and then debug it in a week or two before finishing the first version.

Eventually I will be able to build in a feature that would be able to show using different voting systems how elections over a span of years would change the makeup of a Legislative house.

It'll be a small file I might be able to host through Google Drive. It'll be a simple .exe

 

How would you keep areas with smaller populations represented? Like here in Kansas is is easy for the two largest cities to control a lot of votes which would make the western counties not have much of a voice. Unless I am looking at it wrong.

 

I understand where you're coming from with the question. It's a valid concern to ensure that the rural areas don't get choked out of representatives.

Because the districts don't have the final say in which candidate is elected, the rural population would be able to have their vote count.

Under my idea, pursuant to the 2012 Election, Kansas' House delegation would be comprised of three Republicans and one Independent. That is because the GOP received 70% of the popular vote and the Libertarian and Democrats received a combined 30%. Neither party received the threshold to receive a seat in their own right, so the seat would become an "Independent" seat, but would be filled by a Libertarian since the Libertarians received more votes.

The Independent district would have been Kansas' 3rd District, since that district received the largest percentage of Libertarian votes.

 

I think your looking at it right but, in this country, votes are based on people, not on acres. You don't get extra votes for being a farmer.

 

I disagree completely. Your system seems to guarantee people who run a seat. There are some people who are defeated for a reason. I would sooner see the US disband into separate countries as your plan. whether intended or not, would create an unbreakable democratic party stranglehold on our entire political process from top to bottom.

 

Going off every one of your replies, I do not believe you have much of a grasp of what Proportional Representation is. Wikipedia has a pretty good explanation in its Proportional Representation article that I believe would help you better understand the system which I am proposing.

Not everyone who runs would be guaranteed a seat, since there would be a finite number of seats that would be much smaller than the number of candidates for those seats. There would not be a Democratic stranglehold of any sort, since a PR system would damage the Democratic Party as much as it would damage the GOP.

The two parties are basically umbrella organizations that would not last long under most PR systems because they are too broadly focused for most people's tastes. They would last longer as caucuses within Congress, but would lose much of their power.

Proportional Representation would reflect the proportion of the popular vote received by all parties in the election. In fact, the Democrats and Republicans would both lose seats at a decent speed once the system started, first to the Libertarians and the Tea Party, but eventually a more liberal offshoot of the Democrats would appear. I don't even discount states such as Texas even becoming host to parties that would lobby for state Independence.