Would you support Proportional Representation for US Congressional Elections?

True, but mob rule should not be the norm either. Everyone's voice should be heard even if your county has fewer people.

 

The Libertarian in me says yes so we can finally get some seats............but then the realization that in most PR system you need a minimum showing of 10% or more means that even then we wouldn't get any seats.

My biggest concern is that it would become a political nightmare of constantly shifting alliances which has upsides and downsides. Mainly being that you can avoid some of the party line votes that you see today but on the other hand legislation becomes so watered down with compromises to keep all the factions that make up the majority happy as to render any meaningful policies toothless and irrelevant.

 

I understand how PR works. Your proposal seems to be that if the democrats get 54% of the votes for house, then they get 54% of the seats. That favors urban areas over rural areas; it favors democrats over republicans; it favors larger states over smaller states. It nationalizes elections. I oppose that even if it meant that I might be able to cast all my votes for a single candidate as opposed to dispersing them among first second and third preference. I simply oppose creating more centralized government than we already have too much of.

 

You're using flawed logic, not to mention flawed terminology. This isn't about Democrats versus Republicans, ideology is liberalism versus conservatism.

Since the United States Census of 1920, more Americans have lived in cities than lived in rural areas. From 1920 until today, the liberal-leaning party has held Congress far less than the conservative party, only fifteen or sixteen times. Using your logic, that trend should be reversed and Conservatives should have had Congressional control 15-16 times. Now, yes, urban areas will be favored over rural areas, because seventy-five percent of Americans live in cities.

This system would allow farmers to bond together and create their own party. If they do form, say the American Rural Party, they could potentially control a full 25% of the Congressional delegation. That has the potential in a Saint Lague system that favors smaller parties, to be one of the largest political parties.

In the 1970s and continuing until just a few Congresses ago, the United States went through a partisan reformation. While the two parties were undergoing their partisan switch, they also became less geographically-oriented and more oriented on a party platform. Now, there is a roughly equal number of Liberals and Conservatives in the United States, and a sizable fraction of the population that will change their vote to choose the best of the two parties for the time being.

Your logic assumes that any urban center would automatically vote Liberal. However, most Southern cities will still vote Conservative and the split between conservative and liberal parties would still maintain parity with each other. The moderates would become their own parties, as would the moderates. The Conservatives and Liberals would also split in terms of authoritarianism and libertarianism.

This wouldn't centralize the elections over what they already are. Yes, there's the chance that your district's Representative may have won his seat because his party received enough votes nationwide to secure a seat and he was the highest-percentage candidate from that party. However, candidates like that would more than likely listen very attentively to their district's voters as a whole if they are interested in winning election in their own right. An idea like that could hasten the partisan decompression.

 

It has to do with proportions, not size. If 40% of people vote for Democrats, 40% vote for Republicans, 10% vote for Libertarians, and 10% vote for Greens, that is what the make up of the house would be. You vote for the party, not the individual, and often the party has a public list of candidates in the order they will fill the seats. So say there are 100 available seats. Each party would have a list of 100 candidates. If the Democrats got 40%, the top 40 of their list would become members of Congress.

 

There's two types of PR, open-list, and closed-list. Closed-list you vote for the party, and open-list, you vote for a candidate. I prefer open-lists because that gives a more democratic feel and ensures honesty by the parties.

My idea would be an open-list system, it preserves a more local feel for the elections and would eliminate the need for parties to have lists of 100-200 candidates.

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There's two types of PR, open-list, and closed-list. Closed-list you vote for the party, and open-list, you vote for a candidate. I prefer open-lists because that gives a more democratic feel and ensures honesty by the parties.

My idea would be an open-list system, it preserves a more local feel for the elections and would eliminate the need for parties to have lists of 100-200 candidates.

 

No, but "mob rule" IS democracy. And having your minority voice heard should not necessarily translate into power. If it does translate into a power the majority doesn't approve of, you have tyranny of the minority. The Senate does not represent the majority except coincidentally. The House does not currently represent the majority, which is hogwash. The Bush v Gore election was not representative on the majority. The country is hamstrung by the minority.

 

Mob rule is NOT democracy.

 

Technically, it is. The rule of the majority is democracy, which is mob rule.

The country is hamstrung by the minority for a reason. Densely populated cities, like NYC, SF, LA, PH, ATL, etc. skew the results of elections. That's why there's an electoral college. The founders knew that heavily populated urban areas would result in like-minded thinking or a hive-mind mentality, so the popular vote would almost always be skewed in favor of the big city thinking (which, in these days is usually liberally minded). To offset this skewing, they implemented electoral college votes.

After thinking on this, I would probably opt for keeping things the same, but dismantling the party system, which is corrupted (it'll never happen, but the 2 party system already creates bias, merely by party favoritism - many people vote Democrat or Republican, because they always have or they come from families who always have). A PR system would very much result in majority rule, at all times, and would be heavily influenced by big city hive-minds. For one, the flyover states would be grossly depowered during election seasons. Some of these states only have 700-800 thousand residents, which is equivalent to a smaller city in NY, NJ or CA.

 

I believe you're not quite grasping the difference with it.

Mob rule, or ochlocracy to use the technical Greek terminology, is analogous to herd behavior.

Wikipedia's article puts it best as: Ochlocracy ("rule of the general populace") is democracy ("rule of the people") spoiled by demagoguery, "tyranny of the majority", and the rule of passion over reason. So while, Ochlocracy is, technically, a form of democracy, it is a form that is not true to democratic principles since there is a lack of free will.

The Electoral College is a different organ in its entirety from this system. That organ has been misused quite a bit in American history. It has benefits, but those benefits are only apparent if the Electoral College is functioning in a much smarter way.

As currently utilized, the Electoral College is an all-or-nothing proposition in all but two states that are largely insignificant. The Electoral College was not really designed to select the President outright. Rather, it was meant to be a means by which the field of Presidential Candidates would be narrowed so that the House of Representatives would then pick the President. That idea went by the wayside when States began giving all of their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote. Doing that led to swing-states being important.

As usual, I have an idea to fix that little Charlie Fox too. The candidate who gets the popular vote in each Congressional district wins that district. Then, the two remaining Electoral Votes either goes to the winner of the popular vote or to the winner of the most districts. That one proposal alone would see a much closer electoral vote with each election.

Having the House select the President would then make the President more accountable to the Legislature.

PR wouldn't necessarily be dominated by the big cities. Just going off a quick calculation based on data from Wikipedia, the top 287 cities in the United States have a population of only 87.7 million people. That's only the cities proper though, not their entire metropolitan areas. I do not think that the rural areas will be as marginalized as some would think using a PR system. Farmers would arguably be at an advantage. Many issues facing the agricultural sector of the economy are similar whether the farmer is in Kansas, California, Georgia, Virginia, Iowa, or Hawaii.

If you keep things the same, you cannot dismantle the two-party system. The two-party system is because of the status quo. The current system is like the T-1000 Terminator, it'll just reform in a short amount of time. To permanently dismantle a two-party system and keep a first-past-the-post system you would need a Constitutional Amendment that would allow for limits to be placed on parties, that'd be wholly inefficient and un-American from where I sit, because it'd allow one party to say that another party was too big.

I'm already working on a protest movement called the No More Sheeple movement. A few friends are helping me organize it for the spring to get the word out that you don't HAVE to be beholden to a two-party system.

 

You aren't thinking about how peoples behavior would change if this system were implemented!! I currently haven't voted since 2008. That is not out of apathy or indifference, it is because I feel that both parties are corrupt and in no way represent my interests or my beliefs. However, if I knew my vote for a third party would actually count, I would be more inclined to vote. Similarly, people avoid third party votes because they see them as "a waste of a vote." If your vote went to a third party that had a chance to get seats in congress, it would no longer feel like a wasted vote, and more people would vote for other parties besides the current big two. You would no longer have the disparate elements of the Republican party all in one group, because elitist northeastern Republicans don't really see eye to eye with bible thumping southern Republicans. They might still form a coalition together, but those groups could be represented by separate parties. Similarly as a person who is actually left wing, I would no longer have to choose between voting for the corporatist center-right Democratic party, and could choose to vote for a party that was actually left-wing!!

 

I'm Canadian but we are imo desperately in need of PR...as it is now where I live 40% of the electorate that haven't had a representative who reflects their views in 10, 20, 30, 40 yrs and some have never had any in their lifetime and if the system doesn't change never will.... this shouldn't be acceptable in a true democracy...I want my vote to count!...

 

Mob rule IS democracy. It is the law of the land in every state in the union. Just not in the Republic.

 

That probably used to be the case but most flyover (red) states now have major cities. Certainly the flyover states have Phoenix, Las Vegas, Denver, Houston, Dallas, KC, St. Louis, New Orleans, Memphis, Atlanta, etc. AND people live in the flyover states because they WANT to, not forced to. Not only that, most people probably live in 3-4 states before it is all over and they don't consider their representation when they move. One man/One vote!!! You don't deserve over-representation just because you are a rancher.

 

I've found I generally agree with you on most issues, but what is wrong with herd behavior? Herds are comprised of individuals and even farmers in rural Nebraska (25 miles from everywhere) can be considered a herd. Protecting the country from herd behavior is a poor reason to compromise democracy.

 

Herd behavior strips humans of their free will.

 

Everybody runs in a herd, probably no more so than in the flyover states. That's no reason to de-democratize anything or to be granting over-representation.

 

What I am proposing is not de-democratization. What we have is undemocratic, and what I am proposing is a system of democracy.

Everybody is in a herd right now not by choice, but because the system has militated towards a herd mentality. THAT'S THE WHOLE PROBLEM. Humans are NOT herd animals, we have free will.

My proposed system establishes a threshold that would be equal to the least-populous district in the country. If a party were to receive that many votes, they would receive one member of Congress. That member of Congress would represent the district that had the highest percentage of first-place votes for that candidate. That representative would also have a responsibility to represent all of his party's voters across the country. It would not over-represent a smaller party because the smaller parties would be required to get the whole threshold again to be assured a second seat.

What we have now is not democracy, and if someone thinks it is democracy, they don't know the meaning of democracy in the first place.

 

That's a philosophical or values issue, not something that should be used rationalize over-representation. And individual is an individual (no values judgment here) is he not?

 

It's not philosophical at all.

Look at our closest biological relatives. All have hierarchical societies, not herds. In fact, I don't know of a single omnivorous mammal that exhibits herd behavior except as a response to danger.

And as I have said, it won't lead to over-representation. A proportional representation system will lead to equitable representation.

What a PR system will, as long as around 600K Americans vote for a party, that party gets a seat in the House of Representatives. That's NOT "over-representation" at all.

 

No, keep the current system. There's no system that is perfect - if you try to make the system more representational you'll always end up with someone on the losing end of a vote, left unrepresented (or underrepresented). That's unavoidable.

Our current system is in place for a reason, one that it seems the majority of Americans are completely ignorant of. We're not a series of provinces, we're a union of states, and there is a world of difference. In our system states vote, not people. Under current law, states can still restrict people from voting. Establishing such a new system would essentially require turning the states into provinces, and would be nigh impossible to pass, since you'd need it approved by 38 states.

 

And such a system will still leave out Americans with around 500k votes, and cut short those with around 1000k votes, leaving them underrepresented. You can't stop such an event without going to a direct vote in Congress by all citizens.

Such a proposed system is also nigh impossible to achieve. Our current system exists to protect small states from being overwhelmed by the wills of stronger states, and in order to pass a law such as you propose, you'd have to convince the small states to shoot themselves. Constitutional law leaves voting laws largely in the hands of states, and such a system as you propose would be ineffective without a constitutional amendment.

 

A secondary goal of this system would see that the size of House constituencies drop from their average of around 600,000 to around 250,000 which is a bit more than what it was when the size of the House was frozen at 435. That would then lower the threshold to 250,000ish. Thus, a party with a million voters across the country would be granted four seats.

Sure, there would need a Constitutional Amendment passed to truly enforce it, since I don't think Baker or Reynolds could make a compelling enough case to say that FPTP is inherently unconstitutional. What we're facing here, is a quandary that this country has faced before, in the wake of Oregon v. Mitchell that was ultimately rendered moot by the passage of the 26th Amendment.

I also believe that it is entirely possible to achieve such a system as long as the public makes their voice heard. Public demonstrations and protests have done much to change the system. It is up to US, the American public to determine whether the government is adequate to the task of governing or if they are deriving their powers from something other than the citizenry they govern. I believe that is the case today in America.

So, because we've got an imperfect system and no system is perfect, we shouldn't strive to better the system anyway? That sounds like a complacency I'm not willing to surrender. I don't know about you, but I am not willing to let my country become beholden to partisan bastards. We know there is a significant number of Libertarians in the United States, enough to get at least two representatives in the current apportionment system in the House, and at least five under a 250,000-constituency district system.

My case is made somewhat by the fact that since 1974, Congressional approval ratings have rarely risen above 50%, and have, for the most part, been around 40%. The only time I found the average had gone above 50% was in the summer and fall of 2001, of those, the post 9/11 numbers were largely due to a swell of patriotism. The average approval rating for the past forty years is lower than what it should be even if people were voting along partisan lines. Numbers that low suggest to me that there is a problem that goes deeper than Congress itself.

Also, voter turnout in the United States is abysmal. For General Elections, turnout is typically between fifty and sixty percent. For midterms, it's usually below 50% and rarely reaches the 50% mark. Using simple math, that means that only about 20%-30% of the country votes for each party. It's not a tyranny of the majority, it's almost a tyranny of a minority.

In the House of Representatives, it's supposed to be the People's House. Since the inauguration of the Constitution, the House of Representatives has been the voice of the Citizens in the Federal Government. However, with every single cycle, we see more Americans grow disenchanted with their government and we have seen voter turnout and Congressional accountability fall.

Even in the Senate, which is supposed to be the State's voice in the Federal Government, it has been subsumed by the desire for more Americans to have a voice in the Federal government. Combine that with the issues the Senate faced in the late Nineteenth Century, it was all but inevitable the Senate would become popularly elected.

A Constitutional Amendment would leave up to the states what method to use, either a D'Hondt, Saint-Lague, or other method of proportional representation.

 

And thus you would dissolve the entire purpose of the electoral process in our union, where you not only rob states of the ability to elect their OWN representatives, you don't even HAVE regional representatives. You have 'party' representatives. A true party system is hardly preferable to a regional system.

Let me give you a tip about political forums: what you just did here is a fail. You cite obscurities in the hope that you'll feel or look smart because you doubt the average person would know what you're talking about. The inability to explain yourself and your thoughts clearly without obscurities doesn't give credit to you, it only takes it away from your argument. Nice job!

blah bleh blah - there is not, and will not be a major public outcry for what you want and, short of violent dismantling of our system, it won't happen. We need less than a quarter of the states to say "f*** this stupid plan" and it CAN NOT pass!

It's not complacency to point out an absurdity in your proposal. You find one imperfection, and think we should dismantle the whole basis of our union so that we can have what is maybe one slightly less imperfect imperfection, even as we dismantle the entire basis of our system of regional representation in turn for PARTY representation - odd, since you just said you're sick of partisan bastards.

No it's not. It's made by that fact just as well as the case that we need a monarchy again because people are unhappy with congress - you're taking one statistic and adding your own view to the interpretation of it, with no factual basis to support your interpretation.

lol, it's not tyranny. It's absolute stupidity to suggest that if I don't care enough about politics to take the time to vote, I'm being subjected to the tyranny of a minority when a party is duly elected in an election I didn't partake in. You obviously don't know what tyranny is.

I'm calling bullsh*t, both on your supposed "facts" and on your interpretation.

lol, WRONG! BOTH the Senate and the House are supposed to be the states voice - why do you think every Congressmen represents only people from ONE state? The two are both modes of state representation, the House based on population and the Senate based on # of states, to ensure that NEITHER the tiny states dictate to the large, nor the large to the small. It is ALL about state representation.

moot.

 

If the purpose is to ensure that the people are not represented, then damn straight I want it gone. If the United States is going to beat its chest and say that we're making the world safe for democracy, and we have a blatantly flawed system that is barely qualified as a democracy as our own system, we're hypocrites. Germany, Japan, Iraq, and Afghanistan all have more democratic systems than we do. The only way to better define irony is having a bunch of idiots dancing on a plane to a song written by a band who died in a plane crash.

Reynolds v. Sims 377 U.S. 533 (1964) was a landmark Supreme Court decision by the Warren Court. In the 8-1 decision, the Court ruled that districts for state legislative districts must be roughly equal in size. Considering that the case dealt with the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, a similar suit could easily strike down the Reapportionment act of 1929 which froze the US House of Representatives at

Reynolds v. Sims is hardly obscure, as it establishes the "One person, one vote" mandate in the United States.

The United States is moving toward a platform-based two-party system. When that happens, more and more people will be disenfranchised, and my ideas will take hold.

I'm sick of the partisan bastards within the United States system. When political discourse is overwhelmingly left to a small number of parties, outside voices are marginalized and minimized.

When Congress has as low of an approval rating as it does currently, there is a definite problem. The solution would be to vote out every incumbent. The only problem is, the parties decide who to run in each district. Since the parties can also gerrymander their districts to their whims in most states, this leads to the trend we have seen of over 90% of the House being reelected each year, and only 5-10 Representatives being voted out each cycle.

Advocating Congressional reform and advocating the abolition of republicanism are two totally different issues.

I know exactly what tyranny is. Tyranny is oppressive rule. When a political view is suppressed, that is a form of tyranny. The Republicans and Democrats do whatever they can to choke out opposing views. In the last election cycle, Libertarian Candidates received a full percent of the vote nationwide, which, under a PR system would have given them at least one and as many as four, seats in the current House, but, because they're widely distributed throughout a country of over three-hundred million people and not concentrated in a single area, they might as well not even vote.

In the 1896 Presidential Election, the first election that was largely influenced by big business, the turnout was almost 80% of registered voters. In the following elections, the trend was a sharp decline in voter turnout. It was a trend that would not be reversed until the 1924 election, when lassiez-faire economic policies were a key issue during the campaign.

If I'm wrong, then you're also calling almost every single Constitutional scholar and arguably even the Framers themselves wrong. Something tells me the Framers aren't wrong.

The House of Representatives was set to be the voice of the Citizens, the Senate was set up to be the voice of the States. Senators were originally set to be appointed by the state legislators and to be a check on the potentially more raucous House.

Maurice Duverger, a noted French political scientist, published several papers in the 1950s and 1960s that point out that first-past-the-post systems inherently lead to a two-party system. It's my belief that the less parties in a system, the more liable the system is to being corrupted.