#like that cgp grey video where he’s like if it’s a matter of being separated by land you gotta count europe asia and africa as one big thing

[le-agent-egg]

Moot you said something that left me a bit confused, you said America is separated by two parts, North and South, but I've always learned that it was actually separated in 3 parts, North America, Central America and South America 🤔

i am such a moron i was thinking of just continents but yeah i should have also said central america. i was not on my a-game yesterday lmao

[therisingdragon]

The most representative system given our current technology

Currently the United States uses a representative system known formally as “first past the post” (FPTP). It seems intuitive, you separate the country into chunks, you elect representatives to represent the people from those chunks, and those representatives vote on federal policy. Under FPTP the candidate with the most votes in a running election wins the right to represent the district.

There are two major notable flaws with this system.

The first flaw is the spoiler effect, resulting in two parties in a FPTP system, every single time. This video by CGP Grey will explain it to you in interactive form but I’ll explain it in text from here. Your vote will not matter if your candidate gets knocked out in a field of 4 or more candidates, so you vote for the next best option, the candidate who’s a little further from you down the political spectrum but not as extreme and “far less evil” than candidate B waving his arms screaming about imminent doom. Congratulations! Your chosen candidate won! Not as ideal a choice but at least you averted certain doom, right? The next election cycle, candidate B’s supporters want results, but they don’t want to lose, so they side with the more moderate candidate C. This continues until two candidates are left. Most voters are locked into strategic voting for the lesser of two evils.

One solution to this is the single-transferrable vote system, where voters rank their preferred candidates, most to least preferred. The candidate with the least votes is knocked out and his votes are transferred to the voters’ next stated preference. This repeats until a candidate has a majority. This solves the spoiler effect but not the next flaw.

The second flaw is one that has been in the headlines every once in a while. Gerrymandering. The Republicans have done it in states they control, the Democrats have done it in states they control. The general strategy is, “pack” as many supporters of the opposition party into one district and “crack” the rest of the opposition voters so their votes are essentially meaningless. Congratulations, in a state with 60% green voters, yellow holds 80% of the congressional seats.

The most commonly suggested solution is an independent electorate drawing board. However, that solution does not eliminate the bias, it only places it somewhere else. District drawing is not a simple task. People live packed into cities and spread out over the country. The shape of population spread is varied and nonintuitive. Try to create politically competitive districts and you may have marginalized a certain race of voters. Try to split districts by distinct communities and you have, once again, partisanally gerrymandered. Split voters into districts to try to get a legislature that closely represents the political landscape of the state or country and you have neglected that people tend to move around: eventually what was once valid will have an adverse effect. Even shortest-line split is vulnerable to this. The imbalance of population will cause uneven splits in electoral distributions.

There’s a system I believe ideal which allows for direct participation and accountability while delivering the benefits of variable representation called liquid democracy, but until we have secure, verifiable, rapid-response electorate systems, liquid democracy is infeasible, so I will not go over it here. If you want to find out more, here is a link.

Instead, I will vouch for proportional representation. The definition of proportional representation is what it sounds like; representation by proportion of votes attained. Here, citizens are not assigned to an arbitrarily drawn district (WARNING: CONTAINS BIASES) and must vote on a representative to take their issues to the upper level. Citizens vote for parties that campaign on a unified platform on the state or federal level. Whatever proportion of votes that party receives out of the whole, is the proportion of seats that party gets in the legislature. If party X gets 20% of the vote of the State of Incidia, they get 20% of the seats in its congress, and are beholden to its supporters to assign delegates whom will support its platform. For instance, due to FPTP, the UK’s representation in its parliament from a recent election looks like this:

Con 315 seats 13,568,734 votes 42.4%

Lab 261 seats 12,824,729 votes 40.08%

SNP 35 seats 977,568 votes 3.05%

Lib Dem 12 seats 2,327,425 votes 7.27%

DUP 10 seats 292,316 votes 0.91%

If the UK used proportional representation instead, the seat distribution would look more like this:

Con 276 seats 13,568,734 votes 42.4%

Lab 261 seats 12,824,729 votes 40.08%

SNP 20 seats 977,568 votes 3.05%

Lib Dem 47 seats 2,327,425 votes 7.27%

DUP 6 seats 292,316 votes 0.91%

“ I want a representative who lives in my District, understands my District, and will vote the will of the majority in my District, while totally ignoring voters in other Districts. “ So said William Continelli, someone who replied to one of my comments on George Takei’s post about gerrymandering. In an ideal system, everyone’s point of view is represented by one representative. However, using Virginia as an example, the two Senators we’ve elected are establishment Democrats. I’m a progressive. My former neighbor, Tim, moved to Northern Virginia and he’s a die-hard conservative. Who is going to get their voice represented in the US Senate? Who is going to get ignored? Combine that with gerrymandering and the percentage of people who aren’t represented typically numbers around 40%. In the US, that’s 128 million people thrown under the bus by FPTP. In proportional representation, their votes would still count, their voices would still be heard.

Thankfully, there is a system that blends party-proportional representation with FPTP local representation. Its called mixed-member proportional (MMP) representation. Start with FPTP-style local representation, with all its flaws, then double the number of seats in a house of legislature. Second, when people elect representatives, give them a second vote. The original vote is for a local representative, the second vote is for favorite party. Then, compare party distribution of the first half of the seats for local representatives with the distribution of votes for favorite party. Of the second half of seats, distribute one seat to the party with the most missing representation. Compare representation against vote proportion again. Distribute another seat to the party missing the most representation. Repeat this process until the party representation in the legislative house reflects the proportion of votes they got for favorite party. Say you have 55% Democrats and 45% Republicans currently in the House of Representatives, but the vote for favorite party is 40% Democrat, 30% Republican, 20% Libertarian, 10% Green. In this example, Libertarian would get a seat in the House until they hit <10% representation, then the Green Party would get a seat. Then seats would alternate between Libertarian and Green until the Democrats and Republicans were underrepresented. Each remaining seat is distributed to maintain the equilibrium of Proportional Representation. In this system you still have local representatives to contact, but the additional seats makes sure your voice in national issues is still represented.

Personally, I think local representatives should be elected via STV and whole legislative bodies determined via MMP. In fact, the presidency should be determined by, if not popular vote STV, some form of STV. That way, all points of view, all voices, all parties, have a chance to shine.

I watched a Prager University video and this phrase rung strongly with me, “Facts do not care about your feelings.” However, given what’s going on in US politics nowadays, I find the opposite tends to be true, “Your feelings do not care about the facts.” While scientific evidence overwhelming says climate change is happening, what is open for debate is what policy we should take in response to this phenomenon. Instead, climate change itself is being debated.

As suggested by Renee Frey, one potential downside to the proportional representation system is the greater potential for corporate corruption due to the need to campaign nationally or statewide rather than in a single district in order to attain seats in Congress. This would have to be addressed by a public funding system once a party has attained a foothold within the legislative system.

As for effecting this system, it would require a constitutional amendment to implement this system peacefully. Of course, that requires major support, but thankfully not from our corrupt politicians. The constitutional amendment system in the US has a path where one can bypass the approval of Congress.

You are welcome to reply with a rebuttal, however, if I come up with a rebuttal of my own, I will post your answer and my answer to your answer publicly for all to see. Of course, if your argument is solid and I happen to agree, I will also make a post acknowledging that.