Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[GlyphGryph]

You could just have each representative get a number of votes equal to the people in his grid, right?

[PTTG??]

You could just have each representative get a number of votes equal to the people in his grid, right?

Yes. Leafsnail is just testing us.

[Leafsnail]

That... seems extremely problematic.  It depends on the grid size... you're either gonna get representatives with completely ridiculous number of votes relative to everyone else (so, the guy who represents the large city in the area controls 1 quarter of the votes from that place), or a staggeringly huge number of representatives (so the city's nicely divided up, but the dustbowl nearby has 500 representatives).  It would seriously skew the nature of any debate these representatives would have (lots of people who don't matter at all could get all the debating time... only to be voted down by the guy who has 20,000 times more votes than all of them put together).

I understand why you'd want uniform constituencies, but they should surely be of uniform population rather than uniform geographical area.

[Lord Shonus]

Yeah, all this would do is give states like Wyoming representation grossly out of proportion to their population. (For example, New Hampshire has a population 2.5 times as great as Wyoming, but a tenth of the land area.)

[PTTG??]

Alright, you've changed my mind. I still feel that there can be made some kind of very simple algorithm that will create these regions effectively.

How about we keep the grid shape, but simply distort it so that every region has exactly the same population- and we distort it according to some regular, unchangeable program?

[GlyphGryph]

Okay, how about this:
Basic grid. Every square that goes over certain population gets subdivided into four squares.
Every rep from a square gets voting power equal to population.

I don't actually support the grid system, just thinking of ideas to make it work.

[PTTG??]

Okay, how about this:
Basic grid. Every square that goes over certain population gets subdivided into four squares.
Every rep from a square gets voting power equal to population.

I don't actually support the grid system, just thinking of ideas to make it work.

That sounds really good. However, we'd need to have an additional caviot- If a region is below a certain size, it is merged with the smallest neighboring region until it is large enough The bottom range may be 1000 people, and the top range could be 5000.

The lines would be redrawn every four years.

Finally, if a region has changed every time in the past four redistrictings, there may be a vote to lock it at it's current size and shape for the next four redistrictings. This will avoid a town fluctuating on the edge of a certain size and being redrawn for decades.

[Africa]

A related problem is the less people that live in your state, the more power you have in the Senate. North Dakota has as many people as a section of Los Angeles, but they get two senators, same as the teeming millions that live in California.

In practice, of course, this means Republican-leaning voters have disproportionate power in the Senate.

[Leafsnail]

Basic grid. Every square that goes over certain population gets subdivided into four squares.
Every rep from a square gets voting power equal to population.

I don't actually support the grid system, just thinking of ideas to make it work.

What happens with those with less than the required population?

And I really don't like the idea of having some ultra-powerful representatives (whose grids coincide with the centre of cities) and some representatives who have purely symbolic power.  I think all representatives of a house need to have an equal say if there is to be a meaningful debate (rather than just coddling up to The Guy With Fifty Times More Votes Than You).

That sounds really good. However, we'd need to have an additional caviot- If a region is below a certain size, it is merged with the smallest neighboring region until it is large enough The bottom range may be 1000 people, and the top range could be 5000.

The lines would be redrawn every four years.

Finally, if a region has changed every time in the past four redistrictings, there may be a vote to lock it at it's current size and shape for the next four redistrictings. This will avoid a town fluctuating on the edge of a certain size and being redrawn for decades.

This answers the first question, but could result in some damn strange electoral districts (which, say, snake randomly all over the place).  Really you need to have something for large grid squares too though (ie they'd be divided in half).  I'm not sure if a ratio of 5 to 1 for biggest to smallest is fair enough, although obviously the numbers could be adjusted.

I think there's definitely potential in having some way of automatically drawing electoral districts, as long as it's always clear who's representing you, I guess.

[Starver]

Alternate system:
Everyone get's a "vote of trust" that they can assign to anyone[1].  Anyone who gets a VoT given to them passes it up the chain along with their own personal VoT.  Anyone who does not assign a VoT is valued with the total number of VoTs they have accumulated either directly or by however many degrees of proxy.  The person with the highest value is considered the 'winner'.

Yes, this could give a minority leader in the VoTing stakes, but a coalition is easy to arrange (by the leader, wanting to get a majority leadership, or by other "parties" wanting to exceed that person's VoT-count) by those who wish to do so assigning their VoT (and thus also their supporting sub-total) to the person who will represent this coalition.

Everyone has the right to understand where their onward-vote ends up and to change their VoT (re-allocate, de-allocate or allocate what had previously been held back) at any time[2].


Alternately, and more conventionally, absolutely every ballot has "Re-Open Nominations", so that spoiled ballots may only be counted as representing the number of people too stupid to use ballot papers, non-votes may only really be taken as showing the amount of apathy, tactical voting for third[4] parties is only the correct option when one considers the third party most worthy of representing you and utter frustration and everyone is capable of explicitly saying "None of this lot float my boat" by going for RON, rather than accidentally help to get an unsuited minority into power (by misplaced action or complete inaction).


[1] I already know a couple of different methods to deal with "cyclic trusts", but am still undecided as to which to use.

[2] Could be cue for a chaotic ever-changing system, but would also reveal the "will of the people".  On the other hand, I'm a great big fan of non-populist systems (e.g. House Of Lords, without all this stupid "elected second house" stuff that merely makes it into a clone of the "first house" in all but name, and nearly that at as well anyway!!!) so this would only be half of the electoral system, the other half surely being a different system altogether[3].

[3] Omnes: "Being a different system", and don't call me Shirley!

[4] Or fourth parties, or fifth ones... or indeed second parties, in most circumstances.

[Andir]

The problem with most of these situations is that the farmers get screwed royally ... especially concerning land taxation.  If you go to a total populace based system, the Presidential election would be won by a very few large cities and nobody else would get to voice their opinion.

If you give power to the representative with the most populace, the cities will vote in favor of land taxes (Why shouldn't they?  A good majority don't even pay land taxes and rent.  Even if they did own land, it's not hundreds of acres.  It's usually 1/4 of an acre [enough for their house] if that.)  Yeah, rent could go up, but the tenant isn't going to blame the vote they put in for raised school taxes.  They blame the landlord.

You also place extreme power in city voting power.  If a city wants to do something (arbitrary examples) like flood some land for a reservoir or build a city owned solar power farm then you pretty much have 10,000+ votes vs. that one land-owner/farmer that might be using that land to keep himself afloat.  Sure, he's going to get a payoff for the value of land, but now he has to find some other line of work or more land to sustain his cost of living.  You eventually push out the people who make food and drive up the cost of living for everyone without them even being aware.  All they know is that the cost a the grocer is going up and all they blame is the evil store owner.

Even the vote of trust system.  If all the farmers decided to give their vote of trust to one person, that person would have to travel much further to represent their constituent and the farmer will likely choose someone more local with more face time.  In large cities, this isn't as much of an issue.

(Disclaimer: I'm not a farmer myself, or a landowner [yet], but I grew up in a rural area and I understand why some of these people need a way to offset the "greed" of city dwellers who sometimes do not realize that they are hurting themselves.)

[Leafsnail]

On the other hand, I'm a great big fan of non-populist systems (e.g. House Of Lords, without all this stupid "elected second house" stuff that merely makes it into a clone of the "first house" in all but name, and nearly that at as well anyway!!!)

I'm pretty sure the House of Lords is one of the worst implementations of a non-elected house in the entire world.  It includes random hereditary peers (ie people whose ancestors once were earls or dukes or whatever), bishops (because hey, we have a state religion), people who lent/ gave the ruling party money (since Prime Ministers can appoint Lords...) and MPs who lost their seats (since again, Prime Ministers can appoint Lords).  Really, the idea that the Lords is a non-populist system is somewhat shattered by the fact that the elected leader can appoint members (and then there's a random mishmash of other people there).

The problem with most of these situations is that the farmers get screwed royally ... especially concerning land taxation.  If you go to a total populace based system, the Presidential election would be won by a very few large cities and nobody else would get to voice their opinion.

You could say the same of any other social group.  The solution to this is surely "pass laws to protect people from being screwed over in this way" rather than "give landowners massive overrepresentation on every issue".  Unless you believe that landowners are fundamentally more deserving of votes, of course (which I guess goes back to the old British system...).

[Aqizzar]

Even the vote of trust system.  If all the farmers decided to give their vote of trust to one person, that person would have to travel much further to represent their constituent and the farmer will likely choose someone more local with more face time.  In large cities, this isn't as much of an issue.

I think this one kinda lost face around the invention of the train.  Besides, rural or urban, no representative could ever hope to meet more than a fraction of the people he represents.

I don't have a problem with the posit anyway.  It's the 21st century, vastly more people live in cities, therefore, cities have more say, and they should.  Not proportionally, but just by simple numbers.  Protecting the resources of rural areas, such as the apt reservoir construction issue, is a matter of better policy, not giving rural areas more proportional say in the region's politics.  "Better policy" is a pretty whimsical idea I know, but this all academic anyway, I'm allowed to rely on optimism to make a case.

[PTTG??]

I strongly dislike the concept that a person is worth less because he lives in a city.

[Andir]

I strongly dislike the concept that a person is worth less because he lives in a city.

It's not about the worth of the person, but the scope that they live in.  I would agree that people should be treated exactly equal to each other but that requires that people be more educated about their choices/consequences.  Ignorance can quickly get exploited to further a cause as we are all aware (or should be.)