Suppose there’s a district with 3 seats. The district is approximately 2/3 Dem, 1/3 Rep. The Democrats have a super-popular candidate, Joe Cool. He’s so popular that all Dems and even some Reps will vote for him.
So they put him up as their first candidate. He gets 85% of the vote. The next two vote getters, at 8% and 7%, are both Republicans, and Dems only get one of three seats.
So they’re better off NOT running their candidate who people actually like, and just putting up two boring drones, who get 33% each.
Shouldn’t a representative know the area they represent? It seems like moving away from districts would mean that representatives would all come from big cities and only represent those in those cities. Why would a politician care what people in eastern Idaho need if all the power is concentrated in Boise.
(1) Democracy operates at lower levels, so state assemblymen, county supervisors, and party committeemen could be drawn from rural areas even if Congressional candidates are not.
(2) In the party list ordering process, rural voters could unite to improve the ranking of their preferred candidate(s). A similar effect is achieved in non-party list preferential-vote systems.
(3) The important role of government omsbudsman could, and perhaps should, be separated from the functions of Congressman, as is done in several of the more enlightened democracies.
I believe I have heard of cases like that going the exact opposite way as well: everybody know how popular that person is, they assume plenty of folks will vote for that person, so they feel secure in using their own vote on someone else. Sometimes, the leading candidate in such a scenario could find their base of support thoroughly undermined by overconfidence.
Sure. But that’s also a bad outcome. If 2/3 of the people in the district have the basic opinion “I love Joe Cool, I also like Mr. BoringDemocrat”, and 1/3 of the people in the district have the basic opinion “I hate all the democrats, I prefer Mr. BoringRepublican”, and there are 3 seats available, then I think we’d all agree that the democratically correct outcome is for Joe Cool, Mr. BoringDemocrat and Mr. BoringRepublican to be elected. So we want a voting system which naturally leads to that outcome, without either the parties or the voters having to be aware of how to game the system, or how to keep their opponents from gaming the system.
In a hypothetical which is purely designed to point out why a “every party nominates 7 candidates, every person gets 7 votes” system is bad, then, no, there is no such thing as an independent or a third party.
The sensible approach to voting in multiple-rep districts is to supply each voter with five ballots: each ballot is valid on a specific date, two weeks apart from the next/previous ballots. When a voting date passes, the ballots are tallied and the counts are reported. On any given voting date, the voter has the opportunity to vote for the first time or revise a previous vote. If a voter puts in their ballot in week 2 and does not submit a revision, that will be their vote.
Thing is, there are polls and rumblings and stuff, but then election day and the grand results that no one knows for sure what they will be. How is that preferable to being able to see actual poll numbers for two or three months?
Because while the other 3 candidates fight it out for all of the Boise votes, I can take most of the panhandle and eastern Idaho vote.
But let’s talk about who Representatives actually represent. Isn’t there something to be said for a Representative that would be the best candidate for farmers lets say. In that respect, doesn’t it make since that all farmers in a state have a chance to consolidate their votes for one or two people to represent their interests?
But should all the farmers be able to consolidate their vote for one or two people, but all the computer programmers are NOT able to consolidate their votes, because the farmers are concentrated in one or two districts, but the computer programmers aren’t?
Among all the various paradoxes and gerrymanderings and so forth, part of the argument against geographical districts is, imho, that geography matters far less than it used to in this internet age.
And depending on how the system is set up, some of the proposed schemes being discussed here would allow all of the farmers to vote for Jane Tractorman, who was known as a friend of the farmer, and showed up at all the farm trade shows and gave her stump speech… and if she got enough votes, she would be elected. And even if she wasn’t officially representing the district of Farmtown, she could still function as the unofficial representative of farmers and their interests… she would know that, and the farmers would know that, and many of the same incentives and feedback mechanisms would exist.
It is my notion, that is why you have never heard it before. My state has all-mail-in balloting (I can take mine to a drop box about 3 miles away) and a no-party primary late in the summer. It seemed like a natural extension to the process: all the candidates would be listed and voters could observe how they were actually faring throughout the process and shift their votes if they wanted to move away from a fading player.
How to make vote revision workable might be a challenge, but I think it could be workable, and not having to do all the tally on Tuesday night could take a tad bit of pressure off the polling offices.
So you’re not talking about something where there’s the result of the result of the election, and then people can see the result, and then they can vote again… rather, just that someone who did mail in a week ahead can change their vote 3 days ahead? If so, just allow infinite voting for everyone in any method, with only the last vote counting. So you can do mail in 5 weeks ahead, then do an online vote a week ahead (totally cancelling out your mail in vote), and then go to the polling place Tuesday morning if you want (totally cancelling out your online vote), and then go to the polling place again Tuesday evening (totally cancelling out all previous votes).
If so, that’s an interseting idea, but doesn’t really address the types of issues that are being discussed in this thread…
No. You get 5 paper ballots, with envelopes. They are marked with a number/bar code that ties them together, with control numbers that verify each ballot. The ballots arrive ten weeks, or so, from the election deadline. The first ballots submitted are tallied eight weeks out, and the preliminary tally is reported. Every two weeks, another tally will be reported, according to the ballots submitted for that week (each ballot is dated and may only be submitted for tally on/by that specific date).
So, no, you do not get to willy-nilly pick-and-choose when you vote, it is all on a strict schedule. But you get to see official word on how the vote is progressing. This is in lieu of spring primaries, making the process more compact and more flexible, and allowing voters to respond to what the polling looks like, making it less going-in-blind. It would, for instance, attract opponents of ballot measure 34726 one fortnight and proponents the next, which I think would be a good thing.
There was an indecisive presidential election because voter couldn’t poke a hole in a perforated piece of paper with a pointy metal lance. You expect them to understand this plan?
That’s interesting at least in a theoretical sense. Are you better off voting early, so that your candidate leaps out to an early lead and seems inevitable? Or are you better off convincing a whole bunch of your supporters to wait to vote at the last possible moment to lure the other side into a false sense of security?
And how would it affect third parties? People could vote Nader or Sanders on the first 4 ballots to ensure that their vote was heard before switching on the main party candidate if it looked like the third party was doomed on the final ballot.
Overall, however, it seems like the main thing it does is make something that already less than half the population does even more intimidating.
I don’t understand what you are responding to. I’m advocating at-large voting to eliminate districting so for example (California) if the farmers in the Central Valley and Orange County want to get together and vote for Joe Cropduster they can. Likewise all of the techfirms can get together no matter where they are and support Jane Patentprotector.