Just a little thought experiment. Let’s say the only two political parties in the Divided States of America are the Whigs and the Tories. In most communities, there is a 60/40 split of Whigs over Tories. The federal govt could end up with 90+% of the representatives from the Whig party and they would have total control of all aspects of government, despite having only a narrow advantage among the populace. Basically, there is no direct link between the views of the population and the views of the governing body. The government’s distribution is determined more by quirks of where people of similar views decide to live geographically, or possibly where district lines are drawn.
Furthermore, why should the party with 51% of the seats in the government get total control over every decision? That doesn’t seem very democratic either. What if every decision was determined by probability dice or a lottery ball system? Seems ridiculous, but is it better to give total authority to the party with 51 representatives in the Senate? Or 218 in the House?
So why do we keep doing things this way? We are essentially assigning a random government to rule over us with total authority and zero representation of anyone in the minority. Representative government, at least under our federal system, is just a myth.
Largely, the reason the US has evolved into the political mess it is in, is because there is greater and greater pressure to hold the number of political parties at two, which removed any incentive to compromise. This has happened through a series of presidential candidates who were so odious, the electorate had no choice but to vote against the worse candidate, rather than for the better, concentrating that thrust on a single nobody with a chance of consolidating the vote against the worse.
So the real demon in the representative democracy lies in the selection of the party candidates at the level where they preach to their own choir… When the only person who really wants the power is the one who is most enthusiastically prone to abusing it.
Dilbert: “That smacks of abuse of power.”
Wally: “Why else would anybody want power?”
Of course, to reform the system, you’d need elected representatives who want to reform the system, and it’s usually not to their advantage to do so. In a country where gerrymandering occurs, it’s very unlikely.
The lack of representation is also something that happens in Canada, despite (or because of?) our having more than 2 parties. Justin Trudeau campaigned on reforming this system in 2015, and got many votes for it. His party then won 184 out of 338 ridings, forming a majority government for 4-5 years… with under 40% of the overall vote. A few weeks ago he did what most governments do on this issue: he backed down.
Yes, it is a combination of problems. To get more accurate representation, what about a system like this?
First we redraw district lines with much larger districts, at least 5 times larger than what we have now. District borders must be approved by a bipartisan commission. No more gerrymandering.
Within each district, there will be a coalition of representatives. If a district votes 60-40 for one party over the other, then the representatives in the coalition will be roughly 60% from the winning party. There will be rounding errors, sure, but let the math settle that. The coalition has to learn to work together, or stay in opposition and vote along party lines.
The individuals who are top of the ticket for each party (and thus be assured of getting a seat) would be determined in the primary. Then in the general election, your choice would be between Party X led by Cand 1 and 2 or Party Y led by Cand 3 and 4.
The end result would hopefully be that the representative govt would much more closely align with the views of the populace.
What you describe can be achieved with multi-member districts using the single transferable vote (STV). STV actually lets you get rid the primaries as well, because you can rank all the candidates rather than having to choose one candidate or one party.
I think all systems of government are illogical to varying degrees, but the absence of government is even less logical. So what can you do?
And nobody’s going to change their form of government just because you convince them that the way things currently work is illogical. As some 18th century dude said, “all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
In a country where 77% of the population is of one race, your choice is to gerrymander or exclude minorities. In a more homogenous country the answer may be different, but in the US their must be deliberately designed minority majority districts to avoid disenfranchising 23% of the population.
From your cite:
Oddly enough, Wired says this is not gerrymandering when it obviously is, by definition -
ger·ry·man·der
verb
manipulate the boundaries of (an electoral constituency) so as to favor one party or class.
Go up to any arbitrary voters picked at random. Ask them the following questions:
How many senators does your state have in Congress? Please name them.
Please name your Representatives in the House.
List the ten most important issues that you believe the country is presently facing. What is the position of each of your political representatives named above on those issues? Do you agree with them? Explain why or why not, citing actual verifiable facts to support your position.
Oh, hell, just ask them to name the three branches of government – half of them probably can’t do that either. Also ask them where they get their news.
You see where I’m going with this. The problem of representative democracy has very little to do with how votes are counted. It has a lot more to do with how and why votes are cast.
Part of the issue is that in the beginning, the system as described in the Constitution was party-agnostic, and we were supposed to be voting for individual candidates, NOT for a party. So we ended up with single-member districts and first-past-the-post voting. This system naturally lends itself to a two-party system when parties are introduced.
I think it’s all illogical; I don’t like the idea of being quite so in bed with political parties as proportional representation implies, yet I don’t like the sort of unrepresented minority that two party, FPTP voting schemes generate either.
Totally right - I’ll just add that our Founders (Peace be upon them) were drawing up their plans before political parties and proportional representation were invented in anything close to their modern forms. If they’d known about parties, PR, and any number of other issues we deal with today, the whole thing would’ve been different.
(I hate appeals to “the wisdom of the Founders;” they did pretty well with what they knew at the time, but they also expected us to improve on their work, not use it as an excuse for maintaining the status quo.)
“Furthermore, why should the party with 51% of the seats in the government get total control over every decision? That doesn’t seem very democratic either.”
I’d recommend CGP Grey’s excellent series of short videos on voting systems and their shortcomings for a starting point on thinking about these issues and how various alternative systems address them. Simple and entertaining: http://www.cgpgrey.com/politics-in-the-animal-kingdom/
I’m not sure why this story is relevant, but I will tell it anyway.
About 35 years ago, I sat as a non-voting parent representative on our local school board. There were 15 voting members + 2 parent reps. I won’t say it worked perfectly, but issues were discussed calmly and then came the vote. There were no identifiable factions, although certain people did seem to vote similarly. After reorganization, there were 21 voting members and, quite suddenly, parties appeared and all hell broke loose and the board has not recovered. Somewhere between 15 and 21, there was a phase change.