Our current system for electing representatives is based on population size. A state’s population determines the number of representatives it has, and the state draws up districts and holds elections in those districts to determine who those representatives are. One of the big problems I see with this system is that if a population in a district is heavily divided on certain issues, you end up with a close election where almost 50% of the population is completely unhappy with the outcome. For example, in 2010 in Oregon’s 1st Congressional District, the Democrat received 54.7% of the vote, while the Republican received 41.9%. That means that even though 122,000 people wanted a Republican, they got a Democrat instead.
So how about this. Instead of basing representatives on population and drawing up districts, we base it all on interest groups. When you register to vote, in addition to choosing a political party, you also select an interest group that you most closely identify with. Examples could include, Christian, gay/lesbian, environmental, small business, big business, etc. Then, instead of districts, an election is held for each interest group (or the largest interest groups). So for each group, they would all know that any candidate up for election would support their most important issue(s), and the differences would come down to other issues that are presumably less important to that particular group. You could very well end up with two Republicans running against each other. Both support lower taxes and smaller government, but one is in favor of gun control and the other is not.
Example:
Imagine a state with a population of 1000. The state is allowed 10 representatives and divided into 10 districts with 100 people in each. Thus the ratio of people to representatives should be 100:1. But in a typical election, 40% or more might go virtually unrepresented because the candidate who got elected probably has drastically different political stances than them. Let’s say that 300 of these 1000 people are part of interest group X. In theory, these 300 people should get 3 representatives. However, only 80 of them live in a single district. The rest are evenly distributed amongst the other 9 districts. With the current system, they would only get 1 representative. With the new system, they would get the 3 they deserve, and more of them would be happy with the choice. Not only that, but the other 20 people in that one district who aren’t part of group X would also be fairly represented because they wouldn’t be bound to whatever candidate was chosen for them by a group that might not share their beliefs.
So what do you think? Could such a system work? For reference, I’m neither in favor of, nor opposed to, this idea. It’s simply an idea.
Well political parties each represent a huge variety of issues. My suggestion is to select a single issue (or perhaps two or three issues?) which are most important to you, and divide it up that way. For example, I have several friends who are gay. They won’t vote for any candidate that is opposed to gay marriage and equal rights for gays. In fact, when New York Republican Senator Roy McDonald voted in favor of gay marriage, they sent large campaign contributions to him, even though they live in Washington. The point being, their most important issue is gay rights. Of course they care about other issues, but if there was an interest group for gay rights, and elections were based on interest groups, then they can be assured to have a representative that cares specifically about that one issue in particular.
Because, really, there’s only two parties. Yes, there are technically more than two, but what we’d up with is almost half Democrats, almost half Republicans, and a very small percentage of “other.” The point is, even within parties, there’s division on certain issues. Using the above example, Roy McDonald could potentially run as a Republican in favor of gay rights, against a Democrat who is in favor of gay rights, and no matter who wins, the gay rights interest group is guaranteed to have someone who is on their side for their most important issue.
I strongly support SOMETHING similar to what you’re saying, although the precise details are tricky (and possibly actually provably impossible to get right, might be one of them there voting paradoxes). The idea that people who live near each other automatically have similar enough interest that they should share representation was sketchy to begin with and is just ludicrous in this day and age.
This would also potentially greatly help us break the stranglehold of the two party system… if the Green Party (on the left) or the Tea Party (on the right) has very strong appeal to 5 to 15 percent of the citizenry, they will currently basically never elect anyone to any representative body unless their 5 to 15 percent happens to strongly cluster geographically. Whereas they ought to be able to elect somewhere between 5 and 15 percent of the membership of whatever legislative body, if the representative democracy is even remotely fair.
That’s only because of our current electoral system in the US. There’s already several electoral systems that encourage multiple parties and they would work in the US. It would be a major change for the US, but if your goal is to have proportional representation there are systems available that would produce that result.
We’ve got multiple parties and “first past the post” elections here in Canada, though in practice the Parliamentary majority tends to alternate between the two largest parties. If Americans want a third party, they have to find somebody willing to invest the time, money, effort and patience to establish one, rather than try to jigger the voting system, especially into something as complex as the OP suggests. It’s kind of a pity the Dixiecrats fell apart - you could have had Republicans, Democrats and a solid Southern-White-Racist bloc in perennial third place and without the ability to affect the larger two parties.
On the contrary, the third party would have the deciding votes in any issue at any time in which neither of the two majors had an outright (and solid, not the same thing) majority. That would give them disproportionate power. If they were consistently siding with one party, they’d both find it easier to merge, or the major party would find it easy to co-opt the position that made the third party popular. That’s how it has always worked in the US, and, given that the system actually does not legally recognize parties at all (it’s true), that’s the way it pretty much is destined to work.
In your example, the racist faction in the South that Thurmond appealed to (the dichotomous history of the Democratic Party on race is a different topic) were eventually repudiated by the Democrats and immediately courted by the Republicans - including Thurmond himself.