I have always struggled to understand why many countries keep their first-past-the-post voting system that routinely wastes 50+% of all votes. Theoretically, one party with a relative majority in every state/district could end up with every single seat, even if 60% of the electorate voted against them.
It seems to me that proportional representation makes a lot more sense - seats get assigned according to percentages in a whole district or state, and not all the seats go to the one party with the relative majority (which may, as I said, be even less than 50%). I’m sure that there are reasons to keep these winner-take-all systems around, but so far, no one has been able to give me a good one. So please, fight my ignorance.
Is it just a case of “never change a running system” or is there a valid reason to prefer it over proportional representation?
Not sure if this is the exact forum, but I feel this is more about General Politics than the 2010 election.
The most obvious valid reason in support of the existing system is that has been working well enough for us for more than two centuries – really closer to three centuries, the colonial legislatures were all based on single-member districts – so if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, some would say. Of course, the same argument could have been brought against female suffrage.
Another reason is that single-member-district representation is simple and easy to understand. When you get into PR, there are various complicated forms and schemes – party-list, multi-member districting, etc., etc. – none of which suggests itself as the common-sense way to do it.
I prefer the center-seeking behavior of first past the post. I don’t particularly see the benefit of having extreme left- or right-wing politicians in government. If a political party has fringe views, the first past the post system does a service in sparing the 97% of the rest of the electorate from having to put up with extremist nonsense while trying to govern.
Besides, nobody ever said that the US government is intended to be representative of the passions of the electorate. We’ve got a whole system of checks and balances meant to counter rapid change or momentary passions.
Because we’re stupid. In my state, we have tried to get approval voting going for many years (vote for as many as you like) and the resistance is unbelievable.
Because, in the US we have a tradition of voting for the candidate, not the party. While in many of our government bodies, federal, state and local, representatives will vote along party lines, they are not required to do so, and many do not.
One reason, I suspect, is that many of those pushing other systems are doing so because their party can’t win under the established one.
Another issue is that you can’t have proportional representation in the White House, nor in the Senate as well.
A third is that proportionate representation (if I understand it correctly) does not address the issue completely either. There are, say, 100 seats to be filled. Fringe Party A got 1% of the vote. Therefore, they get one of the seats, even though 99% of the electorate did not want them.
All politics is fundamentally coalitional. In proportional representation people assemble into a bunch of parties each with a little influence; in the US the same people assemble into two parties, have some influence on the platform, and then have a 50% chance of winning. The end result is not terribly different.
Wow, what a response in that short amount of time! Thank you all for your input.
On the issue of fringe/radical parties, might I put forth the German solution (probably not exclusively German, but it’s what I know): If a party doesn’t get at least 5% of the vote in the whole country, they don’t get any seats. This reliably keeps radicals out (we have 5 parties in the German Bundestag at the moment) but doesn’t disenfranchise huge segments of the population in more liberal/more conservative areas.
Yes, but what are they going to do with one seat? There are nationalists in a couple of state parliaments in Germany, but they don’t hold any power - they are heavily shunned by all representatives and hardly ever get re-elected, because the voters see that it’s all nothing but hot air.
I understand the problem with the Senate, but I don’t see why elections for both houses should have to work in the same way.
I also see that you would have to change a whole lot to allow for party lists and the like, but it’s very interesting to hear your opinions.
I believe one of the Founding Fathers, forget which one, did say that a legislature should be “as exact a transcript as possible” of the population it represents. The WTA/FPTP/SMD system produces something more like a distorting funhouse mirror, with some parts of the electorate exaggerated and others reduced to near-invisibility.
Of course, sortition – random selection of citizens, like jury duty – would be statistically likely to produce an “exact transcript,” but then we wouldn’t have a Congress, we would have a focus group, qualified only to vote up-or-down on executive proposals.
Current congressional approval ratings are at 18% and rarely have risen over 50%. (cite)
Re-election rates in the House reliably stay over 90% and the Senate, while not as reliable as the House, clearly has a huge incumbent re-election rate. (cite)
The current system supports keeping the people in power in power. They have no interest in seeing it changed.
Whatever your political stripe the results cited above should bother you (unless of course you happen to be a Congresscritter in which case I am sure you love it).
I’d personally be happier with the relatively higher transparency of a system where the Blue Dogs were in coalition with the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, with the Libertarians, the Chamber of Commerce Party, and the Christian Republican Party in opposition. At least you’d know (better than under the current system) who was sleeping with whom, and at what price.
Besides wield a colossal amount of power in a legislative body that is evenly split between 2 major parties?
With respect to our House of Representatives, there’s a certain value in having your representative there, who is from your area, with an office nearby. A person who is dedicated not just to voting on major party issues, but dealing with issues brought forward by his local constituents, the ones who put his name on the ballot, not just his party’s name.
There doesn’t seem to be much point in proportionate representative, then. Unless the idea is that some one with 5% behind him can do things that someone with 1% can’t. Which is true to some extent, but the objection will remain for any level of threshold.
And it still does not address the issue - 95% of the electorate voted for Somebody Else. Many votes are, in some sense, a vote For as well as a vote Against. I not only want Party A in, I find the ideas of Party B to be stupid and dangerous and offensive. And their candidate is a crook. Under winner-take-all, a win for Good Guy A automatically means that Bad Guy B won’t be there to gum up the works.
These systems always strike me as similar to gerrymandering. The temptation is always to jigger the system to make sure My Guy has a better chance.
Voter turnout in the US is low enough as it is. The more complicated the system, the more disenfranchised the voters will feel themselves to be.
I’m ignorant on this point, perhaps you can help me: under what circumstances do these parliaments require a super-majority to act?
The US Senate, for example, simply cannot run as a majoritarian institution, because the rules frequently require more than 50+1 in order to end debate, pass amendments, change rules, etc.
Of course, there’s always the danger we’d get a centrist coalition of the Chamber of Commerce with the Blue Dogs, everybody else in opposition. That would be a powerful and near-unassailable coalition.
And this is better than first past the post voting? How exactly is that better? Wasting a seat seems like a bad thing.
I think that winner takes all is a fine way to do things as long as there is a strong constitution which guarantees rights and a strong court system.
I can’t imagine how nasty U.S. politics would get with proportional representation, additionally my guess is that bills would get even more complex (and in the process totally jacked up) due to the enormous amount of horse trading that a system like that would entail. It seems to me that proportional representation rewards deals over ideals.
Another downside of PR is that it usually produces legislatures with no majority party – but, that is a problem only in parliamentary systems, where you have to cobble together a majority or at least a plurality to “form a government.” It would not be a problem in the U.S., where we have separation of powers at the federal and state levels, and the chief executive is not chosen by the legislature but independently elected by the people.
But there are different reasons the 99% might not want them, and that would be reflected in the success FPA had in convincing other legislators to adopt their priorities. If they were a single-issue party with limited regional appeal (the Vermont Dairy Farmer’s Party) nobody will blink at buying their vote with some special-interest legislation; if they’re a group that everyone despises (the American Nazi Party), a party that goes into coalition with them will pay the price at the next election.