31–40 of 80 posts
I haven't read the article yet, but I was halfway expecting to see this picture: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/55/Ho...
Alternatively, by switching to popular vote, this problem, and many other problems could be avoided entirely. Above all things, is it fair that a voter in Massachusetts has exactly zero (and I mean exactly zero, not their fair 1/3.2e8 share) say over the election, while a voter in Ohio carries a lot of weight?
There's a very good reason why we don't use the popular vote for Presidential elections. It's precisely because without the electoral college, small states would receive zero attention on national politics. Why would anyone spend time courting votes anywhere north of New York when there's a much bigger payoff to be had working the rest of the eastern seaboard and the west coast? To use your examples of Massachusetts…
Just because it means that local concerns in a couple of large states aren't going to be much of a factor in the presidency (Texas is more likely to freeze over than vote Democrat in the next election) doesn't mean that very many people in smaller states benefit from the electoral system.
There's the Senate to ensure that smaller states get their say in national politics.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
FPTP is heavily biased though - you end up in a situation where there's little point voting the way you want, because it won't be effective. Take the Greens, 3.8% of the vote with 0.15% of the final representation. And I bet that 3.8% would actually have been higher if people had felt like they wouldn't be throwing away their vote. I understand your sentiment, but I think "bit meh" is maybe a little uncharitable. Hal…
"you end up in a situation where there's little point voting the way you want, because it won't be effective." How much of that situation is due precisely to that mindset? It seems like circular logic to me. 10 Why not vote for the guy you want to win? 20 Because he won't get enough votes 30 Why won't he get enough votes? 40 Because not enough people will vote for him. 50 So why don't more people vote for him? 60 got…
My local candidate narrowly won (the one I voted for, not the one I chose) – had a number of us not swapped votes, maybe that wouldn't have happened. For me that's a bit of a win of tactical voting - at least people were able to have some influence.
Another thing to note is that party voting and candidate voting are all rolled together. I actually wanted my local guy to win, but I didn't want to vote for him because I wanted to vote for a different party.
That's all very suboptimal.
This is a great way to teach gerrymandering. It also illustrates the problem with 'Party X is evil, Party Y is not.' Political parties (stripping away all else) are groups of people who identify with one another. Take that one step further, and they're groups of people that identify with one another and believe their group is the best one to represent the whole . Or, if you are less idealistic, they want to win (I su…
So you judge politicians based not on their actions but on their supposed intentions?
> Maybe we could call it a constitutional republic?
Nice save. A constitutional republic is the true "a better government, one tweak at a time" since federalism is the laboratory of government.
No one even remembered that was the point of federalism here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10290172
Alternatively, by switching to popular vote, this problem, and many other problems could be avoided entirely. Above all things, is it fair that a voter in Massachusetts has exactly zero (and I mean exactly zero, not their fair 1/3.2e8 share) say over the election, while a voter in Ohio carries a lot of weight?
There's a very good reason why we don't use the popular vote for Presidential elections. It's precisely because without the electoral college, small states would receive zero attention on national politics. Why would anyone spend time courting votes anywhere north of New York when there's a much bigger payoff to be had working the rest of the eastern seaboard and the west coast? To use your examples of Massachusetts…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> UK election outcomes have nothing to do with gerrymandering and everything to do with > being a multi-party democracy using a FPTP electoral system, which tends to boost > the representation of leading parties at the expense of smaller parties. More precisely, FPTP tends to boost the representation of leading national _and local_ parties (the latter being best exemplified by the SNP) at the expense of smaller natio…
FPTP is heavily biased though - you end up in a situation where there's little point voting the way you want, because it won't be effective. Take the Greens, 3.8% of the vote with 0.15% of the final representation. And I bet that 3.8% would actually have been higher if people had felt like they wouldn't be throwing away their vote. I understand your sentiment, but I think "bit meh" is maybe a little uncharitable. Hal…
It's just a shame that the Lib Dems wasted the chance for a more proportional voting system on a referendum for an unliked semi-proportional system (AV) that would have favoured them.
When it comes round to elections, generally the result of the majority of seats is already known, so they're classified by parties into stronghold (ours), stronghold (theirs), marginal.
When your located within a Labour stronghold, your unlikely to see as much pro-Conservative media, as they are better off spending their time campaigning in marginals and defending their reputations in existing strongholds.
Surely, this effect simply compounds strongholds, making them even harder to change hands overtime, without a significant event to cause the public opinion to shift significantly (e.g. the Scottish independence referendum).
The only way to fix such a problem, would be to randomise the boundaries each election, but this would cause various extra complexities.
In the UK under FPTP atleast, I can imagine there is also an effect or reverse gerrymandering or similar. When it comes round to elections, generally the result of the majority of seats is already known, so they're classified by parties into stronghold (ours), stronghold (theirs), marginal. When your located within a Labour stronghold, your unlikely to see as much pro-Conservative media, as they are better off spendi…
In the UK under FPTP atleast, I can imagine there is also an effect or reverse gerrymandering or similar. When it comes round to elections, generally the result of the majority of seats is already known, so they're classified by parties into stronghold (ours), stronghold (theirs), marginal. When your located within a Labour stronghold, your unlikely to see as much pro-Conservative media, as they are better off spendi…
In the UK under FPTP atleast, I can imagine there is also an effect or reverse gerrymandering or similar. When it comes round to elections, generally the result of the majority of seats is already known, so they're classified by parties into stronghold (ours), stronghold (theirs), marginal. When your located within a Labour stronghold, your unlikely to see as much pro-Conservative media, as they are better off spendi…
It could also be fixed by not having any such boundaries whatsoever.
Personally I think larger multi-member constituencies under STV provide the best compromise.