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Fair Representation Act (HR 3057)

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Re: Fair Representation Act (HR 3057)

#51

Post by pvg »

mc32 wrote: post #9

My horse in the race did not win. It wasn't HRC. However the feeling I get is a lot of her voters are in disbelief she lost and can't understand the opponent having won. It feels as if they felt entitled to a result that didn't pan out. If HRC had won, we would not be seeing these calls for reform gain attention. That said, gerrymandering has two effects, one negative, one positive. On the negative side, there is lit…

If HRC had won, we would not be seeing these calls for reform gain attention.

This proposed legislation has nothing to do with presidential elections and the debates, legislative fights, lawsuits, calls for reform have been going on for many years. You're confusing something you hadn't noticed with something not receiving much attention.

Re: Fair Representation Act (HR 3057)

#52

Post by matttproud »

mc32 wrote: post #9

My horse in the race did not win. It wasn't HRC. However the feeling I get is a lot of her voters are in disbelief she lost and can't understand the opponent having won. It feels as if they felt entitled to a result that didn't pan out. If HRC had won, we would not be seeing these calls for reform gain attention. That said, gerrymandering has two effects, one negative, one positive. On the negative side, there is lit…

You would be hard pressed to find a political scientist who believes races for the legislative branch are deeply competitive. Seat turnover has been less than 5 percent excluding incumbents retiring.

HRC has nothing to do with this.

Re: Fair Representation Act (HR 3057)

#53

Post by letitgo12345 »

mc32 wrote: post #9

My horse in the race did not win. It wasn't HRC. However the feeling I get is a lot of her voters are in disbelief she lost and can't understand the opponent having won. It feels as if they felt entitled to a result that didn't pan out. If HRC had won, we would not be seeing these calls for reform gain attention. That said, gerrymandering has two effects, one negative, one positive. On the negative side, there is lit…

What? My rep is of the party of my choosing and I'm not happy at all. I think most people care about the power they have on the national level, not just or even much who their personal rep is.

Re: Fair Representation Act (HR 3057)

#54

Post by letitgo12345 »

mc32 wrote: post #9

My horse in the race did not win. It wasn't HRC. However the feeling I get is a lot of her voters are in disbelief she lost and can't understand the opponent having won. It feels as if they felt entitled to a result that didn't pan out. If HRC had won, we would not be seeing these calls for reform gain attention. That said, gerrymandering has two effects, one negative, one positive. On the negative side, there is lit…

What? My rep is of the party of my choosing and I'm not happy at all. I think most people care about the power they have on the national level, not just or even much who their personal rep is.

Re: Fair Representation Act (HR 3057)

#55

Post by Aisha3242 »

pmorici wrote: post #32
BurningFrog wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, things were worse during the civil war for example. But that's a really low bar.

Even if you discount the civil war period as an extreme there are many examples.

I quit working at shoprite and now I make $35h - $80h...how? I'm working online! My work didn't exactly make me happy so I decided to take a chance on something new…after 4 years it was so hard to quit my day job but now I couldn't be happier.

........... http://mcaf.ee/4ngo1k

Re: Fair Representation Act (HR 3057)

#56

Post by matthewowen »

brianolson wrote: post #49
whatupmd wrote: post #24

I guess this is mainly about Ranked Choice voting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting "The Fair Representation Act (HR 3057) gives voters of all backgrounds and all political stripes the power to elect House Members who reflect their views and will work constructively with others in Congress." What incentive is there to "work constructively with others" in this system?

Instant Runoff Voting is severely flawed. It can solve basic problems like the Bush-Gore-Nader election where Nader voters probably would have preferred Gore, but it can also get the wrong answer and has in a real world election in 2009 in Burlington, VT: http://bolson.org/~bolson/2009/20090303_burlington_vt_mayor....

I find this example kinda 'eh'. FPTP also elects a 'wrong' winner, and it's not clear to me that the IRV is substantially wronger.

I agree that there's probably a better way, but I fear that it could be at the cost of either ease of use or methodological clarity. Ranking candidates is relatively intuitive, and so is sequential elimination with votes reassigned to the next preference.

I recognize that you could transform the rankings people provide into head to head match up, but if the methodology is too opaque to the layperson, it's going to breed distrust in the system, and I fear that that would be overall worse (if it discourages participation) than having a minority of elections be won by the 'wrong' candidate versus better approaches.

I recognize that this could also be an argument in favor of FPTP. I do think there's a continuum here of conceptual difficulty, and I think finding the sweet spot of correctness vs intuitiveness is tricky.

Re: Fair Representation Act (HR 3057)

#57

Post by AdrianB1 »

The problem definition is so wrong, the solution does not bring any real improvement. There are many problems with the government system, but the election part is not the root cause of the problems and it will solve almost nothing. As people learned how democracy works and they are already manipulating it, what good will do minor patching? How it makes it better for a system where incompetent people vote for everyone else, where the vote of someone that have certain beliefs will eventually make it mandatory by law to do things that I don't want, that others can decide by vote how I can and should live my life? Solve this, don't waste time and energy on distractions.

Re: Fair Representation Act (HR 3057)

#58

Post by nine_k »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #57

The problem definition is so wrong, the solution does not bring any real improvement. There are many problems with the government system, but the election part is not the root cause of the problems and it will solve almost nothing. As people learned how democracy works and they are already manipulating it, what good will do minor patching? How it makes it better for a system where incompetent people vote for everyone…

Do you want a secession? Because this is how you can get things to a secession. The law of the land applies to everyone, and the only way to have a law applicable equally to two groups with conflicting interests is to force one or both of them to sometimes do things they don't want.

A half-way solution is a confederation, Switzerland-style. Weak central government, large variation in laws between cantons. Good luck trying to pull power back from a central government, and make people of California agree that people of Alabama should be allowed to live according to their [add derogatory terms] principles, and vice versa.

Re: Fair Representation Act (HR 3057)

#59

Post by AdrianB1 »

nine_k wrote: post #58
AdrianB1 wrote: post #57

The problem definition is so wrong, the solution does not bring any real improvement. There are many problems with the government system, but the election part is not the root cause of the problems and it will solve almost nothing. As people learned how democracy works and they are already manipulating it, what good will do minor patching? How it makes it better for a system where incompetent people vote for everyone…

Do you want a secession? Because this is how you can get things to a secession. The law of the land applies to everyone, and the only way to have a law applicable equally to two groups with conflicting interests is to force one or both of them to sometimes do things they don't want. A half-way solution is a confederation, Switzerland-style. Weak central government, large variation in laws between cantons. Good luck t…

A possible solution is to reduce the surface of what can be imposed by law, so that what people vote can affect less the people around them. This can be done by more and stronger liberties (not rights, that's a different story). But even this one is far from enough. I am not thinking of any secession, that would solve nothing.

Re: Fair Representation Act (HR 3057)

#60

Post by realcoopernurse »

Looks like this implements multi-member districts elected via STV, similar to the system used in Republic of Ireland to elect members of the Dáil.

Overall I think this is better than single member districts with plurality voting, but IMHO there are simpler reforms that offer better mathematical properties.

MMP [1] (used in Germany, New Zealand) ensures proportional representation and still allows for small geographic-based districts. The overhang allocation mitigates the incentive for gerrymandering. A minor but significant enhancement would be to use approval voting instance of plurality to elect the single winner district MPs.

RRV [2] (not implemented anywhere I'm aware of) is similar to STV in that it uses multi-member districts, but uses a simpler range ballot (think amazon 1-5 'star' ratings for candidates) rather than a ranked ballot.

The Center for Election Science [3] has some very good resources on this general topic. Electoral reform is a terribly important issue that is very difficult to make progress on. My hope is that we start to see some reforms at the state and local levels that can provide indication that these reforms are legitimate and are not being done to game the vote.

Speaking of, "Gaming the Vote" [4] is a really good book on this subject.

I think reforms like HR 3057 are well intended but I think it's too early to attempt this at the federal level. Voters in the US have very little context for electoral reform and it's an issue that tends to (perhaps legitimately) cause people to be suspicious.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_repr... [2] http://rangevoting.org/RRV.html [3] https://www.electology.org/ [4] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003K154R0/

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