• Liz@midwest.social
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    7 months ago

    I think your comment distracts from the point of theirs, but we’re already here, so: the bigger issue is single seat representation and “choose one” voting. Single seat means that no matter who wins, a large fraction of the population won’t have representation. Who do you go to if you’re a Democrat but the Republican won? Choose one voting means the voters can’t support everyone they like. There are lots of ways to fix these problems, but I like Sequential Proportional Approval Voting with 5 winners per district. It’s impossible to submit an invalid ballot, and the voting technique can be easily applied to single seat positions like mayor. With 5 members per district, plus the decay property of the counting method, trying to gerrymander the map is functionally impossible and it’s highly likely any given voter will have someone in office who is willing to listen.

    • Well, yeah. Changing from FPTP would be huge, and it’s necessary to deal with the strategic voting issue, but we also have to get rid of the electoral college. Majority rule, popular vote winner wins. Then we get approval, ranked choice, or literally almost anything but FPTP and things start to look sane.

      Who do you go to if you’re a Democrat but the Republican won?

      You mean your vote? At the risk of misunderstanding you, your vote goes into the Popular bucket with everyone else’s, and whoever wins that vote wins. Why does it need to be more complicated than that? The voting itself can be more nuanced than FPTP, but ultimately there’s (ideally) a mostly-Condorcet winner, and that’s the winner.

      I suspect you’re thinking more about Congress than the single-seat Presidency, where There Can Be Only One. Or I’m utterly missing your point. That’s easily possible. Give me three choices of topics, and I’ll rank them in the order I think we’re discussing.

      PS, I tacked on to their comment because it was specifically about the second-to-last point, wanting their vote to count. I thought it fell a little short as it didn’t address the fact that, if your live in a metropolis, odds are your votes mean less that others in rural environments. I hear you focusing on better proportional representation - anarchists getting a seat, however small, at the table with the Big Parties. I was focusing obviously on the fact that we do not have equal representation by virtue of 70 Oklahoman votes having as much weight as 100 Californian votes (I made those ratios up; I don’t know the exact proportion).

      • Liz@midwest.social
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        7 months ago

        Yes sorry, maybe I wasn’t clear. I meant after the winner is found and is in office. If you’re a Democrat and the Republican is in office, you can talk to them about your concerns, but they’re unlikely to care that much since you’ve got very different opinions. With elections where there can only be one (E.G. mayor) this can’t be solved, but legislative districts can and should have multiple representatives.

        But yes, I agree, fixing the electoral college is also important!