Seeing as how I seem to have killed off discussion in the recent threads, I figured I'd throw out this idea that I'd been thinking about lately to see if I could get some discussion moving again.

Basically I was thinking about the american election system, and how the winner-take-all nature of it leads to a number of (what I consider to be) problems:
1.  third party candidates are viewed as un-viable, or worse, helping someone else get elected
2.  candidates tend to focus on faults of opponents, rather than their own good qualities.  Thus elections are seen more as a need to vote against someone than vote for someone.
3.  people voting for a losing candidate feel they're not being represented because the winner doesn't represent their views
4.  ability to draw the boundaries of voting regions often goes to politicians (who won elections), who use it to benefit their party's future voting situations (gerrymandering)
5.  the either/or situation leads to polarization of political views, rather than a more natural spectrum (ie, the two party system that is a product of the winner-take-all system leads people to think of all issues as two sided, with an "us" side and a "them" side, rather than thinking of a range of possibilities).

As a potential remedy for these problems, I was thinking of ways to change the election process, to achieve something where it wasn't a winner-takes-all system.  What I've come up with is this:

Voting regions/districts/whatever would still have local representatives as we currently do (ie, congressmen).  However, each representative wouldn't just have 1 vote in congress.  Rather, they would each have a number of votes equal to the number of people who voted for them.  In addition, everyone who ran in an election would also have votes (probably there would actually be a threshold, set fairly low, say 1% of the total vote cast, needed to gain votes in congress, but that's a fairly minor detail).  Thus, whether someone wins the election or not, they still get to vote in congress, and they have votes equal to the number of people who voted for them.  Those who won elections would actually be the congressmen who get to draft laws, sit on committees, etc., but nearly everyone who runs will get some amount of say when votes are called.  Those who don't win the elections don't get paid, don't get benefits, etc., but their vote still counts.  In many cases it may be that those in congress (the winners of the elections) would have enough votes between them that it wouldn't be necessary for the non-winners to cast their votes, but when congress is closely divided on an issue, the non-winners' votes would be important.

The advantages I see in this system are:

1.  Since a vote is never "wasted," third party candidates become as viable as anyone else; no matter who you vote for, they'll be representing you afterwords, win or lose.
2.  There will be much less incentive for candidates to focus on the faults of their opponents because you can't "vote against" anyone.  The opponent you don't like will still get to have a bunch of votes regardless of who you vote for, even if they lose, so your only incentive is to vote for someone you actually support.
3.  Whether your candidate wins or loses, they're still able to cast votes on your behalf, and represent your views.  This should reduce the feeling that "no one is representing us" that some voters feel.
4.  Gerrymandering will be less an issue, since winning a particular region becomes much less important.  A candidate who wins by a landslide in their district will have more votes in congress, so politicians won't have incentive to concentrate opposing voters in one district.
5.  With all candidates eventually casting votes, a much wider spectrum of views is represented, and the system is not naturally binary.

At a basic level, the idea is to keep a "one man, one vote" pure democracy system, but without everyone having to cast their one vote for each item.  Essentially, you give your one vote to your representative, and let them use it.  Even if they don't win, they've still got your vote to cast.  You don't lose your vote if your candidate doesn't win the election.

The downsides to the system that I can see are:

1.  it's more complicated
2.  potential for non-winners to just think "ah, forget it" and not cast their votes (not a huge problem, per se, since that's what you get for voting for a slacker, and politicians are currently not obligated to vote now either).
3.  potential for "less serious" candidates to get votes (but they only get a significant amount of votes if a significant number of people vote for them, and people who want to vote for a gimmick candidate have no one to blame but themselves).
4.  densely populated areas get more representation (which might not be a bad thing, though people in rural areas may consider it to be)
5.  Representatives would be non-equal, some controlling far more votes than others.  Would power end up concentrated in the hands a few a super-popular reps?  (We could reduce problem this if districts have maximum population, and if you can only vote for someone who lives in your district)


I'm also not sure if this system would be more or less susceptible to corruption.  There'd be more people to bribe, many of them requiring much less money to bribe, but in order to have a large effect you'd need to bribe lots more people, increasing your chances of getting caught, and probably increasing the total cost (to the briber).

What do you guys think?  Have I missed other drawbacks?  Would the benefits I'm predicting actually occur?  Would it actually be any better than our current system?  Are there any ways to make it better?

It isn't a bad idea. I'd tend to say this would be appropriate for the House, which was always intended to more closely represent a popular democracy. We would probably want to expand current congressional districts, so you'll have about the same number of people in office, but it's not a gamestopper. Meanwhile, Senate would be kept how it is, or actually returned to its original state.

Yeah, I should have said that this was for the house specifically, not for the senate.  Still noodling on how to fix that mess! ;)

Similar ideas (splitting the electoral vote comes to mind) have met with limited success. Considering the number of recounts and so forth in the recent past, would this system meet with difficulties regarding inaccuracies of votes, or would politicians accept the results more readily, since a loser still gets a bit of a say?

My hope would be the later.  While a tiny difference in votes can currently lead to a huge difference in how congress functions, it'd make a fairly minor difference under my system.  One person would get paid and the other wouldn't, which would probably get them doing recounts, but they'd both have more or less equal voting power at the end of the day.

When you say similar ideas have met with limited success, which ideas do you mean, and in what way was their success limited (eg, not getting people to support the idea, or the ideas not working once put in place?)?

I used the splitting up of electoral votes as an example, because that is supposed to be divided by percentages of the populace and how they vote. This idea has taken hold well in certain areas, but has not been embraced by other areas. Why this is I couldn't say, but Colorado was heavily hit with commercials against the idea.

Perhaps your idea wouldn't lift off specifically because the present party system would fight against the implementation.

Splitting the electoral vote makes some sense, but it's still a winner-take-all system at the end of the day (and that's for president, and my system wouldn't work for presidential elections), so I think my system has some advantages over that idea.

I'd definitely agree that as far as implementation goes, the present system probably wouldn't want it put in place, which would make it very difficult to actually do.  On the other hand, there does seem to be a lot of grass-roots energy, and anti-establishment sentiment at the moment, so it may be more possible now than it would have been, say, any time in the recent past.  Still would be a very long shot to get it put in place, even if a large majority of people thought it was a good idea, but for the moment it's still in the day-dream, would-it-work stage.

Perhaps expanding the Executive Branch staff-wise?  As in, more than one president.  A president today has a lot more on his plate than a president 200 years ago; a lot of it is trivial, but it is a lot.

No, I don't think it would be ideal to extend this to the president. The president's role is that of a single mind to make fast decisions without interference, and to serve as the boss of the executive branch. Nor do I think it is desirable to make the President such a populist position. That's okay though, because the president answers to congress, so if your minority is represented in congress, the president doesn't get a choice about whether he obeys or not.

A way to make something like this work somewhat earlier would to be to work to make the voting in individual states- especially the larger states, more of a parlimentry system- if say Texas and California were to split up their electors in Congress by percentage of the vote to the party rather than regionally within the state it would greatly moderate the national system.

What about expanding the role of the Vice President?

I'd have to agree with katisara on this one; the president needs to be one person who can make quick decisions.  Having another committee-like branch of government doesn't seem to buy us much.  Also, way back in the day, the system worked such that the winner got to be president, and the runner-up got to be vice president.  They got rid of that pretty quickly, though, when they realized that having a pres and vice that didn't get along was pretty unhelpful.


Yeah, that kind of thing is sort of what got me thinking up my idea.  Proportional representation, so that even if your candidate didn't win, your vote would still have some effect.  A system like you mention would probably be easier to implement (and would be significantly more straight forward, which is a fairly big plus).  The thing I like I about my system compare to this one, though, is that it maintains a one-to-one correspondence in votes.  Some has your vote in my system, not in a vague sense, but in a very specific "that person is casting my vote" sense, which I like.  Also, in a parlamentary system like you mention, you're voting for a party, rather than a person, which may not be optimal.


In what way did you have in mind, and to what end?

Another issue that my partner brought up when I told her about my system is that if non-winners don't get paid, they might not be able to devote much (any?) time to researching the issues they're voting on, since they'd presumably still have to go to work and do the normal non-politician stuff.  Hopefully if the system were put in place, people running would know what they were getting into, and realize before the election that they were potentially signing up for a non-paid position that took a lot of work for 2 years.  Doesn't really solve the problem, but perhaps makes it less of a worry?

Another issue that my partner brought up when I told her about my system is that if non-winners don't get paid

How would that work? If they weren't paid by the government, they'd be paid by whatever party they were representing.

Hmm...that's an interesting point.  Just because the they're not being paid by the government, that doesn't mean someone isn't paying them.  Though, that raises issues of ethics, corruption, etc.  Currently, the government pays whoever wins the election, regardless of their views.  But if a party (or anyone else) is paying a representative, they'll likely want that person to vote a certain way (that's why they're paying that person specifically, not all reps equally), which raises issues of whether that rep is truly independent.

In system like the one silveroak mentioned (more like a parlimentary system) it'd probably make sense to have the reps paid by their parties (since the voters would actually be voting for parties, rather than reps), but I'm no so sure I like the idea for my system.  Though, is it all that different from a campaign contribution?  I don't know.  Where does the line lay on when a contribution becomes undue influence/bribery?  Is handing a politician a big wad of money just free speech, as some people seem to feel, or is a way to circumvent the voting process (ie, "I may only have one vote, but I've got way more dollars I can spend to get my way")?

There's also the issue of whether a party/group/whatever would pay people in proportion to their votes?  Whether you have a million votes, or just a few thousand, the difficulty of understanding the issue is the same.  Should reps with very few votes get paid the same?  If so, there'd be the incentive for people to run just to get the pay check, which isn't really the goal of the system.

Hmm...will need to think on this problem a bit more to figure out how I think it should work...

If you ask me, I think that a lot of the problems with modern political systems is that core foundation of them was designed to be a good system for a country with a population of about a million, where communication with people out of shouting distance took weeks or months. Take the, what's it called, electoral college in the United States. Makes sense for the eighteenth century. Not so much for the twenty-first.

The chief argument that I've heard for retaining the electoral college is the reliability of secure communications to stay secure (fear of hackers, essentially).

There are other benefits that are not easilly seen because they are about what doesn't happen. For example, if the entire united states went entirely parlimentry there would be nobody to protect the interests of a small town in Texas from becoming exploited by the federal government if only parties were represented and all politicians came from Washington. By making sure there is geographical diversity it in theory prevents for example california with a large population from running completely over the rights of those in washington state and diverting a river for their water supply (which politicians from CA have proposed more than once)

Silveroak is correct.

One key to the electoral college system is that each state is deemed sovereign.  Then, you also have to take into account the broad diversity in land, interests, and population centers.  The electoral college system makes sure the tail is not wagging the dog.  New York, San Francisco and LA don't get all their concerns addressed while critical farmland in Iowa is neglected.  While not a perfect system, it helps ensure a centralized government actually represents its diverse people and states.

Its not the system its the people that vote (or opt not to vote) that are the problem. You vote these people in or by not voting let the rest decide you get what you wanted. People ,especially the poor, have the most to lose if the poor voted and were willing to vote to their best interest it would likely change the game. The politicians need votes more than money or favors if the poor said we want you to do these things for us or you will get voted out or even vote for a third party - say the Green Party controlled 25% of Congress what difference we could have.

After all who cares who the president is the real power is in Congress and the Courts, the first passes legislation and the latter decides matters of law and application of passed legislation. If both parties had to work with a third to pass anything it might temper things.

I disagree to some extent.  The "poor" is not defined, but let's define it by those who pay no income taxes.  Currently, that is 47% of the population.  Therefore, they have great sway as a collective group to redistribute wealth to them from the wealthy through government action; the problem is that many of the poor don't realize that by such redistribution, the wealthy are left with fewer funds to give them jobs and build further wealth, thus making everyone more poor.

Therefore, I agree with you to the extent "poor" means those who are not adequately educated in their own government or motivated to create their own wealth.  I fear that number would far exceed even 50%, making the representative system more at the mercy of powergrabbers who can sway thought processes than giving the people what they really would want if they understood fully.

I don't think your party representation is accurate either.  That's not really a party issue.  That's a balance of power, which is why we have the senate, congress, the president, and the judicial powers.  Three bodies serving different functions help keep balance.

A third party would actually unbalance things because more chefs in the kitchen tend to make for lesser quality outcome, or more delays without outcomes.

And there are actually more than two parties.  Those parties tend to control the two parties.  For example, the Tea Party tends to control movement/ideology of the repulican party to some extent, as does the Green party with the democrats, and other parties as they gain more power.  So these minority parties exert power and influence from within the two existing parties, which actually helps keeps those two parties more balanced...usually.

Think of it like this.  Let's say you go to court.

There is a plaintiff's attorney and a defendant's attorney to make the case.

If you are the judge, do you want multiple attorneys for the same plaintiff making many different arguments?  And maybe even saying why the other plaintiff's attorney is wrong?  And then multiple ones for the defendant, possibly being hostile to each other?  That wouldn't be the best way to handle the case.

Or would it be better to have multiple attorneys advising the main attorney representing each party so that the attorneys provide a unified front in representation?

We have a democratic republic don't we last time I looked? So what if the poor start making simple demands like stop sending just our children to war if you want to make war have a draft and make sure poor or rich you serve? We want health care that we can access and afford and we don't care if you ration its better than the fear we have now and no access? We want our children to have training for jobs in High School not just college, college an college which we can't afford as options how about vocational options like Germany has? We want you to protect us not just the wealthy?

In my mind what the Bible supports treating the poor fairly and with justice, there may always be poor but abusing them is not what God wants as a Christian.

Most poor just want a fair shake are they getting it now I know I'm not and my income is quite low. But in this we have power one person, one vote - whether pauper or king so I think its time the poor use it. Oddly in Europe they have wealthy people and poor and when I Busked over there the poor seem oddly better off than a poor person here. At least a paupers son can go to college if they are good enough, get health care, employment with rights and more days off and don't have the stone of worry crushing them in most advanced EU nations.