The idea was that you get direct representation - your representative should be focused on your issues and the issues plaguing people in your district. But it breaks down today because politicians in the US just vote with their party.
Peereboominc@piefed.social 3 days ago
Why even have the system with districts? Just calculate all the votes and see who wins?
If you live in a place where most people vote x, why even bother to vote y. Your vote will go straight in the bin.
rymden_viking@lemmy.world 3 days ago
booly@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
The American political system was designed for weak parties, and geographical representation above all, in a political climate where there were significant cultural differences between regions.
The last time we updated the core rules around districting (435 seats divided as closely to proportionally as possible among the states, with all states being guaranteed at least one seat, in single member districts) was in 1929, when we had a relatively weak federal government, very weak political parties, before the rise of broadcasting (much less national broadcasting, or national television, or cable TV networks, or universal phone service, or internet, or social media). We had 48 states. The population was about 120 million, and a substantial number of citizens didn’t actually speak English at home.
And so it was the vote for the person that was the norm. Plenty of people could and did “switch parties” to vote for the candidate they liked most. Parties couldn’t expel politicians they didn’t like, so most political issues weren’t actually staked out by party line.
But now, we have national parties where even local school governance issues look to the national parties for guidance. And now the parties are strong, where an elected representative is basically powerless to resist even their own party’s agenda. And a bunch of subjects that weren’t partisan have become partisan. All while affiliations with other categories have weakened: fewer ethnic or religious enclaves, less self identity with place of birth, more cultural homogenization between regions, etc.
So it makes sense to switch to a party-based system, with multi member districts and multiple parties. But that isn’t what we have now, and neither side wants to give up the resources and infrastructure they’ve set up to give themselves an advantage in the current system.
merc@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Another thing was that in the past it wasn’t actually possible to properly coordinate parties. Communications technology just wasn’t there. I’m sure every congressman had a high-tech “telephone” in their house, but they weren’t always home, and there certainly weren’t answering machines.
More importantly, mass media wasn’t there either. People knew their reps from local town halls and canvassing. They weren’t bombarded with mass media featuring the president or the party leader. Sure, they’d show up in newspapers, but not audio/video. So, that meant that congressional reps had a lot more “fame” in their districts, and the leaders had a lot less. So, that gave the reps more independence.
Money also was less of a factor. It’s always been a problem with US democracy, but national parties didn’t have a stranglehold over their members because of money like they do today.
Bytemeister@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Mainly because these jerryrigged districts are counting on you not voting in order for them to work.
Ideally, your Reps are supposed to be local, so states are supposed to be divided up into relatively equal populations where the citizens have similar economic and social demographics so they get equitable representation of their local issues at a federal level.
Personally, I think we need a law where voting districts are limited by complexity. Create a law that establishes a maximum perimeter-to-area ratio for congressional districts, and also mandates that the most and least populous districts must be within 10% of eachother’s population.
some_kind_of_guy@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Mandelbrot has entered the chat
pupbiru@aussie.zone 3 days ago
i did a big ol post here about this
generally what you’re talking about is proportional representation… systems like this tend to lead to a government comprised of a lot of minor parties, which sounds great!
but it has its down sides (and i’m not saying 2 party is much better, but it’s useful to be aware of the situations it creates): when there are a lot of minor parties with no clear “above 50%” majority, they have to form a coalition government and that can be extremely fragile
you can’t hold parties to election promises, because you just don’t know what they’re going to have to give up to form a coalition, and even if they do end up forming a coalition you really don’t know how stable that coalition is going to be!
i guess in the US there’s gridlock anyway, so what the hell right? may as well at least have gridlock with parties blocking legislation based on things you believe in… buuuuuuut that’s probably a bad example: first past the post is far more to blame in that case than proportional vs representative democracy
merc@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
you can’t hold parties to election promises
You can’t do that today either. In fact, it’s worse today. What are you going to do if your party doesn’t fulfill its electoral promises? Vote for the “bad party”?
pupbiru@aussie.zone 2 days ago
yup, so it’s different with RCV and representative: in australia we have this, where we still have a mostly 2 party system that’s representative but we have RCV, so you can preference other parties first, and still have your vote eventually flow to the major party of your choice
in this case, perhaps enough votes are lost that they loose a seat (we’ve had at least 1 green rep in parliament for a few elections in a row)
also we track “primary vote” - the number of people who ranked you #1 - as an important election metric with real consequences… there are limits to private donations for elections, and a significant portion of funding for elections comes from the government itself. any party that gets over 4% of the primary vote is eligible to claim a proportional amount of financing for next election… so you can punish them in a way that really matters without actually putting anything real on the line
merc@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
That sounds good in theory, but I’ve heard a lot of Australians complain about politics there. Maybe that’s just because people complain about politics everywhere. But, it also seems like Australia has a lot of problems that aren’t getting solved (like housing cost).
It definitely doesn’t seem like a place that has things all figured out.
Switzerland is the only country where people seem pretty proud of their system. It has its issues, but that’s mainly because they have some pretty awful voters and a direct democracy system that has caused some real headaches. For example, voters voted for some laws that were incompatible with the treaties the country had signed as part of the EU, and had they gone into effect it would have meant cancellation of their work with France on CERN, for example. I can’t remember how that was eventually resolved, but it was a real mess.
AA5B@lemmy.world 3 days ago
i guess in the US there’s gridlock anyway, so what the hell right?
Historically there were many compromises where representatives worked with the other party to find a solution they could all agree to. We like to think that’s how politics work.
However over the last few years it’s gotten much more divisive. Currently it seems like everything is a party line vote. It seems like one party especially elevated party loyalty above serving constituents, above doing the right thing. There is no more voice of the people, only the party and the evil orange overlord.
Filibusters have always been a thing, where you can hold the floor as long as you can talk about something, delaying everything. That was both a challenge for someone to do and had a huge impact when Congress had the motivation to do what they saw as right for their constituents. Now it’s automatic. You simply need to declare it. A majority vote is no longer enough for most choices because you always need the supermajority sufficient to overcome the filibuster, to “silence the representative “. Now you can’t get anything done.
For most of our history, Congress understood their highest priority was to pass a budget, and they did. Now that is no longer important. Brinksmanship means there is no longer a downside to hold the whole country hostage over whatever issue so they do. “Shutting down the government” by not passing a budget has become the new norm. Meaning we not only can’t get anything done but disrupt everything else.
pupbiru@aussie.zone 2 days ago
For most of our history, Congress understood their highest priority was to pass a budget, and they did. Now that is no longer important.
yeah it’s pretty fucked… in australia, this is a sure way to trigger a dissolved parliament and an early election: there are only 3 things that can happen (and the government shutting down isn’t 1 of them)
- the government resigns and the governor general (technically “the crowns representative in australia”, but in actuality they do very little unless there’s a crisis) appoints (probably) the leader of the opposition
- of budget bills fail 3 times the government may request a double dissolution - early, full federal elections
- the governor general unilaterally dismisses the PM, because if they government can’t even maintain supply then they don’t have the power to do anything at all (this has only ever happened once and was australia’s largest ever constitutional crisis, but i do like that it’s a valid fall-back)
AA5B@lemmy.world 3 days ago
You need districts because not every race is national. Sure it allocates electoral votes but also Congress-critters. When a state has multiple Representatives, who elects each?
Districts are good so that people with something in common are better represented. We do NOT want a “tyranny of the majority” where minorities have no voice.
Some amount of gerrymandering is good to create districts where people have something in common. But that’s the real problem: how to allow “good” complex shapes while prohibiting “bad” gerrymandering? How do you even define that?
Personally I thought there was some law connecting it to the census so that any changes are based on data, not political whims. However clearly not
pupbiru@aussie.zone 3 days ago
this is proportional vs representative democracy
it’s a choice between which you value more: your ideals (proportional - lots of minor parties get elected who better represent your morals and what you want accomplished) or someone to represent the area you live in (representative - inevitably leads to, actually, MINORITY rule because the majority across most districts votes for the party that they hate least - partly because first past the post, but also because in individual districts parties need to get above 50% to win, and that’s just a hard ask do matter the area you live)
NateNate60@lemmy.world 3 days ago
The idea is to have state-wide races where parties, not individuals, compete. Let’s take Washington State, as an example, because it has a nice and even 10 representatives. Instead of having district campaigns, you would have one big statewide election where each party puts up their best campaign, the people vote, and then the votes are counted on a statewide basis and tallied up. Let’s say the results are in and are as follows:
- Democratic Party: 40%
- Republican Party: 28%
- Libertarian Party: 11%
- Green Party: 8%
- Working Families Party: 6%
- Constitution Party: 4%
- Independents: 3%
For each 10% of the vote, that party gets allocated one seat. So Democrats get 4, Republicans get 2, and Libertarians get 1. The remaining 3 seats are doled out to whichever party has the largest remainder. So the Republicans and Greens with 8% get one more each, and the Working Families Party with 6% gets one. The Constitution Party and the independents will go home with zero seats.
The final distribution:
- Democrats: 4
- Republicans: 3
- Libertarians: 1
- Greens: 1
- Working Families: 1
There are two ways of determining which exact people get to actually go and sit in Congress: open list or closed list. A closed list system means that the party publishes a list of candidates prior to the election, and the top N people on that list are elected, where N is the number of seats won by the party. A simple open list system would be that everyone on that party’s list has their name actually appear on the ballot and a vote for them also counts as a vote for their party, then the top N people of that party with the most votes are elected, where N is the number of seats won by a party. In a closed list system, the party determines the order before the election (they can hold a primary). In an open list system, the voters determine the order on election day.
The main drawback of this system is that with a closed list system, the voters can’t really “vote out” an unpopular politician who has the backing of their party since that party will always put them at the top of the list, and open list systems tend to have extremely long ballot papers (if each party here stood the minimum of 10 candidates and 10 independents also stood, that would be 70 candidates on the ballot). It also forces the election to be statewide which means smaller parties can’t gain regional footholds by concentrating all their efforts on a small number of constituencies. Small parties in the US don’t tend to do this anyway, but it is a fairly successful strategy in other countries, like the Bloc Québécois in Canada or the Scottish National Party in the UK. That being said, a proportional system would still increase the chance that smaller parties have of obtaining representation. Small parties in the US have almost invisible campaigns but if they took it seriously, they’d only need to get 10% of the vote to win a seat, which on some years they almost do anyway even without a campaign.
The other drawback is that it eliminates the concept of a “local” representative (oddly-shaped and extremely large constituencies notwithstanding), so if a representative votes for a policy that is extremely unpopular in their constituency, it is less effective to “punish” them for it within that constituency as long as the candidate or their party is still popular statewide.
BussyGyatt@feddit.org 3 days ago
just one of the many reasons you see such consistent low turnouts in american elections