PROPORTIONAL VOTING SYSTEMS: Evolving Legislatures for Better Representation

( A way to beat gerrymandering and increase the effectiveness of legislatures)

October 19, 2020 ( updated December 20, 2021)

The Problem

Elections of legislative branch members tend to result in legislative bodies that inadequately represent the voters.

For example, if a district has a 55 percent vote for the winner of the district and a 45 percent vote for the loser of the district, the winner will likely try to implement the political preferences of the winning 55 percent while the preferences of the losing 45 percent will be ignored.

This is a problem because it leads to extremism and denies the losing percentage any influence.

The Solution : Proportional Voting Systems

The solution is to elect multiple people for each legislative district and give each of the elected a share of the vote equal to their percentage of the votes.

Examples:

Assuming that each district were given 100 votes and you had to get at least ten percent of the votes to be elected:

1. If candidate A won 55 percent of the votes, he or she would get 55 votes. If candidate B won 30 percent they would get 30 votes. If no other candidate received more than ten percent of the votes, the remaining 15 votes would be apportioned to the two winners in a ratio that reflected their relative success, which in this case would be 10 votes for candidate A and 5 for candidate B. Thus the district would have two representatives with one wielding 65 votes and the other wielding 35 votes.
2. If candidate A won 40 percent of the votes, he or she would get 40 votes. If candidates B, C An D each won 15 percent of the votes they would get 15 votes each. If no other candidate received over 10 votes, the remaining 15 votes would be apportioned as well. If no other candidate received more than ten percent of the votes, the remaining 15 votes wold be apportioned to the two winners in a ratio that reflected their relative success, which in this case would be about 7 votes for candidate A and about 2 for candidates B, C and D. They would then proceed to the legislature and have that many votes on any issue voted upon.
3. Note that it may be necessary to have fractional votes to make it easy to divide the remaining votes. Alternatively, each district cold get a larger number of votes to divide, perhaps 10000.

Effects of Proportional Voting Systems

Electing more people increases the number of legislators which has two great effects. It brings more brain power and voices to the issues and it also gives more opportunity to people seeking political office. This is valuable because the better the talent pool in politics the better the possibility of getting a competent person in a position of real power.

Gerrymandering will be obsolete, since groups broken up into disparate districts will still get representation equal to their numbers.

There is also a psychological benefit. More voters would feel that their votes counted for something and would see value in voting and therefore vote and feel invested in the process.