look at wisconsin
Jul. 5th, 2022 02:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solarbirdI'm having a particularly hard time today with the fact that the @GOP have set up a "we hold all power forever" test case in Wisconsin - that we have a lite version of Orbán's Hungary right here in a US state - and nobody reacts.
It's not "just gerrymandering," it's a blueprint.
Yeah, I mean, they can theoretically lose the majority in the legislature. If they lose by over 20 points, it just barely becomes possible. Let's call it 60.5-39.5. Get that, and the Democrats could end up with a paper-thin majority.
I was thinking Democrats got 6% more votes for assembly statewide than Republicans. That was wrong.
It was over 8%.
It was a Democratic landslide, and the @GOP had a 64%-36% majority in the legislature as a result.
And we're supposed to be fine with that?
The @GOP can lose 53%-45% and keep a 64%-36% supermajority lockhold on power and that's okay?
No wonder they think they can launch a coup attempt with impunity. They already have, at the state level.
What the fuck, @TheDemocrats?
This is what the @GOP are going to bring everywhere if they can.
When I say Republicans only accept elections they're guaranteed to win, I'm not presenting it as a hypothetical. I'm presenting it as a fact.
If somehow the coup attempt wasn't enough, look at Wisconsin.
It's not "just gerrymandering," it's a blueprint.
Yeah, I mean, they can theoretically lose the majority in the legislature. If they lose by over 20 points, it just barely becomes possible. Let's call it 60.5-39.5. Get that, and the Democrats could end up with a paper-thin majority.
I was thinking Democrats got 6% more votes for assembly statewide than Republicans. That was wrong.
It was over 8%.
It was a Democratic landslide, and the @GOP had a 64%-36% majority in the legislature as a result.
And we're supposed to be fine with that?
The @GOP can lose 53%-45% and keep a 64%-36% supermajority lockhold on power and that's okay?
No wonder they think they can launch a coup attempt with impunity. They already have, at the state level.
What the fuck, @TheDemocrats?
This is what the @GOP are going to bring everywhere if they can.
When I say Republicans only accept elections they're guaranteed to win, I'm not presenting it as a hypothetical. I'm presenting it as a fact.
If somehow the coup attempt wasn't enough, look at Wisconsin.
no subject
Date: 2022-07-06 12:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-06 01:59 am (UTC)Geographic divisions made sense when you needed to be physically close to your constituents to meet with them and understand their needs. That's less essential today.
Even without gerrymandering (illegal and effectively impossible in my country), physical divisions combined with first-past-the-post power division disenfranchises people.
An example:
My province has 124 ridings (voting regions), each with its own representative. In my region, candidates for seven political parties ran for the 2022 election. The percentage of votes for each candidate were 45%, 31%, 13%, 6%, 4% and ~1%. The candidate with 45% of the votes walked away with 100% of the power for the riding. The same thing happened in all the other ridings. As a result, province-wide the winning party had 41% of the popular vote, but 61% of the seats in the Legislature.
What if, instead, we had candidates run on their platforms and policies, only marketing themselves by region if that coincided with their goals? People could vote for any candidate, not just those living near them. If there are 124 seats in the legislature, the 124 candidates with the most votes would sit there. In any votes on legislation, each candidate wouldn't have a single vote, but would have as many votes as the number of people who voted for them.
This would mean some popular legislators would have massive voting power. It would also mean that people traditionally not represented in the legislature would now have a seat, with all the access to power that it provides.
no subject
Date: 2022-07-06 04:53 am (UTC)1. I'm not sure people traditionally not represented would have any more power. It's possible for instance, for candidate to win on a gay rights platform in North California and obtain 0.2% of the representative vote, which is a lot. If the same candidate had to run in a country-wide vote they might not get as much as 0.002%.
2. A candidate would have to spend a lot more to obtain even that small fraction. People not traditionally represented in politics are also not usually backed by large rich corporations, so I doubt their ability to raise the kind of money to become one of 435 most-voted-for candidates. Of course, we can radically expand the House of Representatives (and do away with the Senate because in an indivisible country it is an atavism), but even if we expand it tenfold given country-wide voting it'll still be divided between billionaire interests.
At State level these issues would be ameliorated for small States. However, at State level if we elect candidates for the whole State at once anyone wishing for a different government would have to move across State lines, which may be more expensive than moving to a different district. Of course, at State level people rarely move for political reasons.
That said, proportionate power (and ranked votes) are lovely things, and we should definitely have these, at least.
no subject
Date: 2022-07-06 05:25 am (UTC)I mean, you want that level of change in a this Constitution, you have to call a Constitutional Convention, and what that means right now is an authoritarian power grab, and you need an Articles of Confederation-type situation where states de facto leave the old union and join a new one, and small states are dragged along out of necessity. And I don't see that being allowed to happen.
You hit on part of it, though: expanding the House. Dramatically. See my other reply below.
no subject
Date: 2022-07-06 05:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-06 05:20 am (UTC)Why?
1. When this whole system was set up, each individual represented far fewer people. It was possible to demand attention from a representative directly. In the modern day, it would be possible, at such a lower number of constituents, for a challenger to meet with every voter - or at least give it a punt.
2. More districts make it harder to gerrymander. Obviously it would still happen, and still work - Wisconsin is proof of that - but the effectiveness overall generally goes down.
3. It re-weights the electoral college. It doesn't fix it completely, but it makes it a lot less bad.
The number of people from a state to the electoral college is defined by the number of senators plus the number of representatives allotted to any given state.
And you can do it with a simple act of Congress. No impossible Constitutional changes required, it is in fact an explicit power explicitly defined by the Constitution.
Quadruple the size of the House.
After that? Ranked preference voting works great and we should have it. That's much harder and we won't get anything actually difficult before we gather the lower-hanging fruit of a dramatically-expanded House.
no subject
Date: 2022-07-06 08:08 pm (UTC)1. Notify existing representatives that this is desirable (calls, letters)
2. Ask primary candidates what their stance is on expanding the house
3. Vote primaries accordingly*
4. Rinse and repeat
Would you agree?
*What I see as a primary obstacle is the sheer number of competing issues right now. I don't think that given the option I'd vote for, say, a Peace and Freedom candidate no matter how much they were in favor of expanding the House. So, part 0 would be "establish a list of issues one is willing to sacrifice".
no subject
Date: 2022-07-07 12:24 am (UTC)