look at wisconsin

[solarbird]

I'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.

Comments

[armiphlage]

Perhaps eliminate geographic constraints and move to have at-large voting, with the power of each representative based on the number of votes they have?

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.

[mme_n_b]

This is a good idea, but there are a couple issues with it at Federal level:
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.

[solarbird]

I'd love to replace the Senate with a proportional body but that's a massive Constitutional change that will. not. happen.

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.

[solarbird]

I replied further down about what we need to do and can actually be done. It's low-hanging fruit. If the republic survives the 2022 election... it's something we need to go at, hard.