• @hglman@lemmy.ml
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    11 year ago

    Why would some fraction of seats be up for election?

    Yes, many systems exist and stv is meh, that’s not really a point against a proportional system unless you think fptp is a point against single winners and in that case the proportional systems looks a lot better.

    Districts are arbitrary and abusable, just sample the will of the population and build bodies that look like the population. You can get tiny districts by forcing choices at the smallest level possible.

    • chaogomu
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      01 year ago

      A proportional system will have multi-member districts. That’s the point. Unless you think that a national election can account for the needs and desires of a local population.

      You don’t want to have someone from LA speaking for the needs of people in Kansas. Hell, you wouldn’t want people in LA speaking for the needs of people in Sacramento.

      That’s where districts come in. To solve the issues with districts, you have two choices, either multi-member proportional districts, or shrink the districts down to the point where any resident can voice their opinion to their representative and expect a response.

      Right now, the US has districts with more than 1 million residents. If even 1 in 1000 people have concerns that they voice, their representative will just ignore it all, because tens of thousands of voices are impossible to listen to.

      That’s why smaller districts are key, even if you have multi-member proportional districts. No more than maybe 100k people per district.

      A smaller district is also much harder to pack, crack, or otherwise gerrymander.

      There is no downside, unless you have a favorite political party that only exists due to the current broken system.