Ask Lemmy

27072 readers

3543 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]

Rules: (interactive)

1) Be nice and; have fun

Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them

2) All posts must end with a '?'

This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?

3) No spam

Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.

4) NSFW is okay, within reason

Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].

5) This is not a support community.

It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.

Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

Has there ever been a political system where legislative votes were weighted by how many votes each legislator received? (slrpnk.net)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/asklemmy

36 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Let's say you have multi-member constituencies. You hold an election with an outcome that looks roughly like this:

Candidate #1 received 12,000 votes
Candidate #2 received 8,000 votes
Candidate #3 recieved 4,000 votes

All three get elected to the legislature, but Candidate #1's vote on legislation is worth three times Candidate #3's vote, and #3's vote is worth half Candidate #2's vote.

I know that the British Labour Party used to have bloc voting at conference, where trade union reps' votes were counted as every member of their union voting, so, e.g., if the train drivers' union had 100,000 members, their one rep wielded 100,000 votes. That's not quite what I'm describing above, but it's close.

Bonus question: what do you think would be the pros and cons of such a system?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] BeefPiano 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It seems weird that the local district’s competitiveness would affect the national weight. The whole point of first-past-the-post voting is to pick one person for everyone. Under your proposed system, people who didn’t vote for the winner lose their influence on the national level. It would probably influence people to vote for the perceived winner instead of their choice.

It might work better under approval voting, where you can vote for as many candidates as you want, but still would encourage people to vote for whoever they think is going to win.

Good question, it’s an interesting idea!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I think you may have missed part of OP's idea here. They specify multiple-member constituencies in which all candidates get elected and their power is proportional to the number of votes they get. The total power of the constituency is conserved, it's just divided between multiple electors.

It would probably influence people to vote for the perceived winner instead of their choice.

This is an issue with FPTP regardless, unfortunately

[–] BeefPiano 3 points 7 months ago

I did miss that, thanks for pointing it out kindly.