How about this electoral idea:

[redeye]

I've discussed several times why we need PR in Congress (and if I haven't ask me to explain or fire up www.fairvote.org). I therefore suggest that the following ideas be implemented (warning: constitutional amendment required) for the two houses of Congress:

The House has 500 members, elected in 25 districts of 20-members each. Within each district, the 20 members are elected by the open list system; that is, individual candidates form unordered party lists before the election, and voters vote for a list as well as for a candidate within it. Lists receive a number of seats in proportion to their vote totals, and within each list the N candidates with the highest vote totals are elected (with N being the number of seats the list receives). Excess votes are distributed on the basis of largest remainders, so if before rounding the five parties contesting the election receive 6.2, 5.3, 5.2, 2.1, and 1.2 seats before rounding then they won't get 6/5/5/2/1 seats respectively because that ttoals 19 and not 20, but 6/6/5/2/1 respectively because the second party has the largest remainder.

The Senate is elected much in the same fashion it is today, but with three important changes:
- There are 50 Senatorial districts based on population, not state boundaries
- Senators have a term of four years, so that voters in each district may vote for a Senator in every Congressional elections
- Senators are elected not by plurality or majority, but rather by either approval vote or Condorcet (IRV has too many flaws)

Now, the districts themselves are drawn according to the following guidelines (this is meant to eliminate gerrymandering as much as possible, obviously):
- Each House district is made of the conjuction of two adjacent Senate districts
- Each House district must include between 3.8% and 4.2% of the voting age population, and each Senate district must include between 1.8% and 2.2% (I give the Senate districts more flexibility here because they elect only one candidate each per election)
- Senate and House districts must be geographically contiguous; Alaska is considered bordering WA, ID, and MT for purposes of contiguity and Hawaii is considered bordering CA
- Senate and House districts must conform to county boundaries, except when it clashes with the population ranges given above (i.e. LA County has to be split between two Senate districts)
- Senate and House districts should conform to state boundaries whenever possible
- Senate and House districts should be as close as possible to culturally contiguous (e.g. separating downstate from upstate NY) and making sense geographically (e.g. using a mountain range as boundary)

Now, redistricting is done 13 weeks before elections if and only if a district has left the allowable population range since last redistricting; if a Senate district has left the allowable range but its House district has not, then only the boundary inside the House district is redistricted. If a House district has left the allowable range, however, then there is House as well as Senatorial redistricting, as long as the number of House districts whose boundaries change and the total area and population ending up in a different district are kept to the minimum possible. Note that Senators may end up serving slightly different constituencies before and after their mid-term; therefore, districts keep their numbering and are not scrapped every two years, although they may gradually "move." To illustrate the idea of moving districts, take Oklahoma, whose population increases more slowly than the national average, and Texas, whose population increases more quickly. Since Texas is gaining districts (the 1990 census would've given it about 1.84 districts, whereas the 2000 census would've given it about 1.94), it becomes denser, and thus districts "move" slightly in its direction. In non-census years, the redistricting is done on the basis of estimates.

Any thoughts (damn, this is already too long)?

[Sephirstein]

1. I love Condorcet...

But remember, millions of Americans voted for Bush. Are you sure they'd be smart enough to understand and accept?

[redeye]

2. I dunno...

...the front-end is exactly the same as IRV: you rank the candidates from 1st to last. Condorcet also includes the concept of equals, so you can rank as many candidates as you want to in each place (e.g. Nader, Dean 1, Kucinich, Moseley-Braun 2, Edwards 3, Kerry 4...) if the system so allows. The difference is in the way the votes are counted, not in the way you vote.

[thom1102]

3. The function of the senate,

is to allow the smaller states the ability to counter the larger states. If the congress were based entirely on population, small states like RI, VT, CT, NH, MD, and DE, would be ill prepared to defend themselves against legislation that favors the states with larger populations. It is supposed to be an august body, and, due in large part to the long 6 year term. less subject to the whims of the popular will, and, in theory more likely to make decisions based on what's right rather than what's popular.

[redeye]

4. Yeah, right (pun intended)

Let's see what's wrong with your argument...

1. Small states are different from one another, and don't have any common interests against big states except continuing their overrepresentation in the Senate. In Wyoming, Nevada, and Montana, speed limits are a big issue; in Vermont, NH, and RI, they are not. Wyoming, Alaska, Idaho, and Utah are safely Republican; Hawaii, Rhode Island, DC, and Vermont are safely Democratic. Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Vermont, and NH are rural; DC, RI, Hawaii, and to a lesser degree Utah and Nevada are urban.

2. People are not their states. Although small states tend to be safer in presidential elections than large states, nonetheless no state other than DC has given a candidate more than 70% of the vote, and only a few gave their winner more than 60%.

3. States are not really relevant as divisions, especially in the west. Wyoming an Colorado are fucking squares; Utah is a square with a straight-line dent; and so on. Very few state borders in the contiguous USA make sense at all.

4. States with large populations are not united, even though they lean more Democratic than small states. California seems like a bastion of liberalism, and yet 41% of its voters in 2000 voted for Dubya. Texas, NY, and California have three different sets of interests, and are very unlikely to cooperate, especially with proportional representation when their congressional delegations will be very far from monolithic.

5. The Senate's term doesn't really make it anti-populistic. Besides, democratic principles require that the legislature be subject to constant review from the electorate exactly in order to prevent such oligarchies from forming. I fail to see how any elected official can be anything other than populistic to some degree; for what is right, there are judges.

[sirshack]

5. Honestly...

...that sounds needlessly complex. You'd have to scrap just about everything outlined in the Constitution in terms of voting, elections, and representation. You'd probably cause more problems than you would solve. People would probably get pretty confused about excatly what district they were in and who would be representing them.

[bushisanidiot]

6. I like the idea of letting the candidates split the electoral

votes if there is only a 1% difference in the vote total. Let them each have half. Especially for the large states, it doesn't seem right that one candidate get's the whole basket when half the voters of that state voted against him/her.

[sirshack]

7. some states do that....n/t

...

[redeye]

9. Not exactly

In Maine and Nebraska, there are only 2 electors for the winner of the state's popular vote; the rest are picked according to district winners, so that the winner in each district gets one electoral vote and the at-large winner gets an additional two. It certainly isn't proportional, given that the states never have split their votes under their current system; in 2000 Maine's 4 electoral votes all went for Gore, even though he received slgihtly less than 50% of the state's vote.

[redeye]

8. Right...

...I think that the whole electoral college needs to be scrapped anyway, only I didn't include it here because I was focusing on Congress.

As an aside, it's strange that Jim Robinson so enthusiastically supports the EC even though it disenfranchises him as a California Republican...