Fireball1244 wrote:To be a democracy, there's more than just giving everyone a single vote. You also have to take measure of the conditions those different votes are cast in. Under the system you have laid out, the vote of a voter in Maine would be far more efficacious than the vote of a voter in California because of the vast disparities created by your "elect everything statewide" concept.
I'm going to work through some math here for a few minutes. A few points and assumptions:
- A microvote is 1 x 10^-6 votes.
- We assume a 100% voting rate (ha ha)
- We don't account for the fact that votes for losing candidates are effectively discarded, as if the individual had not voted at all
Let's start with Senate elections. California has 38 million people, Maine has 1.8 million. To determine the effectiveness of an individual vote, you take the number of people voting "on your behalf" at the federal level, and divide by the total number of individual votes cast in the state. Since everybody votes for only one senator at a time, we get the following:
# California senators being elected / population = 1 / 38M = .02 / M
# Maine senators being elected / population = 1/ 1.8M = .55 / M
So, in the Senate, each Californian has .02 microvotes, while a Maine resident has .55 microvotes. The stated goal for the Senate is to give the little guy a greater voice, so this is working as intended.
Now, we'll go to house of representatives election. Each rep needs to go up for re-election every two years. California has 53 reps, Maine has 2. Same population numbers.
# California reps being elected / population = 53 / 38M = 1.39 / M
# Maine reps being elected / population = 2 / 1.8M = 1.1 / M
So, a Californian voting for reps in a state wide election has 1.39 microvotes, while a guy from Maine voting for reps in a state wide election has 1.1 microvotes. So, there's a disparity, but it's actually in favor of Californian voters, not Maine voters. Because the stated goal of the house of reps is to provide larger population states with a greater voice, this is working as intended (although we could adjust the number of reps in Cali or Maine to get a more appropriate ratio).
BTW, I'm all for a parliamentary system, with a
queen-appointed governor, if for nothing else other than humor value and the ability to toss everyone out if they're dicking around and not doing their jobs (or doing their jobs a little too well).