Which governmental system better represents the electorate?

Get rid of the Electoral College
Au 1929, I was thinking of exactly the same question you posed. During the 2002 presidential appointment, I wrote extensively about the subversion of democracy under the Electoral College system. I'm still pissed about the outcome and don't want to get all riled up again.

However, I will state at least one reason why presidential elections should be based on one person, one vote. If, in my state, I vote for candidate A, but candidate B receives one more vote than my candidate A, my vote is discarded---poof---my vote is a "wasted vote." The Electoral College system allows this disfranchisement. Elections based on the national popular vote would correct this. Then, if my candidate A lost the election, I would at least have had my vote counted in a fair way.

In addition, the Electoral College system forces a false homogeneity on a state's population. It disfranchises political affiliation representing less than the majority views of the electorate of that particular state. For example, my party affiliation C may be less than the majority in my state, but may be greater than the party affiliation D in neighboring states. The other states combined votes for C may be greater than in my state, but my vote is discarded and the victory is given to party D.

Advocates for the Electoral System continue to use outdated reasons for maintaining it. In today's world with our modern transportation and communication abilities, along with rural demographic changes, it is no longer valid to try to protect small state's undue influence over the process. If the popular vote of small states agrees with those in large states, the will of the majority of people will be served.

In addition, president and vice-presidential elections are Federal elections, not State. The Electrol College system is not consistent with Federal elections. It is a left over from the era of compromises made to obtain Constitution approval votes of small states.

It's too easy for balloting corruption to occur in localities under the Electoral College system. It would be much more difficult to corrupt the process in a nation-wide popular vote.

I would rather try ridding the process of the Electoral College than changing to a parlimentary system.

---BumbleBeeBoogie

I agree re scrapping the Electoral College. In addition to the excellent arguments put forth by BBB, I think the current system leads to strategies along the lines of: "We have to win states A,B,C, D and E. We have no chance in F-M, and N-Z are in the bag. So let's focus only on the states we can win..." The strategy then is to ignore all the voters in many states. If you can't win a majority, the votes there are meaningless.

And, if the majority ruled, the odds would be far lower for the kind of BS we had happen in the Supreme Court in 2000...

BBB
The questions related to the pros and con of the electoral college abound. However, the question here is which system is more responsive to an electorate. I should point out that even without the electoral collage and one man one vote we would still have two basic parties and winner take all. In addition IMO the representatives {congress people} would appear to have more allegiance to the party than those who put them in office. But than again one can always ask who and what put them in office.

The EC has nothing to do with the question posed and most of BBB's complaints against it have nothing to do with the EC itself. The arguments posed are complaints against the rules the states setup to allocate their EC votes - not the EC itself.



A bit of spin there. Yes, the Presidential election is a national election. But they are also very much state elections. Read your Constitution. The Federation is a Federation of States - not a Federation of individuals. BBB's own earlier comments (i.e. "In addition, the Electoral College system forces a false homogeneity on a state's population.") argue against a national individual vote count that she desires.

Some of the other points raised are just as poorly thought out. The claim that it would be harder to corrupt the balloting process is flat out silly. The 2000 election had a seperation of less then 600,000 individual votes. If you count the number of missing ballots from ballot boxes that "disappeared" in St Louis, Chicago and Boston alone, they exceed that number so the entire election would have to have been recast.

To the meat of the original question: I don't think it really matters. "Responsiveness" is more of a matter of the candidates entrenchment and political ties. You have that under both systems.

There are 2 separate elements in the question.

One has been adressed. The Electoral College system in the US, which is based in the supposed autonomy of the individual States. Since nowadays, it is more supposed than real, strange outcomes, such as the one in 2000, tend to underline the limitations of the system.

But the other element seems more important to me.
If you ask "which governmental system better represents the electorate", the answer is simple: a parliamentary system with full proportional representation,as in the Netherlands.
But there may be contradiction between "better representing the electorate" and "builiding a democracy that works well". Proportional representation makes it more difficult to have workable parliamentary majorities. It gives excessive leverage to small parties who may have the decisive votes in majority formation. It is a breeding ground for opportunism and for the power of the party -deciding lists of candidates- over the power of the citizens -deciding to support or to change the incumbent in a given district-.
Strict winner-takes-all rules promote easier governance, but tend to put obstacles in the formation of new parties. The big old ones "close the house" and don't let any newbie in.
I prefer a mixed system, which favors more governance -putting percentage barriers to access parliament, as in Germany-, but has some space for minority parties to grow, to bloom and to eventually become a majority party, if the electorate is willing to support them.

being an idealist i would prefer a benevolent dictator, obviously unworkable modern world idea but i am an anachronist to begin with.

Fishin
Fishin, your point about the states control of how the EC in each state is valid. I've been active in my former state's legislation advocacy and understand that nothing is done for anything but political advantage unless the electorate takes control through the Ballot Proposition process, which has it's own set of problems.

The problem is that politics control the structure in each state. The party in control through the benefits of EC structure won't make changes that might be a political disadvantage to that party, similar to redistricting.

The changes need to be made federally for federal elections.

BumbleBeeBoogie

fbaezer
Quote I prefer a mixed system, which favors more governance -putting percentage barriers to access parliament, as in Germany-, but has some space for minority parties to grow, to bloom and to eventually become a majority party, if the electorate is willing to support them.

Expand please?

On one extreme we have the US, GB and New Zealand. There is a district for every seat. A separate election for every seat. Candidate with more votes, wins the seat, no matter the percentage. This often leads to a two-party system, and blocks minoritarian organization's access to power.
Representatives have their constituencies, and respond directly to them.
There is less party discipline (specially in the US).

On the other extreme we have Holland. One big circunscription, in which the electorate votes for long party lists. Each party gets the same percentage of representatives as the percentage of it's votes.
A party with 2% of the votes, gets 2% of the chamber.
Representatives have really no constituencies, and respond to the party, not to the voters.

A mixed system does not allow miniparties to enter parliament and/or divides the country in several circunscriptions and/or has races in two tiers: part of parliament is elected by the "winner gets all" method, another part is elected by proportional representation.

How is that a bad thing? Aren't the politicans supposed to put the people that they represent ahead of their party allegience?

Ted Rall's comedic take on the eveolution of the US version is a bit off topic but I thought it good enough to share:

I liked that cartoon when I saw it the other day, PDiddie. Rall can be over the top some of the time, but he really nailed this one!

(Thinks to self ...how can one be an anachronism at the BEGINNING? Beginning of what? TIME?! Nemmind...)


I quite like Oz's system - where, if a particular candidate, from any party, does not get up, one can indicate one's preferences for the next party and so on. This means that you can vote for a candidate of a party that is not one of "the big two" - the Greens for instance - and, not split the vote to allow a candidate for a party you disagree with strongly to get up by default.

Our system does allow smaller parties to get up in the Upper House - where there is proportional representation - and this makes for interesting times for the bigger parties.

fishin'

I was only making a statement, not a judgement.

This is my judgement:
Less party discipline brought by the electoral system has one good thing, one bad one.
The good thing is that representatives tend to respond more to the constituency (I really really do think I wrote it in the priovious posts) and less to the "party line". That's a way to prevent a democracy from becoming a partitocracy.
The bad thing is less reliability depending on the assembly (parliament, congress) composition, and the chance that the will of constituents can be eroded by the interest groups in the constituency.

Ok! I understood the "good thing" side of it but I don't see the "bad thing" clearly.

What stops a special interest from voting however they choose and gaining seats directly? The special interests are the constituency. If all of the electricans in the country decide to elect their union head to the national government and they all vote for that person you now have a person in elected position who's sole purpose is to look after one specific special interest.

Also, if a party wins say.. 5 % of the national vote and gets 5% of the seats as a result you end up with the situation that is common in Europe of the coalition government. No one party has a clear majority so they have to buddy up with another party (or 2) and form a coalition that builds the majority. In doing that each party ends up giving up some concession or another to the others to gain that majority coalition. If they end up ignoring the reasons people voted for them to begin with then how are they being responsive or representitive of the people that voted for them?

In the US at least, the idea is that the elected representative is there to represent ALL of the constituents of a specific geographic region and all of the special interests that exist in that region. That certianly isn't perfect but it does force the candidates to address a wider variety of issues to win elections and remain there.

dlowan



Explain getting up what you mean by indicating one's preference. Thanks

Who was I thinking about when I gave the "bad thing" example?
I was thinking about Jesse Helms and the tobacco lobby.

To sum it all up. My opinion is that governance is, at least, as importat as representativeness. Too many parties hinder governance; too few, hinder representativeness.

There is a thread about the (very interesting) Australian voting system:

http://able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6572

None - from my perspective. c.i.

Not sure what the question means, Au, but I will try to answer.

Getting up, of course, means to be elected.

We have a parliamentary system - party with the most successful candidates generally (unless there is a bigger coalition of other parties) forms government.

There are two major parties - Labor and Liberal (conservative). There a re numerous minor parties.

Say I am upset with the Labor party, and there is a Greens candidate standing in my seat. I would like the Green to be elected, if possible (though this is unlikely) - but I do not want to see the liberals win the seat - I am not THAT angry with Labor!

So - I can vote 1 for the Greens candidate, and 2 for Labor and so on.

If the Greens party person is not elected, because my second prefereence was for labor, my primary vote then goes to Labor - I have not split their vote.

Hope that helps.