Proportional Representation in the USA: Consequences/Implications

Suppose that on January 1, 2013, the American electoral system - for all elections at the national level, so President, Senate and House of Representatives - is suddenly changed from a district system to a system of proportional representation. A simple system of proportional representation, that is; no additional members, transferable votes, thresholds or whatnot, simply 'one citizen, one vote'. Of course, this is never going to happen, but I think it's an interesting topic to think about: what would the implications be? How would this affect American politics? I'm more interested in speculating about the consequences than in debating the merits of PR vs. the district system. Here are some consequences I can think of right now; feel free to add on!

Short-term consequences:

• Perhaps the first thing to go would be the distinction between "swing states" and "safe" states. Under PR, any vote in any state makes just as much of a difference as any other vote in any other state, requiring parties to spread out their campaign efforts rather than focus on a handful of "battleground states".
• Gerrymandering, as seen here, would become impossible.

Long-term consequences:

• Slowly but surely, a true multi-party system would arise. I say "slowly" because there are currently no parties except the Democrats and Republicans which are well-known, well-organised and significantly large, and such things don't just appear overnight. Personally, I think the first new parties on the scene would be split-offs from the existing parties (e.g. the Democrats and the Republicans both splitting into a "moderate" and a "radical" wing), rather than completely new ones. I don't know enough about the USA to predict what would be a plausible political landscape - which parties there would be, how many, how big or small - so I'd be very interested to hear American tropers' thoughts on this.
• As the number of parties increased, any given party's primaries would become less important.
• More parties mean more specialised parties; each party would have a clearer and more detailed "party line" than under the current system, where the Democratic Party and the GOP each cover a very broad spectrum of political positions, and there's considerable variation among Senators, Governors and (wannabe) Presidents of the same party.
• In a multi-party PR system, it's virtually impossible for any single party to gain an absolute majority in any election. This presents an interesting challenge when it comes to presidential elections, which are by their nature single-winner (you don't elect a hundred Presidents, you elect one). I can think of a few ways to solve this:
  • Declare whoever gets the most votes to be the winner, whether he has a majority or not. This has the obvious disadvantage that a candidate with only a very small minority behind him can become President, provided the other candidates have even smaller minorities.
  • Have parties form coalitions beforehand so there are only two candidates again, each of whom has a serious chance at an absolute majority.
  • Go for a two-round system like in France, where the two highest-scoring candidates from Round 1 face off in Round 2.
  • Stop electing Presidents altogether and hand more power to Congress. From what I know about the US, this option in particular is hilariously implausible.

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What would happen is that instead of having local candidates and representation, you'd be voting for parties, who would designate the representatives accordingly, who would basically all vote in lockstep. If you were a person who saw this a a bad thing (I'm on the fence about it), then this would be a good reason to oppose proportional representation.

As well, there would be zero incentive to provide good constituent service..often elected leaders also serve to be representative of government as a whole, helping citizens in their district to navigate government.

On the whole, I actually think that proportional representation would result in a more broken democracy. I rather Instant Runoff Voting, but recent examples and studies have shown that it might be too complicated for most people.

Democracy is the process in which we determine the government that we deserve

I think that instant runoff voting is implemented in some countries, so I call bullshit on the "too complicated bit". And there's two round voting, which isn't complicated at all. Though I do question its value and whether or not people would come out to vote a second time.

In any case, the Green party would be likely to experience a surge in membership. It is also likely that in such a scenario the Tea Party and the Libertarians would break off and try to form their own party rather than try to control the Republican party.

Also, why the fuck would we get rid of the Presidential position? We don't have anything equivalent to replace him with, and the Speaker of the House is not anything like a head of state.

How would Senate and House positions work if they're not elected by certain regions? Would they just all run on one ballot, and the Top 100 candidates for Senate and Top 435 candidates for the House would take the seats?

edited 10th May '12 7:16:25 AM by RavenWilder

Most PR systems work with "open party lists" - each party submits a list of candidates numbered 1 to n, and you can vote for anyone on any party's list. Most votes for any given party will usually go to the No. 1 on their list. The votes for all candidates of Party X are added up to get the total number of votes for Party X; if this is enough for, say, 30 seats, then the first 30 people on Party X's list will become members of the House/Parliament/what have you. However, if someone further down the list - say, on number 35 - has received enough "preference votes", then she will be elected at the expense of someone higher up on Party X's list. This will not affect the total number of seats Party X receives.

Of course, you could also use a "closed list" system, which is simpler (you can only vote for a party, not for individual candidates, so no "preference votes" - if Party X receives 30 seats then their first 30 candidates are elected, period).

edited 10th May '12 8:11:25 AM by MidnightRambler

Mache dich, mein Herze, rein...

Aren't there alternatives to Party List Systems?

I've always had a dislike of them since I ran across them — they always seem unrepresentative to me. I admit, that'll make the system more complex, but it might restore the link between voter and representative.

Keep Rolling On

From roughly left to right, it would look something like this:

• Green Party: Environmentalism as its primary focus; probably relatively small.
• Socialist Party: Wouldn't be called this due to "socialism" being a dirty word in American politics, but it'd still be a socialist party. Focus on entitlement programs like Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, welfare, etc.
• Liberal Party: Focus on social issues like gay rights, religious freedom, racial equality, abortion rights, etc.
• Conservative Party: The mirror image of the Liberal party; focus on Christian values (eg, pro-life, anti-gay marriage, possibly intelligent design, etc).
• Corporatist Party: This wouldn't be called this either, but a pro-business party, meaning as little taxation and regulation as possible.
• Libertarian Party: Government minimalists. Focus on getting rid of basically every government service except the justice system (police/courts/prisons/etc) and the military.

Of course, there'd also be the old classics like a proper communist party and a neo-Nazi party on their respective fringes, but those six would be the mainstream ones. The biggest rivalry would be Socialist/Liberal vs Conservative — the former two would be natural allies, and they'd probably be pretty evenly matched in size by Conservative. Green and Libertarian would both be fairly small, but I couldn't say which would be smaller than the other. Corporatist would be fairly small as well, but would have disproportional amounts of money behind it; however, it doesn't have any natural allies (except perhaps Libertarian), so I'm not sure how things would fare with it.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

The general attempt to link "regions" to specific people rather than broad political parties was to have larger voting districts with multiple candidates. So it's more of a localised PR system rather than a national PR system.

A lot of PR countries with parliaments typically vote for the PM in their house, but a president system usually is a different election from the senate/parliament/congress/sejm/whatever. I'm not sure which is superior as I tend to dislike presidents, too much power vested in a single person. I rather a well run parliamentary system but hey that's not the topic I guess.

It's actually a lot simpler to vote in a PR system because you can be way more lazy and vote for a party.

Party whips aren't necessarily true, but usually grow stronger for more ideological parties (for instance, the Tories in Canada have massive party whip, the liberals party whip on issues they wish to win on, the NDP usually bring out the whip for social issues but not economic ones, Greens have yet to use a whip but they have one MP so the point is moot... basically each party applies it differently and if you don't like the way they whip members then you can vote for a different party) Plus you get a lot of "floor crossing", where certain party members join another party if their constituents don't like the way the MP's party is going.

edited 10th May '12 9:04:10 PM by breadloaf

My kingdom for Instant Runoff!

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

You have a kingdom?

What is Instant Runoff, anyway?

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That's where, after you have a general election where all the various candidates run for office, you then have a second election where only the Top Two candidates from the previous election are on the ballot.

It's a way of trying to avert the situation where people will vote for a candidate, not because they necessarily want them in office, but because they see them as the best bet for keeping an even less desirable candidate out of office. That approach to voting is the reason why just two political parties control pretty much everything.

They use that system for the French presidential election... didn't prevent a

Exactly that happened in 2002, when many Socialists voted for Chirac just to keep Le Pen out, after their own candidate Jospin had been eliminated in the first round.

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Well, yeah, in the runoff round, sure; that's what the runoff round is for. But the idea is that in the first round of elections people can feel free to vote for their first choice, because they know the lesser-of-two-evils decision won't need to be made until the second round, making it easier for Third Parties to garner votes.

Hm. We (and many other European countries) solved that problem by simply not having any single-winner elections at all. We don't elect mayors, provincial governors or the Prime Minister, only legislative bodies.

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That would be the parliamentary system, which is why I think it is superior because of its ability to do PR in the first place.

What would be the consequence for America? Well for one thing, the face of the country is a lot less important than before. Now, theoretically speaking the Canadian Prime Minister is more powerful than the US President, practically speaking it's the reverse. But, you still get the "dictatorial government" problem, where a lot of times when you just had an election, it gives free reign to the biggest winner. That's mostly because nobody can go into an election right after you just had one, so for a few months to a year, whatever government is formed gets to do whatever it feels like for a while.

That's still better than a President that gets to do whatever he/she feels like for four years.

Additionally, well-run governments can be re-elected indefinitely. So if you got good government, keep the good government. Imagine for instance, Clinton's balanced budget got maintained through the Bush years so when the subprime mortgage crisis hit (because I seriously doubt the democrats would have put in legislation to have regulated the market properly), you'd have a lot more breathing room to work with. An extra trillion dollars from the lack of war and an extra 6 trillion from lack of deficit spending and tax reductions.

edited 11th May '12 8:26:21 PM by breadloaf

In a parliamentary system, though, political parties gain much more power, with legislators largely being their party's mouthpieces. There's something to be said for politicians having to take personal responsibility for the votes they cast.

Even Bush had to get permission from Congress to go to war, breadloaf. The president can't just do whatever he wants willy nilly. There's measures in place to limit the amount of things that can be done on a whim. And there's always the possibility of getting things changed back after he's out of office. And with the way the Republican party is right now I really don't want the parties to have more influence than we do right now, because that would result in several bad things currently.

I object to calling it gerrymandering on the basis that Elbridge Gerry was an honest man who was Mis-blamed for gerrymandering.

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I think most countries - PR or not - have some clause saying that legislators are free to vote whichever way they like, that they can't be forced to follow any "party line", and hence that each and every one of them is individually responsible for how they vote.

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I don't think so. In the UK (the base for many of the Parliamentary systems out there) there is almost always a party line. If you break the party line, which is defined by the level of whip that is applied (so a three line whip is the most serious kind), you can lose any government positions that you hold (such as being a minister) and even be expelled from the party (though that is super rare). We do occasionally have free votes (Fox hunting was one) but they are the exception and not the rule.

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While not a dictator, I believe Bush only got congress approval for Afghanistan but for Iraq he used a previous declaration of war no? I think he got stuck on funding the war from congress, as budgets must pass through the legislative branch, even then it's not like it's really possible to vote to not fund it. It's really the political culture that a president creates that I am concerned about.

In the current climate of power-presidents, can you really vote against them if they go to war? What if they pull a Libya, and go in for 30 days and then illegally extend it? The military doesn't appear to care to refuse and congress just uses the situation to gain votes but not actually stop the war.

Even so, I think that in general a president creates a winner-take-all system that doesn't translate well to reflect a people's opinion.

Also, I think that proportional representation also eliminates the entire "waste your vote" problem. Your vote is always useful because once you have a proper PR system and parliamentary politics and lots of parties, you can complain about "they vote the party line"... well vote for the party that has your policies. What's the problem? That they are forced to vote in the way you told them to vote?

edited 13th May '12 11:16:20 PM by breadloaf

Lots of people voted against Bush and Mc Cain specifically because they wanted a president who didn't want to go to war anymore. That's a large part of how we got Obama in the first place! Granted, the Bush case shows that just because you vote against them doesn't mean you'll win, but we also vote for our Congressmen and state representatives. But yes, we can vote against them, and we can vote against their party.

Also the whole "vote the party line" is an obscene problem as current US politics should show you; the party line can go in an extremely wonky direction when it gets populated by idealogues instead of people who actually think their job is to serve the people.

You have failed to convince me that a parliamentary system is any better. Particularly when your Head of State and whatever the other title of State is called aren't covered by the same person. We'd benefit from a shift to a multiparty system, sure, but I see no reason for us to just ditch the position of the leader of the country in such a manner.

The issue is that a multiparty system doesn't usually fit well with a Presidential system, unless you tie with your parliamentary/congress elections. Really I think that's all I'm asking for.

A workable solution is to be somewhat like... say Germany, where the Chancellor is usually of the winning party and the important parties receive ministerial positions. It's mostly parliamentary negotiations then. I just prefer to remove winner-take-all systems and replace them with congress.

Proportional representation is both a boon and bust for crazies like Tea Party. Boon in that they can grab seats. Bust in that they can just be ignored if the Democrats/Republicans formed a coalition government to block them from power.

Also our Head of State is the Governor General who represents the Queen of Canada (the Queen holds a separate throne specifically for Canada, thus Canadians don't have to bow to the British Throne, although the throne is held by the same person anyway). Not sure why you care about this, it's not really important.

Maybe it's different in countries with parliaments, but in the U.S. the inner workings of political parties aren't publicized much. I could tell you a lot of stuff about the President and various legislators, but I have no clue what the internal power structure of the Big Two parties is like.

Sure, I know what their party platforms are, but those are so simplistic that they often don't tell you how a party will actually vote. They might say they support Issue A and Issue B, but in what ways are they willing to compromise B to support A, or vice-versa? And how will they react when a new issue comes up that wasn't in anyone's heads back during the election?

With directly elected representatives, at least you know they're ultimately the ones responsible for the votes they cast. But if legislators are just mouthpieces for their political party, then the real decisions are being made by a bunch of people I've never heard of and whose faces I've never seen. Even if I and a bunch of other people vote against their party, I'll never know whether the decision makers we disagreed with kept their jobs or not. I find that very unsettling.

Frankly, I wish political parties weren't even mentioned on ballots and we just voted in candidates by write-in vote.

It indeed is different in countries by proportional vote (not necessarily parliamentary system).

If we implement proportional vote in US, then the grip on the two major parties will loosen. Then the different blocs of those parties no longer need to force themselves to unite into bipartisan chunks. Thus there's a greater incentive to make your own party, rather than a coalition within a party. When that happens, each of the branch parties will have clearer ideas on what it represents.

It all comes together as a result of the systematic change.

The US parties do have subdivisions with somewhat defined ideas, as I've mentioned with the coalitions; they just get lumped together into two parties.

edited 14th May '12 10:59:51 AM by abstractematics

Now using Trivialis handle.