Since Donald Trump won the US presidential election, a lot of people (including me) have found themselves outraged over the idea that you can somehow win an alleged democratic election despite getting fewer votes than your opponent. It's an idea that I find paradoxical to say the least. And though America's Electoral College is probably the most well-publicised example of a voting system that gives more weight to votes in certain areas over others, it's far from the only one: Many, if not most Western democracies split their countries into electoral counties where the vote is not always proportional to the amount of people living there. From what I understand, Great Britain is probably one of the more egregious examples out there, given that it uses a system where it's not merely possible for a political party to win a majority in parliament with much less than a majority of votes, it's virtually guaranteed.
I live in Iceland, a country with less than half a million people in it. You'd think that in such a country, it would be easy to vote for a single parliament with proportional vote, but you'd be wrong — at least the last two coalition governments were able to scrounge up enough parliamentary seats to form majorities even when they had considerably less than half the vote. It's not a situation I'm very much inclined to stand for.
I guess what I want to ask is, why do people who are disadvantaged by these kinds of systems stand for this? How is this democratic, and how is it any different than straight-up denying voting rights to people with the wrong opinions or backgrounds? When governments base their entire claims to power on the idea that the opinions of people in certain areas matter more than in others, how far can you stretch systems like these before you lose the right to even call them democracies?
Since Donald Trump won the US presidential election, a lot of people (including me) have found themselves outraged over the idea that you can somehow win an alleged democratic election despite getting fewer votes than your opponent. It's an idea that I find paradoxical to say the least. And though America's Electoral College is probably the most well-publicised example of a voting system that gives more weight to votes in certain areas over others, it's far from the only one: Many, if not most Western democracies split their countries into electoral counties where the vote is not always proportional to the amount of people living there. From what I understand, Great Britain is probably one of the more egregious examples out there, given that it uses a system where it's not merely possible for a political party to win a majority in parliament with much less than a majority of votes, it's virtually guaranteed.
I live in Iceland, a country with less than half a million people in it. You'd think that in such a country, it would be easy to vote for a single parliament with proportional vote, but you'd be wrong — at least the last two coalition governments were able to scrounge up enough parliamentary seats to form majorities even when they had considerably less than half the vote. It's not a situation I'm very much inclined to stand for.
I guess what I want to ask is, why do people who are disadvantaged by these kinds of systems stand for this? How is this democratic, and how is it any different than straight-up denying voting rights to people with the wrong opinions or backgrounds? When governments base their entire claims to power on the idea that the opinions of people in certain areas matter more than in others, how far can you stretch systems like these before you lose the right to even call them democracies?