Let’s say you have multi-member constituencies. You hold an election with an outcome that looks roughly like this:
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Candidate #1 received 12,000 votes
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Candidate #2 received 8,000 votes
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Candidate #3 recieved 4,000 votes
All three get elected to the legislature, but Candidate #1’s vote on legislation is worth three times Candidate #3’s vote, and #3’s vote is worth half Candidate #2’s vote.
I know that the British Labour Party used to have bloc voting at conference, where trade union reps’ votes were counted as every member of their union voting. So, e.g., if the train drivers’ union has 100,000 members, their one rep wielded 100,000 votes, but that’s not quite what I’m describing above.
Bonus question: what do you think would be the pros and cons of such a system?
No because that would defeat the point of having regional representatives at all. If I live in City X and there is a really tight race between two candidates, and one of them wins by a hair, then you’re saying that all of the people who didn’t vote for the winner now have the person representing them being weaker in the legislature. It would amplify the bandwagon effect where people vote for the person they think is going to win rather than voting their conscience, because strategically what you’re suggesting is incentivizing the bandwagon effect.
I think OP is saying that City X would have Reps 1, 2, and 3 (etc), and that (in your scenario), 1 would have a slightly stronger voting power than 2, while 3 had less power again.
This would mean that almost all voters in the city had some representation that they agree with, but with power apportioned proportionally.
Compared with City Y (same population), where candidate N won 99% of the vote, N would wield more power than 1, 2 or 3 individually, but the same amount of power as 1, 2 and 3 combined. So the city’s representations would be equal overall.
That’s exactly right, thank you.
No worries, it’s an interesting idea to think through :-)
That’s not what they’re suggesting. If it was a tight race and candidate A got 13,000 votes while candidate B got 11,000, both candidates would “win.” Their voting power would just be proportional to their votes. In a way, it would be more representative than what you’re saying, because how it works now is that the 11,000 people voting for candidate B wouldn’t have any representation at all.
Ah, I see. In that case I think the criticism is that you would have proliferation of way too many representatives in legislatures. IMO a legislature shouldn’t be much more than 200 people (though many nations break this threshold). My reasoning is that there is research showing that a person can’t really maintain relationships with more than 200 people.