Re:North Carolina Is Ordered to Redraw Its Congressional Map
by michaelmrose on Wednesday January 10, 2018 @06:34PM
(#16120147)
I'm all for innovative methods like single transferable vote and agree they would be more effective than FPTP but I think this is logically distinct from whether we should decouple votes from geographical locations.
Re:North Carolina Is Ordered to Redraw Its Congressional Map
by dragonwriter on Wednesday January 10, 2018 @06:55PM
(#16120262)
They aren't practically distinct, and the benefit you claimed upthread is not realized with the voting system (which is also an innovative, non-FPTP, system, just a bad one) you proposed.
You could, but that would actually be worse the FPTP in single member districts.
> Logically the choices would resemble the choices of the population.
No, they wouldn't, except by chance. Say you have six candidates, A-F, for three seats. 75% of the electorate prefers an ideology generally espoused by A, B, and C; 25% prefers an ideology generally espoused by D and E, and 10% prefers an ideology espoused by F.
In the first group, A is by far the most effective campaigner and gets 70% of the total vote, with the remainder split evenly between B and C; in the second group, support is split equally between D and E. The last, of course, all goes to F.
So, in your top 3 vote, A and F win seats in the clear, and the third vote goes to a tiebreaker between D and E; this does not at all reflect the distribution of views in the population.
That's why methods like Single Transferrable Vote and it's relatives, using preference rather than bullet ballots, exist.