While I do think the current system has gone way too far in the other direction, the concern I'd see here is that for issues that _are_ of largely local concern there's no real voice.

> Most issues that voters care about are not local issues

Do you have an data to support this claim?

Indeed, most political science supports the opposite conclusion. Almost all politics is local.

> Indeed, most political science supports the opposite conclusion. Almost all politics is local.

Interesting. I'd say all the very toxic politics is non-local. The local stuff might be more, but it's mostly mundane.

Which makes sense. My city and county representatives can't get away with passing something wildly unpopular that >> 50% of local people hate. While it's far from perfect, there is a reasonable amount of accountability with local politicians.

Federal-level politicians though, are so far removed from the people they purportedly represent and their election is so heavily gerrymandered that they are untouchable. They can get away with serving only special interests and passing laws which most people hate.

How people vote (or for those who consistently vote one party no matter what, whether get nothet to show up to vote) is consistently due to local issues. Not necessarily local laws or measures mind you, but things impacting them in their local everyday life. This include having a job or the price of gas (incumbents who bring home pork contracts to their district do very well).

politics is WAN when nuance is harder to find

You're both right, in a sense.

Political science supports the fact that most of the issues voters care about the most are actually national culture-war issues.

It also supports the idea that most of the issues that actually affect voter's day-to-day lives are state/local.

In other words, according to mainstream political science thought, voters don't care enough about what they "ought" to be caring about.

Of course, this is also placing a value judgment that the material things that affect voters lives (local zoning and property taxes, for instance) are more important than the cultural/moral things (like how race is taught in schools). And when you start telling people that what's actually important to them isn't what they think is important, you're trying to "rewrite" their values...

Because America is the greatest democracy in the world, which means the democratic system it was built on is the best in the world. Anyone who suggests otherwise hates America.

I'm not being serious, but at least in the UK one of the major defences of the British system whenever electoral reform is brought up is, "it's the oldest so it must be the best".

When NZ adopted MMP (proportional system similar to Germany's) both the major parties (National & Labour) campaigned against it on the "better the devil you know" basis, which the electorate see through. The first MMP election was mildly rubbish, with a populist kingmaker gaining disproportionate leverage, but since then the electorate has been shrewder and in a subsequent referendum MMP remained the preferred system.

> Most issues that voters care about are not local issues

If this is actually true (which I am not sure about), it is a defect, not something we should entertain.

> why do need a system to carve up representation along geographical boundaries

Because people in the same geographic areas tend to have correlated interests

> Most issues that voters care about are not local issues, so why do need a system to carve up representation along geographical boundaries?

That seems more like ratifying a failure mode rather than fixing it. Having geographic representatives mean that area is less likely to get railroaded in various ways, because they have an advocate who's accountable specifically to them, rather than some diffuse ideological block.

Also, a lot of issues that voters care about are actually local issues made national through centralization.

Proportional representation can be done at multiple scales. You can simply add more representatives if districts feel to big.

Because when you do have a local issue you need a local representative who is beholden to you and is more dependent on your vote.

I have an issue with a bullet ridden sign on the Erie canal that needs to be taken down. It's been that way for years and I'm tired of looking at it. I will first contact the canal corporation as it's their responsibility but if they do nothing the local assembly member for that district can make things happen.

It's funny - I only left the United States six years ago and yet this idea is already unimaginably weird to me.

Why is this your representative's job? It just baffles me. Why is this guy dealing with some sign?

The idea that government is broken so you rely on personal relationships to get around is fundamentally bad.

In the Netherlands, you would just take a picture of the problem and post it to the Gemeente (municipality) - in fact, they have an online map you can pin these complaints to, and it's public.

You get a case number, and you get updates until it's fixed, which is usually pretty fast.

If you aren't online, you can just walk in to the office and they'll help you do it.

It's his job because this sign is in a location where outside visitors will frequently see it and it sends a bad message.

> I feel like a fairer way to do this would be through proportional representation.

Very much so, and there is evidence that proportional systems produce, among modern democracies, better satisfaction of the electorate with government, richer political dialogue with more axes of variation.

> Most issues that voters care about are not local issues

That’s very much not true, but in the US system, more local issues tend to be the focus of more local governments (not always, but usually.) At the same time, local impacts of national issues are important and need representation, but proportional representation can be done in ways which respect that.

> Why do need a system to carve up representation along geographical boundaries?

Several reasons: representation of local concerns, accountability of individual representatives to the general electorate and not just a party, and providing individual citizens at least one representative that clearly and concretely represents them particularly, not just their party of preference.

But you can do PR with local district representatives. Two key methods which do this:

Single Transferrable Vote (STV; the multiwinner analog of Instant Runoff Voting/Ranked Choice Voting) provides proportional representation by district in multimember districts, which provides coarse-grained proportionality overall while providing local representation, and mitigating the impact of specific districting decisions, since its very hard for them to have any significant effect on partisan representation overall.

Mixed Member Proportional, in which people have two ballots for a legislative body, one for a district elections (which can be single-winner FPTP, multiwinner STV, or just about anything else), and one for a party. The winners of the district elections are elected, but in the same body enough additional seats are added, from party lists, to achieve proportionality (within the tolerances specified in the system) overall, by reference to the party votes in the second ballot.

STV is the most straightforward and the one that would probably be least problematic for US state or federal legislative elections. (Federally, it would require a change to statute to either allow or mandate states to use it, because there is a statutory single-member-district mandate currently.)

Living in an MMP country, I can say I think the party list system truly sucks, because you get career politicians that you can’t vote out, whom are essentially elected by themselves into the party.

I think one of the most important strengths of democracy is voting out people we don’t like, and MMP badly breaks that ability.

The argument for the list is when 5% of the population would vote for NZ First, and Winston Peters would get a seat because he put himself first on his party list. He would get over-representative power when a coalition government was required: in that specific situation he had a constituency. However in the larger parties (National, Labour) there are situations where people on their list get in on their party vote, even though the person is wildly disliked in the electorates, and would never get a constituency. During a past landslide Labour win, a bunch of nobodies wayyyy down the list (not expected to ever win) got in as members of parliament with zero constituency.