Re:Delegative Democracy – a scalable voting model
by hga on Wednesday November 05, 2014 @06:11PM
(#8564825)
Indeed, our system was originally a "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" sort, where if you didn't know him, you'd likely know someone who'd vouch for a House candidate or Elector (who was vouching for the President); the Senate back then was elected by state legislatures to protect their interests.
It had obvious scaling problems, and the total number of districts was fixed at 435 in 1910 ... yeah, in the period where the GooGoos (Good Government) types were smashing most everything in sight about our system, like Senate elections. They sure improved things :-(.
Re:Delegative Democracy – a scalable voting model
by dllthomas on Thursday November 06, 2014 @01:10AM
(#8565982)
"the Senate back then was elected by state legislatures"
I actually think this change was a large part of what led to consolidation of power at the federal level.
If a citizen wanting X is deciding between Senate candidate A promising X, and B not promising X, why wouldn't they just pick candidate A?
If a legislator is trying to decide between A and B, why wouldn't they just do X and keep the credit?
Wouldn't it be subject to the same limitations of the electoral college, that future laws could restrict how delegates vote based on popular election results, etc.?