Posted on 03/17/2015 10:20:07 AM PDT by C19fan
On Tuesday, Israelis will elect a new national parliament. Millions of voters will choose between competing "lists" -- slates of candidates who represent a political party or an alliance of parties that will be allocated seats in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, based on their share of the votes they garner.
In Israel's history, no single party has ever won an outright majority in the 120-seat chamber, meaning governments have always been formed through coalitions of parties. The question of whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will lead the next government hinges on a complex set of calculations based on the seats won by his Likud party, trailing in the polls behind his main challengers, and what parties will join his coalition.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Belgium has proportional representation modified based on electoral districts. The parties are dominated by geographic factors; Flemish v. Walloons. Germany uses a mixed system but there is a specific geographic the Bavarian Christian Social Union. Italy has the Northern League party based in Lombardy.
Because of the electoral college system in the United States, the simple fact of where you live could mean your vote just doesn't matter in a presidential election
A Republican living in CA is just as "shut out" of the POTUS election as a Democratic living in Texas. The POTUS is not the only election we have here in the US Mr. Tharoor.
Studies suggest that voter turnout is higher in countries that use proportional representation.
Comparing a small compact country like Israel to the US is an apples to oranges comparison. Israeli participation at 80% is in the middle of the pact. The UK with a district system has participation rates comparable to Israel.
Women are half the population, but that's not reflected in the world's legislatures
Women made up 22% of the last Knesset. 20% of the US Senate and 24% of the House are women
It seems the author is arguing we should eliminate the separate executive and have a pure PR Parliamentary system. I could imagine there would ideological parties would fragment based on on geography, religion and race/ethnicity. Israel with a relatively homogeneous population had 13 political parties. Belgium has 13 political parties. I would imagine there could by a multiple of that number for such a heterogeneous country as the US. If you think pork politics is bad now imagine what it would be like with a PR system.
House Bill 4310: Pro-rate Michigan’s electoral college presidential votes
Introduced by Rep. Cindy Gamrat (R) on March 5, 2015, to require that at political party conventions one presidential elector from each congressional district and two electors at large be chosen. The elector ultimately chose for each district would the one whose party’s candidate for president won in that congressional district. The at-large candidates elected would be, as now, those who belonged to the political party whose presidential candidate won statewide. This would end the current “winner take all” system.
http://www.michiganvotes.org/Legislation.aspx?ID=168841
Senate Bill 197: Pro-rate Michigan’s electoral college presidential votes
Introduced by Sen. Dave Hildenbrand (R) on March 11, 2015, to end the current winner-take-all system of allocating Michigan’s presidential electors, and instead pro-rate the state’s electoral college votes on the basis of the state’s popular vote totals.
http://www.michiganvotes.org/Legislation.aspx?ID=168894
It will never happen. Our small states will never approve a change.
ELECORAL votes should be based on Congressional Districts. Most of this country/state/county votes Republican and leans Conservative. Because of the mass density of toilets like Philadelphia/NYC/Seattle/Chicago etc. we get Democrat Presidents.
I think we only need to make one significant change to our system: We need to make sure each voter is actually a living (not dead) U.S. citizen, and votes only once per election.
We also need a lot more congressional districts. The total number of seats in the house should have never been capped at 435. The House was supposed to have 1 Rep per 50,000 people.
If you’d dilute the power of these congress-critters, a lot of problems would go away. You wouldn’t be able to significantly gerrymander any districts and the life-long politician would become a thing of the past (unless you’re ideal job involves working in a madhouse). I also think that more representation would help put an end to this two party stranglehold that’s been morphing into a uniparty over the past century. Finally, literally anyone would have a shot at winning a congressional seat. You wouldn’t need millions of dollars to win an election.
Yeah, I’m asking for a *lot* of people in the House ... it’s supposed to be that way though. Power is best when it’s distributed.
No, we need to keep the Electoral College that the Founding Fathers gave us for a reason. And we need to keep the winner take all system in each state.
Increasing the number of districts would benefit the larger states. This, along with the winner-take-all for president, would virtually ensure democrat presidents with the current population distribution.
As it stands right now, the less populous states have a good check on the teeming masses.
The Founding Fathers set up the Electoral College for small states, so that the big population states wouldn’t control it all, completely.
Right now all the counting is in the hands of the Marxists and not likely to change soon. ACORN, SEIU, NEA, Fed Unions....etc.
I've called for that before.
That would get us closer to a parliamentary style House. Even if we raised the cap to 600, that would be one Representative per 500,000 people. That's possibly to many to divide roughly equally between two major parties.
That would force coalitions to emerge to select the Speaker. And the Speaker *should* drive the interests of the coalition that selected him (unlike today).
Then there is the Senate. It would still be capped at 100, and the two leading parties will still run it. They would be truly forced to deal with the House, because the House would likely not be run by party cronies like it is today, where both chambers act as essentially one body.
Then there is the Electoral College, which would grow to 700, which means that the President will need to get 351 electoral votes to win. The disbursement of those 600 district votes across the states will change what we think of as battleground states.
This is all perfectly doable without changing the Constitution.
-PJ
Blame Delaware. Freedom of speech, etc in the Bill of Rights came out of Congress as the THIRD amendment with Right to bear arms as the FOURTH, etc. The originally SECOND amendment was finally ratified a couple hundred years later as the 27TH and is often referred to as the Madison amendment. The original FIRST would do as you suggest allowing between 200 and population/50k Representatives. Like the 27th was it still can finish ratification. Only 27 more states are needed for that. However it might not change anything according to the Wiki I linked above. 435 Reps would be permitted by it for any US population over 21.75M, i.e. any time after 1850, with Congress left to pick a number from within the approved range. Interestingly, both the original House and Senate versions would have mandated much larger Houses today, but the conference committee compromise sent to the states doesn't.
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