Hiya! Itsa me, Mario  2 quid is good (Gasp! She typed it out fully). So this has been niggling around in my head for a while, and seeing as Barry hasn't made it yet I thought I would. (Don't ask me, he's a mindreader or something)

 

 

I am very ill today so do forgive any oversights on my part. Much appreciated

 

ALSO this is like a completely uncontroversial topic, its basically speculation, so like please don't fight. I don't want another topic deleted/locked Cheers.

 

 

So without. Further. Ado

 

DADADADADADADADA --> ELECTORAL REFORM

 

This is a buzzword that loads of media people and lizard persons politicians use. But what does it mean? Well the official definition is:

 

 

Electoral reform is change in electoral systems to improve how public desires are expressed in election results.

 

So if you're a little cynical, you could consider this gerrymandering by the party of the day to increase their vote share. Or, if you're a glass half full kinda guy, you could consider this a wonderful opportunity to make the whole system fairer. Opinions, eh?

 

For arguments sake, lets go with the second one for the purposes of this post.

 

Now, before this election, I had a vague idea of how the American political system worked, but now I feel I know enough to at least talk about it in this context. We all know that Trump won, happy face, sad face, delete as appropriate. That's not what we're here to discuss. Of course the full results still haven't come in yet, but the loser of this election had more votes than the winner. So what's that all about? Surely that can't be right? THIS DOES NOT COMPUTE!

 

Well actually, it computes very well, because the US has this thing called the electoral college. TL;DR Each state has a number of electoral college votes, and the person who wins the state gets them all. They need 270 to win. Trump got the magic number, even though he had a lower vote share, ergo, he won.

 

From an outsiders perspective, the US is so huge and populous, that I don't think they need to bother with electoral college votes. This is because, unlike in other countries, Americans first directly vote who they want as their presidential candidate, and then directly vote for their president. Why was a middleman thrust in? It seems to me a relic of bygone times when the establishment were free to gerrymander to their hearts content.

 

In the UK, we vote in a constituency MP, known as a seat in parliament. Right now there are 650 seats, but the Conservative party wishes to decrease that number to 600, which will disproportionately affect Labour seats, and also, doesn't make sense because the population of the UK is at an all time high. Of course they claim that there is no gerrymandering but the facts speak for themselves.

 

So what are we gonna do about it? Well nothing, really, we're just gonna discuss and debate. I've tried to outline as many different electoral systems as possible, and I'd like it if we could all discuss how to better all of our electoral systems.

 

NUMBER ONE - FIRST PAST THE POST (FPTP)

 

Used in: UK, many former UK colonies (ok there were wayyy too many for this one and loads of the countries were former colonies so, like, don't get offended please?) and US (this surprised me)

 

 

You're running a race, you can see the finish line and then BAM! The person behind you streaks ahead! They take ALL the medals. That's FPTP in a nutshell.

 

Benefits: Simple to undestand, generally provides majority governments therefore more stable

 

Drawbacks: Where do we start!

1) Gerrymandering the results is extremely easy to do. Take for example the new boundary changes I mentioned. If this gets through Parliament, the UK could end up with the Conservative party in charge literally forever! *shudders*

2) There are a lot of wasted votes. A prime example is the US election, another one, however, is the 1951 UK General Election. Labour won the most votes they've ever won, and held the record for most votes ever cast for any party until 1992. But they did not get the seats therefore they lost.

3) Tactical Voting. My constituency, Surrey Heath is the safest conservative seat in the UK. No matter how terrible the MP is, Surrey Heath will vote for them. Proof: Michael Gove Therefore, if you don't want the Tories to win, you would have to vote Liberal Democrats, as that's the only way the constituency would swing. (Un)fortunately, its never happened.

4) Smaller Parties. In the 2015 General Election, a party known as UKIP (aka Acceptable Racism) won around 4 million votes, which only translated to 1 seat in Parliament. On the flip side, the SNP (Scottish Nationalist) won over 1 million votes but won 54 seats. Why? FPTP, that's why. Scotland has a much smaller population, but more seats for represenatation purposes. Also, UKIP were a lot of  second place parties, and only won in one place. However small parties also have another effect, they drain away votes from parties that could actually win the election. In many places, this overlaps with Tactical voting - People don't vote for the party thwy want, they vote to keep the Tories out. I would use another party, but there has never been a case of keeping out a party other than the Conservatives. Except for South Thanet in 2015.

 

Ok, so that's that done,

 

NUMBER 2 SINGLE-TRANSFERABLE VOTE (STV)

 

Used in: Republic of Ireland, Scotland, UK local elections, Malta, Australian local elections, India, Pakistan

 

 

So what you basically do, is rank the candidates. You don't have to rank them all. And its counted in rounds. After every round, the person wo got the least votes is eliminated, and their votes go to whoever was ranked 2nd. This keeps on going until you have a winner.

 

Benefits: Reduces the need for tactical voting, Less wasted votes, more representation

 

Drawbacks: I'll be honest, not a whole lot. It's not completely fair. But it's better.

1) It is rather complex. I tried to give a summary, but it's very difficult to undestand the counting process. The voting bit is fine though.

2) There is no set way to count. You can choose the quotas for the candidates, but in the final round, someone who was everybody's 2nd choice could end up being the winner. You can have some strange results. But this also decreases any gerrymandering.

 

NUMBER 3 ALTERNATIVE VOTE (AV)

 

Used in: Australia, Canada, Papua New Guinea

 

 

A mixture of FPTP and STV. In the first round of voting, if there is a clear majority, that candidate wins. However, if there isn't, the votes keep on being transeferred until a winner is found,whereas STV keeps going on to find a winner. There is a difference.

 

Benefits: Slightly better than FPTP, as there is slightly more representation. Slightly less tactical voting.

 

Drawbacks: It's not too different to FPTP

1) Winner-take-all. If there is a clear majority, then it has no effect. This means safe seats will stay just that. Safe.

2) Not that proportional. Well, yeah.

 

NUMBER 4 PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION (PR)

 

Used in: Germany, New Zealand, Scotland, Wales, Bolivia, Lesotho, Hungary

 

 

Don't be fooled by the name in he picture, this system is known by many different names. Basically, if you win 30% of the votes you get 30% of seats. Simples

 

Benefits: Completely fair, you literally could not complain about the result. Basically no need for tactical voting. No wasted votes, practically.

 

Drawbacks: How could there be possibly be any drawbacks!, I hear you cry. Well read on.

1) Coalitions. You would very rarely have majority governments. The UK is very averse to this. Germnay on the other hand isn't.

2) Confusion. Apparently, having two votes confuses people

3) It's how Hitler got into power

 

And on that note:

 

NUMBER 5 DICTATORSHIP

 

lol disregard that

 

These are just the main ones. Feel free to add any more.

 

 

 

 

I am very ill today so do forgive any oversights on my part. Much appreciated

Hope u get better

 

 

 

 

On topic, the 5th 4th one seems to be the best IMO, it's fair. I don't get why you vote twice, once for the candidate and then for the party or something? Love the hate you gave to the first one tho

 

 

 

The Spanish one is... none of those.

 

The way one party's vote counts more than another one's works similar to the FPTP system, which basically means that it's extremely rare for any party that isn't the two big ones (equivalent to conservative and labor I think) to actually get any decent amount of seats, as you say. It doesn't exactly work like that, it's actually more like this, you first vote in something similar to the contituencies, like the areas in Spain, then the seats are given to each party, and then depending on the number of seats, the general votes (like the last ones, to decide the president of Spain) count more than others, basically

 

Not only that, the Spanish system is unfair in every way. Just like the FPTP system, it's easy to gerrymander the results and it's even easier to get tactical votes (for example, what would be the labour party "helps" poor families by giving them employement, so that family will vote for them. Of course, since only they've been the winning party, they're, generally, also responsible about that family becoming poor, and the aid they give isn't great). Furthermore, this is probably the only system in the world in which if you don't vote, your vote goes to the winning party, and unfortunatelly, some people can't vote that day or don't even know that their vote will go to the winning party if they don't vote. If you don't want to vote for anyone, you have to make a null vote, a blank vote is the same as not voting, it'll go the winning party.

 

 

There's many other things that make the Spanish system unfair (counting the dead people as people who can vote, so the winning party gets those votes (this only happened once, and it wasn't the general election )), but I think I'll stop here

Hope u get better

 Thank you

 

Hope u get better

 

 

 

 

On topic, the 5th 4th one seems to be the best IMO, it's fair. I don't get why you vote twice, once for the candidate and then for the party or something? Love the hate you gave to the first one tho

 

 

 

The Spanish one is... none of those.

 

The way one party's vote counts more than another one's works similar to the FPTP system, which basically means that it's extremely rare for any party that isn't the two big ones (equivalent to conservative and labor I think) to actually get any decent amount of seats, as you say. It doesn't exactly work like that, it's actually more like this, you first vote in something similar to the contituencies, like the areas in Spain, then the seats are given to each party, and then depending on the number of seats, the general votes (like the last ones, to decide the president of Spain) count more than others, basically

 

Not only that, the Spanish system is unfair in every way. Just like the FPTP system, it's easy to gerrymander the results and it's even easier to get tactical votes (for example, what would be the labour party "helps" poor families by giving them employement, so that family will vote for them. Of course, since only they've been the winning party, they're, generally, also responsible about that family becoming poor, and the aid they give isn't great). Furthermore, this is probably the only system in the world in which if you don't vote, your vote goes to the winning party, and unfortunatelly, some people can't vote that day or don't even know that their vote will go to the winning party if they don't vote. If you don't want to vote for anyone, you have to make a null vote, a blank vote is the same as not voting, it'll go the winning party.

 

 

There's many other things that make the Spanish system unfair (counting the dead people as people who can vote, so the winning party gets those votes (this only happened once, and it wasn't the general election )), but I think I'll stop here

 

For the 4th one, you vote once for a local member, and then you vote again for the government member. I think anyway

 

And the Spanish system sounds really unfair, i can't believe blank votes go to the winning party

 

And omg, did they actually let dead people vote!

Electoral College was created exactly for things like this. You have Clinton who won less than 20 states. The map was almost all red with very little blue. 
The Founding Fathers DID NOT want a few heavily populated states to be able to elect a President. The Electoral College worked perfectly because the vast majority of States were for Trump with just a very few for Clinton. It helps to know our history too. 
Since a few here might not actually know the history of voting for President some states didn't even vote for President until 1824. They just let their electoral voters elect the President. But Trump won decisively according to the rules fairly set up. Every state has a say in the election - and small states have a say greater proportionately than their population. States rights still matter. We are in fact the United STATES of America. Not "America".

 You do NOT want the powerful to rule over the less powerful. They did not want a few big highly populated states to rule over the majority of less populated states. So considering this - it does make sense why things are the way they are. This video also helps explain:

 

 

Electoral College was created exactly for things like this. You have Clinton who won less than 20 states. The map was almost all red with very little blue. 

The Founding Fathers DID NOT want a few heavily populated states to be able to elect a President. The Electoral College worked perfectly because the vast majority of States were for Trump with just a very few for Clinton. It helps to know our history too. 

Since a few here might not actually know the history of voting for President some states didn't even vote for President until 1824. They just let their electoral voters elect the President. But Trump won decisively according to the rules fairly set up. Every state has a say in the election - and small states have a say greater proportionately than their population. States rights still matter. We are in fact the United STATES of America. Not "America".

 You do NOT want the powerful to rule over the less powerful. They did not want a few big highly populated states to rule over the majority of less populated states. So considering this - it does make sense why things are the way they are. This video also helps explain:

 

 

I see where you're coming from, and that is, as you say, fair, those are the rules, and they've got a reason to be there.

 

 

Now, from what I can see, what Quid says (and I agree with her), is that what should be taken into account isn't the amount of states, but rather the amount of people. The way it is working right now just makes less populated states have more power over the rest of them, but as you said, States rights still matter, so it makes sense that it's the amount of States what makes the difference rather than the amount of people.

 

However, this system is applied in other countries of the world, where maybe a different system could work better, since it's the people who have an ideology rather than a zone (call it State, constituency, community, this depends on the country ), which means that it's the exact number of people voting what must count rather than the exact number of zones. For example, I live in the most populated community of Spain, and I find it unfair that 9M people's decision (my community) counts exactly the same as a different community which population doesn't reach 500K people.

 

As you said, there's a reason why it works that way in the US, and I'm not going to discuss that since you know a lot more than I do there, but I do find this system unfair, at least where I know how it works (Spain (although it isn't exactly that FPTP system but it does share this counting system) and England (I'd rather not say UK since I'm rather uninformed about how well this works in the other countries )).

I see where you're coming from, and that is, as you say, fair, those are the rules, and they've got a reason to be there.

 

 

Now, from what I can see, what Quid says (and I agree with her), is that what should be taken into account isn't the amount of states, but rather the amount of people. The way it is working right now just makes less populated states have more power over the rest of them, but as you said, States rights still matter, so it makes sense that it's the amount of States what makes the difference rather than the amount of people.

 

However, this system is applied in other countries of the world, where maybe a different system could work better, since it's the people who have an ideology rather than a zone (call it State, constituency, community, this depends on the country ), which means that it's the exact number of people voting what must count rather than the exact number of zones. For example, I live in the most populated community of Spain, and I find it unfair that 9M people's decision (my community) counts exactly the same as a different community which population doesn't reach 500K people.

 

As you said, there's a reason why it works that way in the US, and I'm not going to discuss that since you know a lot more than I do there, but I do find this system unfair, at least where I know how it works (Spain (although it isn't exactly that FPTP system but it does share this counting system) and England (I'd rather not say UK since I'm rather uninformed about how well this works in the other countries )).

 

 

Well I am not arguing if your ( Spain's) way is fair or not bc I know very little about it. I was just saying how this applies to the US and our latest election since this is made a big deal even though the popular vote difference is by comparison pretty small considering our actual total population. I can see why people would see it as unfair if they did not know the reasoning behind it so I thought this would be good information to share. Also how many Electoral votes a state gets is partly based off how many people are in the state so this is balanced out btw.   In America:

 

At minimum each state gets 3 electoral votes. Larger states have proportionately more electoral votes because a state's House delegation is determined by population, In addition, the District of Columbia receives three electoral votes, making a total of 538.