The Saturday, July 8, print edition of The New York Times has this op-ed in support of HR 3057, the Congressman Don Beyer bill for proportional representation for most states in U.S. House elections. The co-authors are Rob Richie of Fairvote, and Reihan Salam, editor of National Review.
The authors of the op-ed did not choose the title.
This 16% threshold is yet another example of the failed work of Rob Richie.
After more than twenty years of IRV which guarantees a one-party system he now brings PR with a 16% threshold.
This will give them three Days and two RS in every election and it’s a poor idea and pathetic attempt at proportional representation.
Is the NYTimes or Fairvote that likes the bipartisan-ideal-enhanced-by-PR idea more? Is there no other way for a more just electoral arrangement to gain credibility?
HR 3057 is very similar to the system used to elect New York City councilmembers 1937 through 1945, which resulted in several minor party members being elected, including two from the Communist Party, the only instance when the Communist Party ever won a partisan election anywhere in the United States.
Why not simply repeal the statutory freeze on the size of the House of Representatives at 435 and enlarge to membership to 2,000 or more U S Representatives?
HR 3057 is *not* a proportional-representation bill. It arguably moves slightly in that direction with its multi-member districts and RCV — but again, that’s *not* proportional representation, and I am very disappointed to see BAN calling it PR. (By contrast, I expect the New York Times to misuse words like “bipartisan”, as it did in the headline.)
John, do you think New York city’s system for electing city councilmembers 1937-1945 was proportional representation?
Not if it’s the same as HR 3057, Richard. But angels as well as devils can be in the details. Do you have any references containing the statutory (well, probably charter or ordinance) language of that old NYC system?
James Ogle — There are plenty of reasons to criticize FairVote, but calling a 16% threshold a “pathetic attempt at proportional representation” is not one. A better example would be in Maine, where proponents want to overlay IRV onto 186 winner-take-all elections for the state legislature. However, it appears conflicts with the state constitution will block that from going through.
I am a little familiar with the former cumulative/”bullet” voting system for Illinois State House, though our family moved out of Illinois before I got to use it much. (Or maybe at all — I was at college in Minnesota all the Novembers I might have been able to use it myself.)
http://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1815&context=etd_hon_theses
That’s another system where multi-seat districts meant many districts got Representatives from both of the Titanic Two. But I wouldn’t call it proportional, either — even though a really solid and large enough bloc of voters using bullet votes can guarantee themselves a share of representation even larger than their share of the populace. E.g., in a hypothetical district of 1000 voters, 251 voters all casting all three of their votes for candidate X (753 in all) can guarantee that there’s no way the other 749 voters can cast that many votes for more than two other candidates.
This was an appealing retrospective about PR in New York City. FairVote included copies of the article as a promotional piece for PR. The council size then appeared to be 25 members, so the threshold would have been something under 4 percent.
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/08/11/weekinreview/the-region-the-golden-age-of-the-city-council.html
Each borough was a separate district, so the threshold was more than 4%. It was different in each borough. I think 5 parties elected members of the city council: Dem, Rep, American Labor, Fusion, and Communist.
If you really need want party bosses to control seats (verses more regular people and independents) then you are for a few seats to five per district.
If you really want a portrait of the people then a large number of seats with low threshold.
Rob Richie and Richard Winger agree to the former.
Interesting about each NYC borough being a separate district. I didn’t know that. But given population differences, some boroughs must have had more council members than others.
Thanks to @Lee Mortimer (July 10, 2017 at 2:07 pm) for the NYT link. The article does say the NYC system was PR by borough: “. . . [C]ouncil members were selected not from individual districts, but through a system of proportional representation in which political parties and nonaligned candidates won election in proportion to their total boroughwide votes.”
If true, that would be different from HR 3057 — which would not proportion out winners, though it would also have a lower winning threshold than 50% +1 in any borough that got to elect more than one Council member . . . a potential step toward PR.
(BTW, since the NYC system was pre-1960s it wouldn’t necessarily have had to be one-person-one-vote. Does anyone know what the state of New York state law was at that time?)
In any REAL Democracy — each legislative body exists ONLY because ALL Electors-Voters can not assemble in person and vote on proposed laws.
Thus — ALL *AREA* schemes are perversions — going back to the formation of the English House of Commons in the 1200s.
Thus — EXACT PR – each legislator to have a voting power equal to the votes he/she gets — directly and from losers — via pre-election candidate rank order lists.
https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-115hr3057ih/html/BILLS-115hr3057ih.htm
text version of the bill
When you enlarge a district five times, you will have five times as many candidates.
This bill does no good for independents and third parties because the top five Ds and Rs will always win.
Are you doing interested in pure proportional representation done right?
Look at the First International Parliament Election of 2017 as a good example where the threshold for 1000 names is less than 1/10th of 1% plus one vote (.00999%).
http://www.international-parliament.org
Nobody has it as good as the International Parliament.
A big flaw with this bill is addressing paper ballots.
By using STV (which is not needed and a big waste of time) this will make hand counts almost impossible.
The correct method of RCV, aka “count the tics” by James Ogle, eliminates the complicated STV and makes a hand count a breeze while giving the same results as STV.
For more than twenty-twenty years I have counted under RCV using “count the tics” and when I was in Maryland in 2012 no one at FairVote was interested.
The bill is no good. Why support such a rotten deal for third parties and independents.
Winger says small steps are needed but this bill using Richie’s computer program be rejected by people who favor paper ballots.
The authors of the bill are too inexperienced to write a good proposal.
As you can see by the five-member district they are afraid of counting votes under pure proportional representation.
The system like in SF, where voters can only rank three choices is not fair to interest groups who have larger numbers of candidates and that favors those with three or fewer candidates.
Wasn’t the IRV system in SF and Oakland supported by FairVote?
Why not just start with perfection and then get perfection? Pure proportional representation is mathematically the fairest and most perfect system.
I don’t see this bill offering pure, the bill may be categorized as PR, but not pure. Purity is best in PR so I guess I am questioning the purity and wondering why a limitation of five per district.
I suspect maybe it is planned around the program one has available at the time.