Congressman Tom Davis (R-Virginia) says he will soon re-introduce the bill that would expand the membership of the U.S. House of Representatives from 435 to 437, with a voting seat for the District of Columbia, and a 4th seat for Utah. His staff estimates the bill will be introduced at the end of January. In the last Congress, the bill (which failed to advance) was HR 5388. This year, Committee chairs John Conyers in the House and Joseph Lieberman in the Senate say they support the bill, as does Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
HI
Thanks for the blog, getting more accurate vote counts
seems to be the right thing to do, President Bush was correct in one of his African speeches when he said the only acceptable form of government is democracy. He also defined democracy, in that speech, as one vote one-person majority government. This requires every vote be counted and every vote be counted correctly and verifiable when results are questioned. In the Republic of Ireland, they seem to have a very reliable paper ballot system without using machines. They do not use the e-voting machines they bought a few years ago and have in storage. The same kind that were shown to be unreliable in Holland’s elections where the wrong results were given by the machines.
It takes more time to count in Ireland because each ballot box is opened and votes counted in front of both partisan and neutral vote observers using hand counting.
It, also, takes additional time because they count twice. They start with an overall total count with out regard to whom the votes are for because of proportional representation. This lets them know how many votes are needed to win a particular race. By this method, votes for a person are counted until he has enough votes to get a seat.
If 5 seats are being contested as soon as one candidate gets twenty percent he is elected and the ballots of other people who chose him continued to be counted using their second choice as their first choice. Everyone’s vote is counted. This way more peoples votes count in making up the legislature. If you voted for a person who already has enough votes to be elected WHEN your vote is counted then your second choice is counted as your vote in that particular race.
They do this to overcome a legislative districting map that, like in Pennsylvania, packs many voters of one party into one district where the majority wins the seat by a wide margin, but allows minority parties to win other districts by small majorities. Minorities in these cases can win majorities in the administration and legislatures, and control of public laws and policies goes to minorities. This type system is defiantly not one -vote one-person democracy government, because a minority of voters can control the legislature and policy. The extra cost in time in getting the results in one-person one vote democratic majority governments is a requirement for democracy to result from election procedures. Optical scan paper trail voting could speed up the counting if necessary, but it should be a copy of the entire ballot, not some abbreviated version.