Joe Mathews, a distinguished California thinker and writer who has just published another book, “California Crackup”, is interviewed here by Scott Timberg. In the interview, Mathews makes the case that California needs a legislature elected by proportional representation. The co-author of “California Crack-Up” is Mark Paul.
REAL Democracy NOW in the nearly brain dead U.S.A. due to minority rule gerrymanders.
Total Votes / Total Seats = EQUAL votes needed for each seat winner — via pre-election candidate rank order lists to transfer surplus and loser votes.
Otherwise – get ready for a combination of American Revolutionary War, Civil War I, WW I and WW II — all in the U.S.A. — due to the gerrymander MONSTERS from Hell with their safe seat extremism.
He proposes using AMS (which is used for electing the Scottish Parliament, the Assembly for Wales, and the German Bundestag, but doesn’t suggest eliminating either the Senate or Assembly, or increasing the number of members.
So let’s assume the Assembly remains at 80 members. Divide it into 8 electoral regions with an average of 10 members each, 6 elected from districts, and 4 regional seats.
Each region would have about 4.5 million people. If you allowed some variation in population, you might have: San Diego County, Orange County, Los Angeles County, Los Angeles City, Inland Empire, Central California (Bakersfield to Stockton, Simi Valley to Santa Cruz), San Francisco Bay (everything around the Bay, except the counties north of San Pablo Bay), Northern California (everything from Vallejo and Sacramento to Oregon).
The single member representative districts would have over 700,000 persons, larger than congressional districts. Voters would vote for both a candidate and party. Depending on the implementation, candidates could be limited to running for one type of seat or both. Parties might run celebrity candidates on the list to get votes, and end up with party functionaries serving in the legislature. Or candidates can lose their individual race, and still get returned to the legislature. Parties have an incentive to game the system. Parties such as Working Families and Green Party might not run individual candidates, because they can be harmed if voters split their vote, and it is better simply to get them to vote for a Democrat in the district race, and the minor party for the regional vote. Independents might have to run as regional lists.
And he also seems to have forgotten that political parties do not nominate candidates (from January 1, 2011). AMS is definitely a party-centric way of election.
The proposal would expand the Assembly to 350 members. There would be only one legislative chamber.
…it’s about time somebody started thinking about PR.
–James
PS Write Winger for Lt. Governor!
(that was a joke…what we need is to start looking for a Ms. Right for Governor, for gender balance. Like a Ms. Right/Winger for Gov./Lt. Govt) Har har! I got a million of ’em…cha, cha, cha.
It sounded like party-list PR was being pushed: “a party needs every vote it can get in a proportional system, so both parties would compete everywhere.”
Now, this would be much better than what what California has now. And it would make the gerrymander issue moot because it would remove districts altogether.
But, there is likely going to be a reflexive response of, “Who represents me in my area?”. Party list doesn’t address that well. And it also doesn’t do a good job dealing with independents. Sure, you can work them in there, but it’s kind of funky.
One setup I’ve considered for sometime is to have two chambers (you could do this with one chamber if you really wanted, I guess). One section is elected party list. This would get the most proportionality.
The other section is done by multi-seat district. Elections for districts would be done by STV, cumulative voting, reweighted range voting, or something along those lines. This accomplishes that local representation with proportionality as long as the districts have a minimum number–say five (which is suggested by David Farrell in Electoral Systems and gives a threshold of about 17% before getting elected).
In districts like these, it’s a pain to gerrymander. It would be much easier to get real shapes without much resistance. These systems push individual candidates as well. Sure, you can have open-list PR with the party list system, but it’s not the same. And independents are easier to manage on this multi-seat district-type system.
So there’s my suggestion: one section party-list, other section multi-seat proportional districting. This affords proportionality, allows for independents, and addresses the locality issue.
Don’t guess, folks, about what we’re proposing. Read the book and then let’s talk about how to make it better and how to make it happen.
#6 The proposal on the NAF web site is for a 360-member unicameral legislature elected by AMS, 1/2 from single member districts, 1/2 from regional party lists, with a 5% threshold, using 8 regions:
San Diego 31 members.
Inland Empire 39 members
Greater Los Angeles (LA, Orange, Ventura) 136 members
Central (Bakersfield to Merced) 27 members
Central Coast (Sta Barbara to Sta Cruz)
San Francisco Bay (includes northern shore of bay) 69
North Central (Modesto to Yuba City) 34 members
Northern 10 members
So in Greater Los Angeles you would have 68 districts, and 68 members elected from party lists, which would be “made available to the public”. District candidates could be included in regional lists, so voters would have no clue as to who would be elected, but not matter, because the list would be made available to them.
PS the folks at the NAF apparently know the difference between a remainder and a quotient.
Here’s a slate some will love;
It’s Nott/Short [Libertarian/American Independent/Constitution] for Governor!
“The proposal would expand the Assembly to 350 members. There would be only one legislative chamber.”
…that counts out the Nott/Short slate for Gov./Lt. Gov., because Libertarians are for smaller government.
I’d agree with Jim’s criticism if there’s not actually a correction as is present in the German system. Even if it is a mimicking of the German system, it can be improved.
I don’t know what this NAF site is. If someone has it, please post it. I think that would cut down on the confusion (at least mine).
#11 “NAF” is New America Foundation. The link that Richard Winger provided was to a blog that mentioned a book and noted that the author was a senior fellow at the NAF. Nothing in the blog or the book’s publicity website gave details of the plan.
But the 360-member plan is explained in the summary here
http://www.newamerica.net/publications/policy/remapping_nation_without_states
with a link to the full report.
I don’t know if you are referring to the overhang or not with respect to the German Bundestag. I believe that has been declared to violate the German constitution.
To: MP Richard Winger [Libertarian], Minister of Government Reduction
From: MP James Ogle [Free and Equal]
Subject: Need Help Finding Candidates
Richard, greetings. This is serious. The leader of the California Pot Party, Bouhlod Khembisai [Pot], is looking to start a write in campaign for Governor to help the Pot Party get recognition with Mike Bogatirev [Environmentalist]. Do you think it’s a good idea to invest in the write in ticket “Khembisai/Bogatirev [Pot/Environmentalist] for Governor/Lt. Governor even though Bogatirev didn’t get .99% in the 5th California Parliament election?
I’d like some pointers if you have time, thanks in advance.
–James O. Ogle [Free and Equal]
A *democratic* (small d) legislative body exists ONLY because ALL of the Electors-Voters can NOT generally appear in person and enact laws/ordinances — thus having *representatives* of such Electors-Voters in legislative bodies.
The brain dead AREA fixation got going in England in the 1200s — 700 plus years of AREA fixation stuff.
The other perversion is at large elections for legislative bodies — in many local regimes.
The courts are stuck with their brain dead stuff from the Dark Age — especially minority rule gerrymanders in single member district systems.
P.R. and App.V. — political *science* has advanced since the 1200s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation
P.R. has been around since at least the 1840s – repeat 1840s.
The U.S.A. is in a gerrymander STONE AGE of EVIL minority rule monsters in control.
Thanks, Jim. After reading the layout, I have to again agree with Jim on it being a mistake not allowing the party-list vote to even out the single-seat vote in regard to proportionality. I mean, if you’re going to do Germany’s mixed system, you might as well follow through with it.
I guess I see the 5% threshold, though I haven’t read any real persuasive evidence of many parties creating instability. People can cite Italy all they like, but it’s just as easy to cite stable countries with lots of parties. And having two parties doesn’t make a country stable either. I guess the 5% is damage control for criticism. It could maybe be lowered a bit so people don’t fear wasting their vote on up and coming parties.
And providing districts does help bring the focus back to candidates rather than parties. However, using single-seat districts without using Germany’s proportion fix is just asking for the continuation of gerrymandering. It stays incentivized.
And let’s say we do this single-seat district idea. Really? You want to keep plurality? Approval voting would be a good choice if you simply must use single-seat districts.
And single-seat districts have an inherent drawback. Even if you use an awesome system like approval voting, many people simply will not be represented by that person. Using small multi-seat districts allow for that benefit of locality while also giving more people they can legitimately go to. How confident are you when you call your local representative that has the complete opposite ideology as you? That’s what I thought. Also, small, multi-seat districts diminish the incentive to gerrymander when bloc systems aren’t used.
So, not using Germany’s proportion fix seems a definite negative. Also, single-seat districts should be reconsidered, and should most definitely not use plurality.
# 16 ALL single member district schemes are AUTOMATIC ANTI-Democracy minority rule schemes — i.e. – especially ALL houses of ALL State legislatures, the U.S.A. House of Reps and the U.S.A. Senate (2 per State – different election times).
Half the votes in half the gerrymander districts is about 25 percent of all votes — much worse in the semi-permanent U.S.A. gerrymander Senate — due to many very small below average States.
Very low tech math — too complex for the SCOTUS party hack morons to understand.