Has there ever been a political system where legislative votes were weighted by how many votes each legislator received? (slrpnk.net)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by frankPodmore@slrpnk.net to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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Let's say you have multi-member constituencies. You hold an election with an outcome that looks roughly like this:

Candidate #1 received 12,000 votes
Candidate #2 received 8,000 votes
Candidate #3 recieved 4,000 votes

All three get elected to the legislature, but Candidate #1's vote on legislation is worth three times Candidate #3's vote, and #3's vote is worth half Candidate #2's vote.

I know that the British Labour Party used to have bloc voting at conference, where trade union reps' votes were counted as every member of their union voting, so, e.g., if the train drivers' union had 100,000 members, their one rep wielded 100,000 votes. That's not quite what I'm describing above, but it's close.

Bonus question: what do you think would be the pros and cons of such a system?

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[-] souperk@reddthat.com 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I don't know if this has been used before, but there is a good reason not to:

The concentration of power would be a huge problem for such a system. If a single person gets the majority of votes, then they get to make the decisions. That's a system with a single point of failure, if corruption is bad right now, imagine what it would be then...

Keep in mind that voters tend to focus on a few key individuals. In a system which you don't need more seats if you have the votes, the concentration of votes to a few individuals would be taken to new extremes.

One could make the counterargument that if the voters want to be represented by a single person, then it should be their right to get that. However, it's more likely that such a result would be driven by the choice for the lesser evil.

Maybe a completely different electoral system, (a) without a fixed number of seats (aka a single vote is enough to be part of the decision making body) and (b) really frequent elections (6 months or even less), would work in the favor of the people, but there a tonne of practical issues with both requirements.

PS A single person is the extreme but not unlikely case, instead it's more likely a dozen or two candidates will gather that decision making majority, but the corruption argument is still the same.

[-] frankPodmore@slrpnk.net 2 points 6 months ago

If a single person gets the majority of votes, then they get to make the decisions.

But there would be multiple constituencies in my hypothetical scenario. Someone from the Left Party in District A gets a majority of the District A votes, but someone from the Right Party from District B gets a majority of the District B votes. So, the majorities in Districts A and B get their voices effectively represented, but the minorities aren't shut out. In District C, no one wins a majority, but all the voters are represented in the legislature.

Compare the current system, where the Left Party in District A gets the majority of votes (or even the most votes, but no majority). The Left Party wins District A, but there's no representation at all for the voters who didn't vote for the Left Party. Isn't it easier to buy the vote of just the one Left Rep for District A?

[-] souperk@reddthat.com 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I need a bit of clarification, are you suggesting that every candidate that gets even a single vote gets to be a representative? or is there some selection mechanism? (minimum votes, fixed number of seats, etc...)

[-] frankPodmore@slrpnk.net 1 points 6 months ago

I think for this to be at all practical, there would need to be some sort of minimum threshold and/or maximum number of legislators, yes.

this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2024

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