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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[-] 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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