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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[-] jaycifer@lemmy.world 7 points 6 months ago

That's not what they're suggesting. If it was a tight race and candidate A got 13,000 votes while candidate B got 11,000, both candidates would "win." Their voting power would just be proportional to their votes. In a way, it would be more representative than what you're saying, because how it works now is that the 11,000 people voting for candidate B wouldn't have any representation at all.

[-] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 4 points 6 months ago

Ah, I see. In that case I think the criticism is that you would have proliferation of way too many representatives in legislatures. IMO a legislature shouldn't be much more than 200 people (though many nations break this threshold). My reasoning is that there is research showing that a person can't really maintain relationships with more than 200 people.

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

Yes, I think there would have to be some kind of threshold. Otherwise I could stand as a candidate, vote for for myself and have a seat in the legislature where I wield my one pathetic vote!

this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2024

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