Sivad wrote:
Yes. There could be a minimum vote requirement of 15% or 20% with instant runoff for voters whose candidates don't meet that threshold. That would only be 4 or 5 reps per district which is what your solution calls for.
The US legislature is 26th in the world in terms of number of members. We could double the number and we would still have a few hundred less than the UK which is a country with less than a quarter of our population.
Congressional reform is also much needed and long overdue but that's a separate issue.
Gerrymandering is back in the news.
To summarize my ideas for you-all again ---
1] Use the power granted to Congress in the original Constitution for Congress to direct the States in how they should do their elections of the House.
2] Increase the size of the House by 50%, more or less.
3] Allocate seats in the House to each state more or less as is now done.
4] Do *not* have each district have its own Representative. Instead, have larger districts with 4 to 7 Reps. each. About 30% of the states would have just one House district. Many would have 2 districts. But, Calif. would have over 20. All the districts must be the same size or that size plus 1. So for example, all the districts in a given state must have 4 or 5 Reps.; another state must have 6 or 7 in each district, etc.
5] Each voter would cast 1 vote, but he/she could split that vote easily into equal fractions simply by voting for more than one candidate. This would usually be all for one party, but it isn't required.
6] The parties could run more than one candidate.
7] The counting process machines would automatically split the votes of those who voted for more than 1 and keep track of the fractions.
8] Voters should be given a 2nd choice if not even 1 of their 1st choice(s) got enough votes.
9] The candidates who got the most votes wins, up to the number of Reps. for that individual district.
A new idea of mine. The same law could require that every state use a Jungle Primary open to all voters with the results being the selection of 2.31R (round to nearest) candidates to be on the final ballet, with R being the number of Reps. for that district.
. . . Again, the voters all get 1 vote but can split it into equal fractions. Then the same system is used. So again, all voters would get a 2nd choice if none of her 1st choices made the cut.. . . To even get on to the Jungle Primary ballot a candidate (or his/her party for them) would have to get signatures or something. I might even let individuals buy their way onto the ballot, why not? Then they can skip the step of paying people to collect signatures and go straight to trying to get voters to vote for them.
Sivad, if I understood you right then, if 4 Reps were seated in every district that there would be 435 x 4 = 1740 Reps. in total in the House. My system also reduced the number of districts as well as having more than 1 Rep. per dist. I may have missed where you also reduced the number of districts, though.
Yes, I can see in these times that many would want to reduce the power of the parties. I think my system would do this by letting 3rd and 4th parties compete for votes and win seats in the House. To fight off this threat I think the 2 major parties would have to cater to more voters. Also, see my new idea for Jungle Primaries.
And to you-all; yes, I know this can only pass if the people somehow make it pass.
If the people have the power to do the above then maybe they would have to power to have most of the powers of the President be transferred to a Prime Minister who is elected by majority vote of all the House Members plus all the Senators. The remaining powers [like the pardon power] would be retained by the head of state President who is elected as he/she is now or some other way.