Why I'm in favour of Proportional Representation

[andrewducker]

According to the BBC, the current polls show Lib Dems on 33%, Conservatives on 32%, Labour on 26%.
Which would give a seat allocation of Conservatives: 246, Labour 241, Lib Dems: 134.
Or, in a more easily digestible table format:

Party	Percentage	Seats
Lib Dems	33%	134
Conservatives	32%	246
Labour	26%	241

It should be pretty fucking obvious that this is an electoral system that is fucked in the head.

Comments

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

then the Electoral College system says that if 55% of a state votes one way, then 100% of the Electoral College votes go that way.

Usually but not necessarily. There's no overriding Constitutional principle involved; all the Constitution says is that each state shall appoint electors, and keeps mum about how those electors are chosen. Why so many states have gone with the winner-take-all method is a mystery to me, but they can change the system if they wish; both Maine and Nebraska use different systems, and the other states have the option to set up any laws they like.

Our system is strange, fascinating, and overly complex.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Grin, actually I knew that, as I seem to recall there was an interesting episode of Boston Legal where one of the electoral college had stated they weren't going to follow the winner-take-all and there was a constitutional question about whether the state had the power to compel that person to do so.

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

There's actually a whole Wikipedia article on what are called "faithless electors"--people who didn't vote for the same person or party that their state did.

That happened en masse once, in 1836, and ,a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector">the whole article is kind of fun reading.

Um, if you're a big ol' geek, anyway. :)

[skington.livejournal.com]

There is in fact an ongoing attempt to have states pass laws that say that they'll give their electoral votes to whoever wins the popular vote, but only if enough states to make a majority of electoral votes have such a law on their books. (This is to avoid the practically impossibility of doing so by passing a Constitutional amendment.) So far it's been passed by statesrepresenting 23% of the required votes.

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

Huh; that's interesting. Thanks for the link!