frigidweirdo
Diamond Member
- Mar 7, 2014
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What is the criteria? Proportional to whom?
Nah! Too much like Equity management. Prefer one man/woman one vote.
Proportional Representation is a type of electoral system. It can work in different ways, but the basic premise is one person, one vote and then all the votes are counted up and seats handed out proportionally over the whole area/country.
The Germans use FPTP and PR on the same day. They have a 5% cut off, so parties need to gain 5% in order to get a seat with PR (but not with FPTP, which only requires a majority in any one constituency) and they also have a system for regional parties to gain seats.
Denmark has a PR system (without any FPTP constituencies) and a 2% cut off.
The difference for the two systems are:
1) The cut off - Germany has about 6 viable political parties, Denmark has about 10.
2) The FPTP for Germany means the number of seats in the Bundestag changes. So if one party does really well in the FPTP the number of seats required to make it proportional will increase (a silly system for me, I think they could do it smarter, but anyway).
You say you prefer "one man, one vote", but FPTP isn't one man, one vote.
In the Senate we know Wyoming voters get far more "vote" than people in California.
But House seats are also not proportional, the number of residents in an area can change wildly. Also, in safe seats where political parties never lose, then people feel disenfranchised.
You do realize that Trump's largest number of votes in the 2020 election was California and all his voters got NOTHING from their votes, right?