Posted by alexharri 8 hours ago
1. Using D'Hondt [2] on every party's national vote share, determine which party should be given the next seat. 2. For every constituency which has adjustment seats available, calculate the D'Hondt quotient of the first candidate in that party who has not already been elected using the constituency vote share. So if a party received V votes in a constituency and two party members were already elected from this constituency, their quotient would be V/3. 3. Elect the candidate with the highest quotient to fill an adjustment seat for their constituency. 4. Repeat until all adjustment seats have been given away.
There's arguably a step 0 here, which is determining how many constituency and adjustment seats every constituency gets, and this is done before the election is held. This is described in Article 10. It's pretty bad. First, the adjustment seats are hard-coded. Second, unlike the US where we reapportion after every census, Iceland appears to only reapportion the constituency seats when the constitution demands they do it. This happens when there are twice as many voters per seat in one constituency compared to another. Furthermore, they only adjust as few seats as possible to get back under this limit rather than actually recalculate a fair apportionment. I'm not sure what the logic of this was, maybe to minimize how often the number of seats in each place is changing? Either way, in the 2021 election this resulted in one constituency with 199% as many voters per seat as another and no changes were made [3].
[1]: https://www.stjornarradid.is/library/03-Verkefni/Kosningar/K...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Hondt_method
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Icelandic_parliamentary_e...
This makes me wonder: why stop at two? Some places have explicit quotas for different ethnic or religious groups as a compromise to avoid civil war. Could they use a tripoportional system?
And why not add in even more demographic variables? Age, gender, income, level of education, ... I suppose at some point it stops being a secret election because the number of voters sharing all attributes becomes too small, or the parliament would get unwieldily large trying to represent every hyperspecific constituency.
That would be interesting, but it's not even possible to achieve one of those things by itself.
True, but...
> A state could technically switch to a model like this for assigning representatives at large.
No, it can't because Congress itself is given the overriding power in the Constitution to regulate the "time, place, and manner" of elections to the House, and has exercised it to prohibit at-large districts (many times, with lax enforcement, but the most recent mandate, adopted in 1967, has not had the compliance problems the earlier ones often did.) The 1967 mandate was adopted under the dual specter of a some states failing to resolve districting controversies and potentially facing judicially-imposed at-large districts and several states having used at-large districts for non-federal elections to effectively disenfranchise Black voters and concerns that the same might be done to Congressional delegations as a way of blunting the impacts of new rules like the Voting Rights Act.
Additional detail at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43739929
California could make this change by referendum.
No, it could not, because Article I, Section 3 (emphasis added): "The times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing Senators." (the last part of that about choosing Senators has its effect eliminated by the 17th Amendment, but that isn't important here.)
And Congress has exercised its authority in U.S. Code Title 2, Section 2c (emphasis added): "In each State entitled in the Ninety-first Congress or in any subsequent Congress thereafter to more than one Representative under an apportionment made pursuant to the provisions of section 2a(a) of this title, there shall be established by law a number of districts equal to the number of Representatives to which such State is so entitled, and Representatives shall be elected only from districts so established, no district to elect more than one Representative (except that a State which is entitled to more than one Representative and which has in all previous elections elected its Representatives at Large may elect its Representatives at Large to the Ninety-first Congress)."
Because your constituents are better represented. California strikes me as a potent place to do this because I could see a constitutional amendment passing at the ballot box.
As in?
People can legitimately disagree about what is right and wrong, or what even falls on a moral continuum. Nailing down a moment’s broad truth is among the most revered roles in any society.
If vandalizing a Telsa and vandalizing the US Capitol are both wrong and my focus is only the act of vandalism in asking this question. Overall, both acts are clear cut wrong!
Those who refuse to say both are wrong their brains are driven now by political emotional mind control babble where they've thrown out knowing and standing for right over wrong.
2. That's obviously unwieldy, and so we haven't had a bump in seats since ... 1910.
3. 'Factions' were viewed dimly by the Founders. I would argue in favor of two immediate changes:
- Term limits for everything, including shorter max civil service careers. Capitol Hill, like any compost heap, benefits from regular turning.
- A "bidder bunch" rule, whereby if Congress can't manage its key function--that of producing a budget--then none of these goofs (even the ones I admire) get to run for their seat when next up. There are copious talented alternative people to put on ballots. Do your job or face corporate punishment, say I.
This creates an obvious and huge perverse incentive to throw a wrench into the works any time you want a do-over.
How? You don’t think you could find Democrats, today, who wouldn’t roll the dice on a new Congress? The proposal essentially gives a narrow minority the ability to call no confidence.
There has been numerous proposals in the Congress to get rid of it, but they don't get ratified because two parties like the status quo.
People will have to make it an issue.
The House is a mess. So is SCOTUS. My proposal for the latter is redefining the Supreme Court as one drawn by lot from appellate judges for each case. This not only solves the appointment lottery. It also incentivises expanding the judiciary, which we need to do, and removes the modern perversion which is the Supreme Court just not bothering with controversial cases.
Most importantly, the edits to SCOTUS can be done by the Congress. The edits to the House can be done by the states. (EDIT: Nah.) Senate requires a Constitutional amendment; that window isn’t open at this time.
The Senate is elected similar to a parliament from other countries. Country-wide votes for parties, with proportional representation. It would balance out the regionality of the House.
The Supreme Court justices serve terms of 12-16 years. Each presidential candidate must select 2 supreme court picks at least 4 weeks before the election, and whoever wins has their picks placed on the court. (After their term, supreme court justices retire to the DC circuit).
This is important to understand, because the 17th Amendment is an on-again-off-again political issue; Republicans have, in recent history, held most state legislatures, so repealing the 17th Amendment would basically guarantee that the Republican Party would control at least one house of Congress for the foreseeable future, and give the party greater control over who is selected to the office.
Instead their vote goes to someone in the same political party in another district.
So the entire system is biased away from local representation and towards party policy decided on a national basis.
That policy is in turn heavily weighed towards the interests of geographic areas over "one person one vote". Icelandic law only starts considering that a problem once your vote counts 2x as much as mine, just because we live an imaginary line apart.
> That policy is in turn heavily weighed towards the interests of geographic areas
Forgive me if I'm missing something, but these sound like contradictory claims to me?
As an American, I feel I'd prefer this system. The number of members of each party that make it to Congress is the main determinant of what policy gets passed. But I can only influence that indirectly, by choosing which party represents my local district. If I'm in a solid minority in the district I live in, I basically have 0 influence on the result of the election. Overall, those invisible lines let politicians crack and pack constituencies so a party with a minority of the votes still gets a majority of the seats.
In this system, the number of representatives of each party would be determined by the national popular vote, meaning I can more directly vote for which party gets the majority. Your vote does two things: it casts a vote for your party against the other parties in gaining them seats, and it casts a vote for your favorite party candidate over other candidates in the party (including those in other districts) to determine which candidates of the party earn the seats the party is given. It reduces the effect of the invisible line in weakening my vote. I'm okay with this meaning that sometimes my vote helps elect someone in a different district, since this would mean my district doesn't have enough members of my party to justify a representative of our own and because a lot of times the lines are arbitrary anyway. It would require bigger districts with multiple winners, and sometimes that the person with the 6th or 7th most votes in the district gets the 4th or 5th seat instead. This, in my mind, is the "gerrymandering correction:" it ensures those parties who were disadvantaged by the line drawing get their fair share of party members.
As for one vote counting twice as much as another, my understanding (and please correct me if I am wrong) is that the main cause of that is differences in turnout between the different districts and rounding representatives to the nearest whole number. Nothing can be done about the later (big problem in the US too -- people per district varies by hundreds of thousands of people, not to mention the disparity in the Senate). For the former, you could proportion representatives between districts based on turnout instead, but this is a bad idea since it makes it much harder to campaign in a district if you don't know how many seats are up for grabs.
Sure. And I don’t anymore. But the casualty of that choice is social empathy.
A lot of bad shit hides in the averages. Some US states have poor or no standards, or allow kids to bypass standards through various means.
Unless they got remedial education in the military or something, the average high school graduate from a poorly performing place is much less capable than a Mexican or Filipino graduate.
And you’ve internatilized an American racism that’s not so shocking to see, unfortunately.
Less than a day later, and you’re back at it. Not even a DEI specific post, but the racism still seeps out.
Suggesting uneducated immigrants are a major problem is a common trope of racist discussion even if the word “race” is not specifically used. Especially in the context of a system that is currently trying to kick out immigrants who have voluntarily entered our educational system.
And our population is among the most educated in relation to which countries? Half the country is below a 6th grade reading level. A quarter is below a 3rd grade level. Abysmal for a developed country.
It’s inappropriate to compare the US education level to countries that have historically struggled economically and politically, especially when their struggles have been only exacerbated by self-serving US interference. And when enforced illiteracy is often used as a weapon to keep people down. Granted, GP made the first mistake there it seems, and you responded in kind. (Though I’m not sure because he is specifically comparing the lower percentiles. I haven’t seen data on that.)
But more to the point, you’ve previously claimed that your passion for these topics is due to a belief that ethnic identity and DEI is a threat to your children and to the American individualist culture. Yet, here you are bashing immigrants when neither ethnic identity, DEI, nor American individualism are being discussed.
@JumpCrisscross said uneducated Americans are a problem. If that’s true, then immigration must really be a problem, because most of it is from countries with much worse education. If you think “uneducated” people are a problem, then own that. Don’t hide behind this “punch up versus punch down” bullshit where it’s okay to call Americans uneducated but not people who are objectively more uneducated than Americans.
Look at the PISA scores I posted up thread. The U.S. performs around the same as Sweden. It’s not hanging with the very top, but it does fine compared to big western countries. And it vastly outperforms every Latin American country.
Additionally most immigrants don’t vote, so it doesn’t account for the current circus. When they do vote, they’ve become citizens by passing a test that many native Americans couldn’t pass.
Uneducation is a problem in general. Doesn’t matter who it is, immigrant or native. But uneducation is fixable problem if we as a society/culture wanted to fix it. We are currently working towards the exact opposite goal and doing it faster than ever.
PISA is not the only measurement. And it is not used by many countries, particularly Asian countries. It isn’t hard to look up other stats on US reading levels.
And again, comparing education levels outside of a historical context of politics and economics is not helpful, to say the least. And it says nothing about an individual’s ability or willingness to become educated once the opportunity presents itself, especially if they’ve already self-selected by making the effort to enter an environment that offers said opportunity. That should be obvious to a person who values and desires to protect American individualism, as you claim to be.
Work out the score distributions implied by the national PISA scores and you’ll see this isn’t true. Countries like El Salvador and Guatemala are more than a standard deviation below the U.S., meaning the average person from those countries would be in the bottom 10% of the U.S. scores. And the immigrants from those countries are less educated than average. So immigrants are going to be quite a disproportionate share of the bottom 10% of the U.S. education-wise.
> Believing that they are nonetheless the bigger problem is a sign of a racist perspective, albeit not a guarantee of one, perhaps it’s simply anti-immigration.
Just use your brain without trying to label everything. If you think uneducated people are a social problem, then it logically follows that it’s a problem to have low-skill immigration from places with more uneducated populations. And contrary to your point above, you don’t actually have to care about whatever historical circumstances caused them to be less educated. That doesn’t change the effect on American society.
> PISA is not the only measurement. And it is not used by many countries, particularly Asian countries. It isn’t hard to look up other stats on US reading levels
PISA is the most commonly used test for international comparisons.
The people able to gtfo an emigrate from many places are usually the smarter people. The 75th percentile Filipino probably went to a Catholic school and had a better education than many US districts.
I’m sorry this upsets you, and I assure you I share your anger and disgust.
The section further with the complicated Greek formulae is for a different voting system, explicitly not the Icelandic one.
What? It's for all voting systems. It just defines a set of criteria that are desirable; it doesn't describe any system.
https://demodexio.substack.com/p/why-does-proportional-repre...
(In my opinion, the Dutch system is one of the best implemented in practice, precisely because of its proportionality.)
Then there the focus on the left vs. the right, which is no longer as relevant as it used to be during the cold war. If you choose a single faction (such as the left, conservatives, or environmentalists), that specific faction is almost always smaller than everyone else combined. When there are multiple major issues instead of a single overarching question, political divisions become more nuanced than simple X vs. not-X.