10-16-2019, 09:01 AM
(10-15-2019, 10:28 PM)ijmorlan Wrote:(10-15-2019, 07:03 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: I really don't understand your comment here. I am not saying there aren't other considerations, but proportionality is fundamentally the point of government...being less proportional is bad...yes, we may be able to tolerate some as a trade off for other considerations, but I don't understand how one must justify the idea that government should be of the people.
No, the point of democratic government is to represent the interests of the people. PR takes as a goal that the number of representatives from each party will be (near) proportional to the number of votes that party got in the election. Already, there are two assumptions:
1) there should be these things called “parties” for which one votes; and
2) the best way to represent the interests of the people is for the number of MPs from each party in the legislature should be proportional to the number of votes received by the corresponding party.
As I said, I agree that a situation where a party with 33% of the vote gets 55% of the MPs and therefore 100% of the power (well, not quite, MPs aren’t that well trained, but not far off), is clearly problematic, but I’m not aware of anybody actually arguing for the proposition that if a party gets 33% of the vote it should have 33% of the MPs +/- 1 MP. What’s wrong with 30% or 35%? I notice that you didn’t say anything about my ”square root” idea (which is not mine but arises out of a consideration of the voting power of various parties or interest groups given various numbers of representatives in the assembly). At a minimum, an advocate for PR should be able to explain, without resorting to circular argumentation, why simple proportion is more appropriate than the square root.
Also, does it matter where the support is? I think there is a colorable argument to be made that thin support country wide is not worthy of representation in Parliament; but if a large fraction of people in a small part of the country have concerns, they probably need to be heard, because widespread dissatisfaction in a geographical area is bad for the union.
I very much fundamentally disagree. Parties are nothing more than a set of values, you pick the one you agree most with, or you form your own. People who happen to be thinly spread throughout the country still deserve representation in our government, just the same as the same number of people in one area, why should my feelings count less because people who agree with me are spread out, or frankly, for that matter, interspersed, because spread out areas still get representation if they're sparse.
As to your questions, no, square root doesn't make sense because it still breaks proportionality, in this case by giving minorities more power. And no, I did explicitly state that 30% or 35% in your example is fine...
One of the biggest reasons I believe this is because the less proportional a government is, the more people a government can ignore when it makes decisions. The most people a government must consider, the more it represents the people, and not special interests.