Liking the development of Superia very much, though "Gnativism" is too cute and kind of ugly at the same time.
Love the idea of the election system. I myself have for some decades thought it would be great to have a variant on the theme where there are about twice as many seats as districts, and everyone gets to vote for one per district, but the candidates are in alliances or "lists" (more general than parties though a party would be an example of a list). Each list has twice as many candidates as they have people running per district, with the surplus being in traditional party-designated order, but the surplus is just in case they get more votes than half overall. (Another way to do it--they don't get surplus candidates but can choose people from other lists by mutual consent at their discretion if they get a surplus. Or, the leading individual vote-getting candidates get to vote their individual surplus votes by having two votes). It is well publicized (left up to the supporters of each list, but it is in their interest to do so) who the other candidates are associated with each district candidates, so voters know they are voting both for an individual and a faction at the same time. They cast their votes for the individual candidate in their district they prefer, by whatever criterion they choose. Any individual candidates who get a solid majority are automatically seated as district representative, but then the lists are ranked collectively by how many votes they have total, after subtracting the average district total from each majority-winning candidate already seated. The top list gets its top vote-getter remaining (if one wins unanimously, and by a district of average or higher voter participation, that same individual might get this seat too, or pass it on to the list's publicized first surplus candidate, or choose another list's member who doesn't win in the main process, whatever) seated, the bubble sort with varying quotient process implied in the post revises the list ranking, and so on to seat the rest of the legislature. A district with no single person winning a clear majority will have the highest-vote-getting person seated from it designated the district representative, but this has only symbolic importance anyway; a seat is a seat and a vote is a vote, whether district or at-large. The mechanics might work out so no one from a given district is seated though that is unlikely, it would have to be the result of the district's vote being heavily split among many candidates--and that implies that the dominant concern of the voters there are not regional. Mechanisms can be worked out in that contingency to provide local access to an appropriate representative, say the geographically nearest member of the leading list in that district is given this "hat" to wear and spends time in that district.
I was trying to apply the concept of proportional representation to the US situation where districts are geographically very far apart; also by generalizing to "lists" distinct from parties I was trying to address the ideological point that the US Constitution was developed by people who didn't believe in the legitimacy of parties and so did not provide for them as an integral part of the machinery. My version does imply that faction is a valid thing, but it is meant to be very flexible. The idea is that people who think their district or larger region has peculiar concerns and priorities can organize campaigns for some individual pledged to focus on these issues, whereas other people who have concerns more appropriately addressed by a broad national coalition can choose to vote for someone who gets very few votes locally but they add to the total the list gets nationwide and might push it to the level where they get a few seats.
The fundamental value is to enable voters to support whatever types of issues they think should be the priority, and cast their votes so that legislators reflecting these priorities are elected in appropriate numbers--to avoid the sorts of "wasted vote" dilemmas so common in the USA with our first past the post system, but also without enshrining political parties as the sole and necessary path to political empowerment either. Given that parties exist (I hardly want to try to abolish them either) it is important to provide alternative paths to nomination, which I could go into detail about if anyone is interested.
Taking artificial steps to pump up a party that gets over 50 percent to give it a damn monopoly strikes me as a very bad idea indeed, which is why one way of distributing votes for one party of more than 50 percent overall votes I suggest is forcing them to choose members of other lists--it strikes me as very very unhealthy to have one viewpoint only talking to itself in the legislature while others are locked out--especially if they got minority votes, but adding up to large minorities.
Enabling the possibility of votes splintered over numerous factions forces the sorting out of a governing majority among the legislators. The elected representatives are professional advocates for their various causes; it seems reasonable to me to give the public the option of choosing whether they want their legislators to handle the complexities of factional negotiations for them or micromanage them, and that an open and proportional system puts these choices in the voters' hands--then they can watch the performance of the legislature as closely or as indifferently as they choose. If factional division comes to seem a great evil, what is to stop a coalition of list factions from evolving pledged to deliver a consensus, and persuading a solid majority of voters to vote for them? Factional division in the legislature represents a diversity of priorities in the public, and the suggestion so common here in the USA that first-past-the-post systems force the voters to do the compromising in advance looks to me like a means of guaranteeing rule of the privileged classes. (As of course the authors of the Federalist papers fully intended it to!)
I'm very surprised to find that the principle, when allotting a certain number of seats to a particular faction in proportion to their share of the vote, of assigning the seats to the individual candidates who polled the most votes individually is apparently the most novel aspect of Thande's scenario.
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I have some views on airships. There is a good chance I think, in just about any ATL, that when aircraft in general are at a tech level between OTL 1915-1930, that considerably more use of airships for long-range, transoceanic travel than we saw in OTL happen. By the time general tech approaches 1930 levels, the day when the airplane can make revenue crossings with acceptable reliability will not quite be on hand yet, but it is foreseeable, and this is when investment in airships will slack off in anticipation, unless airships begin to integrate airplanes into their operations. That might extend their viability, in restricted but substantial niches, considerably. OTL I think we drastically under-developed and under-utilized them in the critical 1920s decade, which is when we should have expected routine and substantial transAtlantic and later transPacific (island hopping) dirigible air lines. They can cruise economically faster than surface ships can, by a factor of at least 2 and compared to many ships, 3 or more. Airplanes are faster pretty much from the beginning, but far far less reliable initially. Airplanes and airships will use the same general technologies, but by virtue of its limited speed (due to structural issues, not engine power) between 60-75 knots, the airship consumes less fuel per revenue ton/passenger mile, and therefore has much more range and far longer endurance, and so by 1920 tech levels can reliably cross large stretches of ocean in fair weather that would be a dangerous stunt or outright impossible for an airplane to try. Over land, they are only weakly competitive with a good railroad network, but there are lots of less developed places without good rail networks. Airplanes are more competitive over land, being able to fly twice as fast as airships or more, but it is only the many planned and emergency landing places over land that make planes more viable there. Even over land though the airplane is not as much faster as the airship as merely comparing airspeeds lead us to think, because the planes need to spend a lot of time on the ground, and lose average speed when climbing back to cruise height, while airships can just go on cruising until they get to their planned destination.
In those early years though, helium is unfortunately an unlikely option. There are very few gas well regions in the world where helium is economical to extract, and OTL in 1920 just one of these was known, in the USA. I have read that nowadays much helium comes from Algeria and Siberia, but I have never been able to find out just when and how each of these alternatives were found. I'd bet neither was known before 1945. Even when a helium well is known, the process of extracting it from the flammable natural gas it is associated with is pretty tedious and risky--compressing hydrocarbon gas clearly has its hazards! Then you have a gas that although pretty safe to work around, has the darnedest tendency to escape. It also lifts about 10 percent less than hydrogen can, and is both expensive and difficult to replace. Hydrogen is not free either, but it is much cheaper than helium, and it can be synthesized at almost any location--helium cannot be and must be brought to any airship in need of replenishment for any reason.
OTL Congress decided to reserve all US extracted helium first to military projects, and only on a case by case development for civil aviation. In the early 20s, when the first rigid built in the USA (ZR-1, Shenandoah) was supplemented by delivery of the ZR-3 (Los Angeles) from Germany to Lakehurst, the USN did not have enough helium in stock to inflate both of them. (Los Angeles, built by Zeppelin, had been flown across by a German crew, inflated with hydrogen. Without hydrogen she was not judged capable of a useful transAtlantic flight). By the second world war, the Navy had enough helium to keep a fleet of about a hundred much smaller blimps operational. By my guess, the other two prime sources known today (and there may be one or two others) were still unknown by the end of the war. Before the war, a grand total of five different rigids had made transAtlantic crossings, though two of them, Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg, did so a great many times, in addition to other even longer-ranged or challenging missions. All of these flights were made with hydrogen-lifted airships--I believe the final pair of the USN's inventory, Akron and Macon, might have done it with helium (and their design, with inboard engine compartments, was not suited for hydrogen) but they were not deemed suitable and doing so would have been something of a stunt, leaving little useful lift for any cargo. (Nor were there helium supplies for them set up overseas. Plans existed to deploy to Hawaii. OTOH once Akron was filled up with several hundred men and flown that way, as a demonstration of cargo capacity--for short ranges to be sure). By the end of WWII, a number of blimps had crossed the Atlantic, the short way from Brazil to West Africa on their way to deployment in the Mediterranean.
I favor helium, but it simply would not be available in suitable quantities during the period when airships would be most advantageous, and at any time the price of using helium would be substantially greater than using hydrogen.
Therefore a Golden Age of airships would have to operate on risky hydrogen. Zeppelin practices proved the risks were generally manageable, and OTL despite the advent of the prospect of transoceanic airplane operations, after the fire that destroyed Hindenburg, the airline management company was flooded with inquiries as to when its replacement would be available, from people eager to book the next set of tickets.
But I don't suppose airships will continue on as prime air transport once airplanes can do the job. Speed is of the essence; a major reason to book a ticket on a dirigible would be to beat the fastest crossing time a surface vessel could make. At some 60 knots, the airship is superior in that respect to any ship on the sea. But an airplane that can better that speed--and anything capable of transoceanic crossings could do so by a factor of 4 or more--would take its place since time is money, for rich and poor alike. The superior economy of an airship due to its low cruise speed is strongly offset by the higher cost of having to reside on it longer; it takes more hulls to maintain a given throughput of passengers; economy passengers generally have limited time due to short vacations and will want to spend more of it at the destination, while business passengers will pay a premium to get there sooner. I can see synergies that might extend the lifetime of the airship age possibly indefinitely using hook-on airplanes in several capacities, but only if the airship operators compromise with HTA in this way can they keep in the passenger transport business. Some cargoes might take advantage of the lower fuel costs per ton-mile, but most cargoes worth air-freighting at all are time-critical. The airship can do some things an airplane cannot do, and if a lot of infrastructure exists to support them, they might go on doing those things, but the airplane will surely relegate them to a second-class status--or worse.
1915 OTL was too early for serious revenue passenger business, but airships had already been flown by 1919 capable of useful service in such a capacity. OTL I think the industry suffered from bad luck, including being most developed by a country that had lost the war and was expressly forbidden to develop aviation, with airships singled out for special attention. Great Britain was the power that would have most benefited from vigorous development of airship lines, the so-called Empire scheme, but alas between general bankruptcy and a vacillating government that could not decide if they wanted to do it or not, an airship that would have been quite possible in the early '20s (R100) was not available until the early '30s, and deemed unsuitable for the tropical Empire route (due to using petroleum burning engines; diesel was wanted for its superior safety as well as efficiency) this was reserved for the more ambitiously designed but seriously flawed R101 which promptly crashed on its first service flight. Had this happened in say 1923, I am confident more ships would have followed, but 1931 was far too late in view of advances in airplanes.
ITTL I'd have to study a map carefully, but there are few sprawling imperial powers that could use airships as effectively as the OTL British empire could. USPA is perhaps the best candidate. The use of airships in continental North America is impeded both by rough weather and by the continental divide--a serious factor for the Meridians to consider as well to be sure, with the even higher Andes separating their coasts. But the run from South America to the Philippines practically begs for airships. The crossing to South Africa is another candidate, as is coastwise service and over the Amazon which can't be easy to run roads or railroads through. In the ATL, railroads are poorly developed in general compared to OTL so airships might be competitive for a while for overland services where they would not have been OTL; this requires smaller and shorter-range ships so it can start earlier than transoceanic. Russia, being a progressive liberal power here compared to OTL, might be a strong contender for major airship development; with or without a TransSiberian line, there are plenty of other reaches where suitable surface transport will be slow to come and where it may be easier to operate airships than airplanes. (OTL the Canadian tundra is a perennial candidate for a niche market for airship services; the vaster reaches of wilderness Russia would make the case more strongly still. The kind of bad weather that plagues these regions includes types that airships can operate in better than airplanes--fog for instance.) Connecting ENA holdings in Antipodia to North America would be another candidate route, though the Russians in addition to domestic routes would also have strong claims on major Pacific crossings--to Hawaii for instance.
