AHC: plural voting the standard of modern democracy

Eurofed

Banned
Your AH task, should you decide to meet it, is to devise a way to keep plural voting (the practice of allowing some persons to vote multiple times) the standard in the voting systems of modern democracy, much like "one person one vote" is IOTL.

In the 19th century wealth and education accomplishments were the typical standards to grant supplementary votes, in modern times wealth might or might not still be used, or be substituted by say being a veteran, or having dependent children, but education ought to remain a valid qualification for plural voting.
 
Your AH task, should you decide to meet it, is to devise a way to keep plural voting (the practice of allowing some persons to vote multiple times) the standard in the voting systems of modern democracy, much like "one person one vote" is IOTL.

In the 19th century wealth and education accomplishments were the typical standards to grant supplementary votes, in modern times wealth might or might not still be used, or be substituted by say being a veteran, or having dependent children, but education ought to remain a valid qualification for plural voting.

It has always existed on a limited scale. I am not clear which country this applies to in the USA I am sure it has occured in Tamany New York, Cook County Illinois and other city machine run areas. In Britain people went round cemetries looking for people who had recently died and impersonated them. It is legal to be on the register in more than one place although not to vote in both but how often are there checks?

More seriously why retain it until 1928 some people had no vote in the UK and some several votes until 1949 or 49 there was ratepayer franchise in local elections restricting the vote. Plural voting was abolished by the Attlee government and in local elections as late as 1969 for the business vote if I remember correctly.

Why should education by a qualification for more than one vote given that it has often been and is again becoming the perogative of the better off. I will suggest another form of plural voting which is the ability of the voter to list candidates in order of preferance as with the alternative vote or better still the single transferable vote which is the best compromise between proportional representation and represenative democracy through constituency based M.Ps or councillors
 
Well, the US has a very draconian interpretation of "one person, one vote" which disallows stuff like Condorcet or any of the proportional schemes. If you mean get the US to have proportional, then it might be possible for some of the US States to use Proportional for the House of Reps after the parties develop (Jefferson and Hamilton invented two commonly used PR distribution methods), although I don't know how plausible that is.
 
Your AH task, should you decide to meet it, is to devise a way to keep plural voting (the practice of allowing some persons to vote multiple times) the standard in the voting systems of modern democracy, much like "one person one vote" is IOTL.

Easily done- were you inspired by the Labour Party leadership contest?

What's needed is a Corporate State of some kind that has professionally or (preferably and) ethnically-based constituencies along with the geographical ones. So, say you're a Gay Catholic Trade Unionist who is a part-time Student at the local University- this puts you in five electorates, so as well as voting for your local representative, you need to vote for your Gay, Catholic, University and Union-based member too.

In British terms we're already halfway there with the House of Lords, the University seats and the Labour Party, so just let PM Mosely or similar reform it along these lines.

In international terms, I would have thought a broad Socialist revolution along the lines of SHWI's "The Seed" would be best; a revolutionary democracy aimed at destroying the Party system but entrenching the interests of widely-different groups would be ideal for this sort of thing.
 
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