AHC: Save Proportional Representation in American Cities

Although all sorts of arguments have been given about why proportional representation is unsuitable for the US, it has in fact been tried here--in municipal elections. That it was ultimately repealed in city after city may be due in large part not to its "failures" but for doing what it was supposed to do: assuring representation for political and other minorities:

"Another factor working against defenders of proportional representation in many cities was the controversial nature of minority representation. Many Americans in the early twentieth century were hostile to political and racial minorities--the very groups aided by PR. Opponents of PR were not above fanning the flames of prejudice in their efforts to get rid of this reform. In particular, critics often played upon two of the most basic fears of white, middle class Americans: communists and African-Americans.

"In Cincinnati, race was the dominant theme in the successful 1957 repeal effort. The single transferable vote had allowed African Americans to be elected for the first time, with two blacks being elected to the city council in the 1950s. The nation was also seeing the first stirrings of the Civil Rights movement and racial tensions were running high. PR opponents shrewdly decided to make race an explicit factor in their repeal campaign. They warned whites that PR was helping to increase black power in the city and asked them whether they wanted a "Negro mayor." Their appeal to white anxieties succeeded, with whites supporting repeal by a two to one margin

"In New York City, fear of communism proved the undoing of proportional representation. Although one or two Communists had served on the PR-elected city council since 1941, it was not until the coming of the Cold War that Democratic party leaders were able to effectively exploit this issue. As historian Robert Kolesar discovered, the Democrats made every effort in their repeal campaign to link PR with Soviet Communism, describing the single transferable vote as "the political importation from the Kremlin," "the first beachhead of Communist infiltration in this country," and "an un-American practice which has helped the cause of communism and does not belong in the American way of life."(3) This "red scare" campaign resulted in the repeal of PR by an overwhelming margin.

"Just as the adoption of the single transferable vote in New York City prompted other cities to consider this reform, its well-publicized defeat there also encouraged repeal efforts in other PR cities. PR was abandoned in neighboring Long Beach and Yonkers in 1947 and 1948. Repeal campaigns also won in Boulder (1947), Toledo (1949), and Wheeling (1951). The PR movement never recovered from these defeats; and although supporters remained optimistic, the 1950s saw the repeal of PR in one city after another. By 1962, only Cambridge, Massachusetts retained this system.

"While the repeal of proportional representation in these American cities is taken by opponents as evidence that this voting system failed, proponents argue that it is more accurate to conclude that this system was rejected because it worked too well. They note that PR worked well in throwing party bosses out of government--bosses who never relented in their attempts to regain power--and it worked well in promoting the representation of racial, ethnic, and ideological minorities that were previously shut out by the winner-take-all system. For advocates of PR, then, it was the very political successes of this system that set the stage for a political backlash that was effectively exploited by its opponents and eventually led to the its demise in most of these cities.

http://www.fairvote.org/a_brief_history_of_proportional_representation_in_the_united_states

See also Robert J. Colesar, "Communism, Race, and the Defeat of Proportional Representation in Cold War America." http://www.fairvote.org/communism_r...oportional_representation_in_cold_war_america This article raises an interesting what-if: Suppose PR advocates had linked themselves with the Civil Rights Revolution, and had put more emphasis on the potential of PR to elect more members of ethnic minorities? True, this would make PR more unpopular than ever with many whites, yet it would at least give it a substantial favorable constituency in minority communities. (And in any event, PR could hardly have fared *worse* than it did in OTL!) Colesar explains the failure of advocates to press this point by noting that "While PR proponents had always vigorously championed the utility of the representation of minority opinion, they were less enthusiastic about racial, ethnic, or religious group representation. They never denied the reality that voters made judgments on such grounds, and never denied their right to do so. But they were not interested in encouraging voting by racial preference, and went to some pains to demonstrate that under PR, such divisions played no greater a role that they did in districting..."
 
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Maybe if city-council style PR elections are more common and better understood, equal rights on the national level won’t go the route of a relatively few Congressional districts which are heavily African-American and sparse effective representation elsewhere,

but will instead go the route of a larger number of districts which are, say, between 20 and 40% black and are often represented by a African-American member of Congress but not always, but almost always black persons are part of the winning coalition.
 
Briefly: Most American elections are conducted by some form of plurality voting, where essentially the representation is done by district and the plurality winner in each district wins(essentially "whoever wins the most votes in a given electorate"). PR refers to a set of systems(really a family) that all basically apportion seats in a body on a roughly proportional-to-choice basis(essentially "this many people back this group or group of candidates, and these many people back another)". The classic one is basic list or non-closed list PR, where people vote for a party and depending on the system representatives from that party and seats are apportioned based on how many people vote for what party(e.g. if you have a legislature with 50 seats and party A gets 20 votes total , B 10, and C 30 and the electorate is 50 voters, the parties get the corresponding number of seats instead of each seat being 1 district). The system discussed here is STV, a somewhat more complex system that basically assigns preferences to voters and apportions seats based on preferences. So if you have a city council of say 17 seats, you would get a ballot with all candidates and rank them, with candidates needing a certain quota of preference votes or winning a certain number of specific preferences to win.
 
. . . So if you have a city council of say 17 seats, you would get a ballot with all candidates and rank them, with candidates needing a certain quota of preference votes or winning a certain number of specific preferences to win.
That breaks down immediately. There's no way I can have in-depth knowledge of 17 different candidates. Really more in that I'm comparing them and picking my favorite 17, or even more if I want to keep listing favorites, my 21st favorite candidate, my 22nd favorite candidate, etc, etc.

In this case, the shortcut of voting by political party is almost a necessity.
 
That breaks down immediately. There's no way I can have in-depth knowledge of 17 different candidates. Really more in that I'm comparing them and picking my favorite 17, or even more if I want to keep listing favorites, my 21st favorite candidate, my 22nd favorite candidate, etc, etc.

In this case, the shortcut of voting by political party is almost a necessity.

You don't have to rank all of them, though. Just rank the ones you care about.

Unless you live in Australia, for some reason...
 
That breaks down immediately. There's no way I can have in-depth knowledge of 17 different candidates. Really more in that I'm comparing them and picking my favorite 17, or even more if I want to keep listing favorites, my 21st favorite candidate, my 22nd favorite candidate, etc, etc.

In this case, the shortcut of voting by political party is almost a necessity.

In practice you don't need to, just the big 2 plus maybe a third party, you can ignore the animal justice party. The big 2 will get most of the seats, the 3rd party will get a handful proportional to its primary vote, here the Greens get about 10% of the 72 Senate seats. Animal Justice and other really fringe parties success will be if they can use their .5% primary vote to elicit a promise from one of the big 2 to do something in return for a preference deal.

Like all voting systems it can be scammed, in 2013 a couple of micro party senators got elected by ultra disciplined preferencing of micro parties before the minor and major parties. The big 2.5 parties got the voting rules changed to introduce a floor so people with. 5% of the primary vote don't get elected.
 
That breaks down immediately. There's no way I can have in-depth knowledge of 17 different candidates. Really more in that I'm comparing them and picking my favorite 17, or even more if I want to keep listing favorites, my 21st favorite candidate, my 22nd favorite candidate, etc, etc.

In this case, the shortcut of voting by political party is almost a necessity.

It works very well in Ireland.
 
That breaks down immediately. There's no way I can have in-depth knowledge of 17 different candidates. Really more in that I'm comparing them and picking my favorite 17, or even more if I want to keep listing favorites, my 21st favorite candidate, my 22nd favorite candidate, etc, etc.

In this case, the shortcut of voting by political party is almost a necessity.

This is why in practice it's usually broken up into electorates so that the actual number of seats is 5-6(in the above example, you could divide the city into roughly quarter-sized electorates and assign say 4-5 seats to each). And as above, most systems allow you to just put any unranked candidate as automatically bottom.

Also, I should note that most PR or STV systems do have political parties so in practice you'd still know roughly what each candidate is running on. You can also run multiple candidates for the same party mind, but again proportional systems tend to favor smaller and more cohesive parties so you have a rough idea what each party is running on.
 

BigBlueBox

Banned
That breaks down immediately. There's no way I can have in-depth knowledge of 17 different candidates. Really more in that I'm comparing them and picking my favorite 17, or even more if I want to keep listing favorites, my 21st favorite candidate, my 22nd favorite candidate, etc, etc.

In this case, the shortcut of voting by political party is almost a necessity.
The political party of each candidate is typically listed on the ballot.
 
Right-a PR ballot(let's go with STV for starters) would have however many candidates are running for let's say 5 seats. You might have(in a Generic Liberal Small City) a few dems running and some greens and a few "independents" or if a small party can form a center-liberal party. Plus maybe an "ethnic interests" party-remember we've set up a situation that encourages smaller parties. Let's go with "Left Party", "Liberal Party", "X People's Party", and and a small center-right "Right Party"(probably divorced from the republicans". So we have let's say...17 candidates total but of those 7 are actually taken seriously(2 left candidates, 2 liberals, 2 greens, and a Hispanic People's Party candidate or whatever-I am making this up and assumisng there will be some number of special interst parties), and each candidate is listed on the ballot with party identification so you have a rough idea. In practice this is pretty similar to a lot of elections where the primary is the "Real election" and people generally know which candidate is center-whatever, which is establishment, which is the young firebrand, which is teh candidate of Those People From Whatever Neighborhood, etc. You rank the candidates you like first and then just chuck the other ones.
 

Lusitania

Donor
Where I think proportional representation could work would be presidential elections. If a candidate receives 30% of states vote he get 30% of delegates for that state. It would stop republicans being shut out of let’s say California and Democrats out of Texas. That way each vote is equal.

Once that system is working people could feel easier and more at ease to elect members of Congress (house) and state legislation. Allow for more than two parties to be represented. No one party would win, the only winner would democracy
 
Would an earlier and more successful Civil Rights movement help? Also preventing, or at least blunting, the Second Red Scare? The former could provide a good base of support for extending it whilst the latter could weaken the opposition.
 
. . . in 2013 a couple of micro party senators got elected by ultra disciplined preferencing of micro parties before the minor and major parties. The big 2.5 parties got the voting rules changed to introduce a floor so people with. 5% of the primary vote don't get elected.
Just like in the United States, this is viewed as a “problem” and not as an opportunity.

* I assume you’re talking about Australia, right?
 
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This book’s from a couple of years ago, and this might be really high trajectory.

On jobs, ecology, education, etc, if the micro parties can sell their ideas as worth some experiments that can actually be measured.
 
Just like in the United States, this is viewed as a “problem” and not as an opportunity.

* I assume you’re talking about Australia, right?

Minor and micro parties have their uses, particularly as balance of power parties in upper houses of what are basically 2 party/strong government systems like US and Westminster systems. But when they get too much power they're a pain in the arse for such systems, which is why many or even most places with proportional voting have a base level of primary votes that has to be reached.
 
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