This might belong in Political Chat, if so feel free to move it. But I put it here because I am sort of asking an alternate history question at the end and it would almost definitely require a pre-1900 POD.
I recently read Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. In it, one of the characters suggested several alternate election systems, one of which caught my eye and I was wondering how it would fare in the real world and how it could come about. In essence, the way election by petition would work is that we do away with geographical districts and instead any candidate who wanted to be a member of Congress would start a petition and collect signatures. Any candidate who is able to reach a certain pre-determined threshold (which would presumably have to be modified over time to match population growth) would become the official representative in Congress of everyone on his petition. There wouldn’t be any regular elections. When a citizen felt that their representative no longer adequately represented their interests, they could remove their name from that person’s petition and sign someone else’s. If due to removals, a candidate fell below the threshold, they would be immediately removed from Congress. Obviously, each voter would only be allowed to have their name on one candidate’s petition at a time. The point of this system is to avoid what the character felt was unfairness in a system based on geographic districts. Under a first-past-the-post system, a candidate gets 51% of the vote in a district and then becomes the representative of the district's entire electorate when his views do not in any way represent the 49% who didn’t vote for him. Under election by petition, the candidate only represents the people who actually support him regardless of where those supporters happen to reside. People who choose not to vote would also be represented in a weird way by there being less politicians in Congress. The amount of Representatives would be approximately proportional to the amount of people who actually cared enough to sign a petition.
So my basic question is, while I like the theory, what would this system look like in practice? Would it be stable? What would be the political impact both for the country using it and for the rest of the world? Obviously it would result in more representation for the fringe parties because their supporters could be organized and concentrated on a few candidates rather than being small minorities in geographical districts. I think that politicians would stay in office longer because people would have to actively reject their previous choice rather than having fixed terms and being forced to give the incumbent an up or down vote every x number of years. On the other hand, when enough people did desire change (like during the anti-war movement in the 60s or Tea Party in 2010) that change could be affected immediately rather than having to wait until the next election. I would also think that it would be harder to disenfranchise racial minorities under this system, since it is a lot easier to harass people at a polling place than it is to track down and destroy every petition being circulated (perhaps in secret if the persecution is bad enough) in minority communities. Overall, would the international community view this system as “left-wing” (because of the radical departure from previous electoral systems), “right-wing” (because it would likely be easier for the existing establishment to hold on to power) or just bizarre? Has anything like this ever been tried? If not, when and where would it be most likely to be tried?
I recently read Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. In it, one of the characters suggested several alternate election systems, one of which caught my eye and I was wondering how it would fare in the real world and how it could come about. In essence, the way election by petition would work is that we do away with geographical districts and instead any candidate who wanted to be a member of Congress would start a petition and collect signatures. Any candidate who is able to reach a certain pre-determined threshold (which would presumably have to be modified over time to match population growth) would become the official representative in Congress of everyone on his petition. There wouldn’t be any regular elections. When a citizen felt that their representative no longer adequately represented their interests, they could remove their name from that person’s petition and sign someone else’s. If due to removals, a candidate fell below the threshold, they would be immediately removed from Congress. Obviously, each voter would only be allowed to have their name on one candidate’s petition at a time. The point of this system is to avoid what the character felt was unfairness in a system based on geographic districts. Under a first-past-the-post system, a candidate gets 51% of the vote in a district and then becomes the representative of the district's entire electorate when his views do not in any way represent the 49% who didn’t vote for him. Under election by petition, the candidate only represents the people who actually support him regardless of where those supporters happen to reside. People who choose not to vote would also be represented in a weird way by there being less politicians in Congress. The amount of Representatives would be approximately proportional to the amount of people who actually cared enough to sign a petition.
So my basic question is, while I like the theory, what would this system look like in practice? Would it be stable? What would be the political impact both for the country using it and for the rest of the world? Obviously it would result in more representation for the fringe parties because their supporters could be organized and concentrated on a few candidates rather than being small minorities in geographical districts. I think that politicians would stay in office longer because people would have to actively reject their previous choice rather than having fixed terms and being forced to give the incumbent an up or down vote every x number of years. On the other hand, when enough people did desire change (like during the anti-war movement in the 60s or Tea Party in 2010) that change could be affected immediately rather than having to wait until the next election. I would also think that it would be harder to disenfranchise racial minorities under this system, since it is a lot easier to harass people at a polling place than it is to track down and destroy every petition being circulated (perhaps in secret if the persecution is bad enough) in minority communities. Overall, would the international community view this system as “left-wing” (because of the radical departure from previous electoral systems), “right-wing” (because it would likely be easier for the existing establishment to hold on to power) or just bizarre? Has anything like this ever been tried? If not, when and where would it be most likely to be tried?