mutantsushi said:
Kasz216 said:
radishhead said:
Scotland only has enough politicians to decide particularly close elections however - historically most votes have been one-sided enough that Scotland's seats wouldn't make a difference one way or the other
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Yeah, guess i'm more used to US super rigidity.
Looking at the 2005 elections, the Torys would of only improved to around 214 Seats.
They went from 194 to 306, that's crazy.
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That's the result of the same crazy first past the post, single seat constituency system that the US and Canada uses,
which distorts the idea that all votes are equal, in fact in many US states that are Republican leaning,
nearly 1.5x as many votes are needed to gain 1 Democratic Party representative as votes are needed to gain 1 Republican representative.
It just happens that when 3rd parties draw significant support the gross failings of such a system become harder to ignore.
Such as Canada which has had Conservative majority governments with less than majority vote support for that party.
But it also shows up in the US, Bush did not win popular vote for Presidency,
and the House of Representative vote has been popularly won by Democrats despite returning large Republican majorities in seats.
The US Senate, despite being less granular (in ratio to population), is MORE representative because it doesn't split the electorate into districts,
which either gerrymandered or "natural" will always create "ghettos" where votes are "wasted" (leading to the 1.5x figure quoted above)
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Eh, I don't really think it is crazy. It just needs better districting laws... though it does tend to bend both ways. Last Presidential Election Romney would of needed 53% of the popular vote to have won. (Though he was such a terrible cnadidate that wasn't an issue.)
A propotion based system better represents the national vote sure, but it hurts local communities. Someone who votes Democrat gets a Republican senator or vice versa.
This is espiecally imporant in a US like system where large importance is put in the federal politcians to bring back things for their states and districts. A politician who won because of votes in other districts isn't as likely to look out for his own
