VoiceInTheWilderness
Well-known member
- Location
- Vancouver, more or less
- Pronouns
- he/him
It's election season, so I've decided to pull the trigger on a project I've contemplated for some time.
Thandean Representation (I know no better name) was devised by Thande as a behind-the-scenes reform to bloc vote, which also addresses some of the problems I (and he) have with the modern election process. In modern elections (in the UK, from 1950) the country is divided into single-member districts, and in each the candidate receiving the most votes wins. This holds true even if that candidate receives fewer than 3 out of every 10 votes – 2 MPs currently sitting “won” their seats this way. More broadly, there may be communities divided into multiple ridings, where one party can sweep every riding on a minority of votes, and there was clearly sufficient opposition across the community to make the sweep seem inequitable. On the other hand I take several exceptions to conventional proportional-representation systems, especially the weak or nonexistent links communities have to any particular representative.
Thandean Representation works thusly (quoted from the original):
To give us something to discuss, I've gone through the existing federal riding map and joined the ridings into groups of (usually) three. Extremely rural ridings (e.g. Kenora or Labrador) remain single, and where the numbers didn't add up to neat threes I created a few two-seaters (e.g. Cape Breton Island or Vancouver's North Shore) and four seaters (e.g. Prince Edward Island or Laval). This approach has a number of problems: varying electorate sizes, an only occasional correlation to natural communities, voters could only vote for candidates that stood in their own riding, and so on. Realistically, the Electoral Boundaries Commission would draw fresh and rational boundaries across the country. Still, it's more interesting than nothing, and exposes some trends that bubbled away beneath the surface.
It is to my great regret that the 2011 election was fought on a different map, because comparing the swing to 2015 would have been enormously interesting.
Thandean Representation (I know no better name) was devised by Thande as a behind-the-scenes reform to bloc vote, which also addresses some of the problems I (and he) have with the modern election process. In modern elections (in the UK, from 1950) the country is divided into single-member districts, and in each the candidate receiving the most votes wins. This holds true even if that candidate receives fewer than 3 out of every 10 votes – 2 MPs currently sitting “won” their seats this way. More broadly, there may be communities divided into multiple ridings, where one party can sweep every riding on a minority of votes, and there was clearly sufficient opposition across the community to make the sweep seem inequitable. On the other hand I take several exceptions to conventional proportional-representation systems, especially the weak or nonexistent links communities have to any particular representative.
Thandean Representation works thusly (quoted from the original):
Thande said:
To give us something to discuss, I've gone through the existing federal riding map and joined the ridings into groups of (usually) three. Extremely rural ridings (e.g. Kenora or Labrador) remain single, and where the numbers didn't add up to neat threes I created a few two-seaters (e.g. Cape Breton Island or Vancouver's North Shore) and four seaters (e.g. Prince Edward Island or Laval). This approach has a number of problems: varying electorate sizes, an only occasional correlation to natural communities, voters could only vote for candidates that stood in their own riding, and so on. Realistically, the Electoral Boundaries Commission would draw fresh and rational boundaries across the country. Still, it's more interesting than nothing, and exposes some trends that bubbled away beneath the surface.
It is to my great regret that the 2011 election was fought on a different map, because comparing the swing to 2015 would have been enormously interesting.
