An Interesting Idea

XWL has another interesting idea for reforming American Politics - make it more like British Politics:

Here's my modest proposal, every candidate exceeding .51% of the vote shall become a member of Congress. The votes for each district will be divided into a hundred votes to be distributed amongst all the qualifying candidates. All the people who have a vote will serve in Congress. In that manner every district will have a Democratic and a Republican representative, and most likely a Green and Libertarian representative as well. The multiplicity of voices and viewpoints will add to the cacophany admittedly, but also it will create a greater competition in the marketplace of ideas that has sorely been lacking in Congress. Many rules would have to change. With each district potentially being represented by half a dozen or more people, the ability of lobbyist to lobby all these diverse characters and perspectives will be diminished. At the same time each district's constituency will be better represented. No vote would be 'wasted' in this system. Committee chairs would go by a rotating lottery rather than by majority party. Each representative would get the number of lottery entries as they have votes, and each committee would be open to entry by all members without regards to party.

. . .

A look at a state's 2004 results might be instructive as to how this would look.

Let's take a look at Nebraska. The first district would have their votes divided thusly, 54 votes for the GOP, 43 votes for the DEM and 3 votes for the Green. The second district would have 61 votes for the GOP, 36 votes for the DEM, 1 vote for the Green and 2 votes for the Libertarian, and finally in the third district 87 votes for the GOP, 11 votes for the DEM, 1 vote for the Green, and 1 vote for the Nebraska party.

Instead of 3 Republicans, the Nebraska contingent in Congress would have been 3 Republicans with 202 of 300 votes, 3 Democrats with 90 votes, 3 Greens with 5 votes, 1 Libertarian with 2 votes, and one member of the Nebraska party with 1 vote. 11 Representatives instead of just 3. Plus on local issues, many times they could get together and do right by Nebraska while still disagreeing on national or ideological issues.

Hrm. I'll have to think about this one, but it's certainly worthy of thought. As 'they' say, read the whole thing.