Why not give representatives as many votes as they received in the election?

Question

A common complaint or source of disenfranchisement in democracies is that many constituents don't feel that their vote "counts" because the margin in most electorates is far greater than a single vote.

What if, in a single-transferable-vote system, the representative elected was subsequently given a number of votes in parliament/congress equal to their margin in the election.

e.g. if the Blue candidate receives 100 votes but the nearest rival, Red candidate, receives (after transfers) 90 votes, the Blue candidate becomes the representative and their vote on bills etc counts as 10 votes for that term. On the other hand, in a 'safe' seat where Blue receives 190 votes and the only other candidate receives 10 votes, Blue becomes the representative with 180 votes on each issue for that term.

Firstly this would mean voters no longer feel that their vote never counted, given it either strengthened or weakened the candidate ultimately elected in parliament.

Secondly, you could never have a party win power without the majority of the popular vote. In a parliamentary system the party in power is the one with the most votes in parliament and that would always correspond to the party that won the most actual votes in the election, even if they didn't get the most seats. There'd be no advantage to playing the percentages to maximise seats while losing on total number of votes.

But thirdly this would force parties and candidates to always contest all seats equally (and allocate spending without favouring marginal or battleground electorates). Because losing 100 votes in a closely contested seat is just as bad for a party's total vote count in parliament as losing 100 votes in a heartland seat.

Has such a system been suggested before and if so what is it called? Are there obvious problems with such a system?

One problem that occurs to me is what happens when the final two candidates are both from the same side of the political spectrum. e.g. a center-left and far-left candidate in a heavily left electorate. If the election was close the winning candidate would only have a few votes even though almost all of their constituents would support them when they voted against a bill put forward by a right-wing party.

Maybe in that case the candidate who comes second would have the choice of deducting their final tally from the winning candidates votes in parliament or distributing their final tally to strengthen other representatives, e.g. of their own party from other seats.

EDIT: Just to sharpen my second point, I think this system would nullify attempts at gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is all about drawing electoral boundaries such that the artifact of most electoral systems (that one citizen's vote doesn't translate directly into voting weight in parliament) can override the natural outcome of a vote. You divide seats so there's a small number of seats that are almost purely, e.g., Blue and the create a larger number of seats that are 51% red, and even though the popular vote might favour Blue, the artifact of seat boundaries elects Red. If a citizen's vote translates directly to votes in parliament it doesn't matter which way you carve the seats, the party in power will be the one with the most citizens supporting it.

Answer 1

A system fairly similar to his does actually exist, it's called proportional representation and is used to varying degrees in many parliamentary systems like Ireland, Spain, and Germany. The idea is that each party gets representatives proportional to the share of the votes they received.

Systems like these, however, don't solve the problem that voting is irrational from an economic raionality perspective. Even if you as an individual are able to give a candidate one extra vote, that's still giving the candidate a tiny sliver of power. The chance that that tiny sliver of extra voting power in the legislative body itself will be the deciding factor on an issue you care about is incredibly small. Multiply the probability of your vote mattering in a vote on a bill by the benefit of that bill to you (in dollars or an estimation of happiness) and you get a trivially small number. Add up that expected payout for a few hundred bills, and you still have a trivially small number. From the perspective of expected value theory, it still won't make sense for you to vote if you could productively use the time better by say earning $6 at work, spending quality time with your child, or playing a video game you greatly enjoy. Of course, if you reject this calculus in favor of something like "if everyone did that then society would collapse" or "voting makes me feel like I have power and that makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside (even though I know I don't)" then you might as well vote in an election with districts anyways.

Like all majoritarian systems, the Condorcet Paradox and the issue of majority tyranny will still be things to look out for. Moving towards simply needing a majority of the population to have power could make majority tyranny worse, since separated powers wouldn't slow down the process or stop bills that hurt a minority with disproportionate power in one part of government.

Answer 2

Why not give representatives as many votes as they received in the election?

Short Answer: Tacit historical parochialism.

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Long Answer:

Proportional representation requires a voting district to have multiple representatives, allocated on the amount of votes received. Voting districts with a single winner-takes-all billet produces inherently geographical representatives.

Two common reasons why geographical representation exists are:

1. A legislature that originated as a consultative council of nobles that controlled the king's budget and hence policy initiatives. As revenue was primarily land-based in the Middle Ages, membership on such councils was to nobles holding large swaths of land. As power devolved over time to the populace, geographical allotment of representation was retained.
2. Federated countries that required geographic representation into order to either entice territories into the federation or to reduce internal tensions by explicitly providing a channel for geographic grievances.

This parochialism made a certain level of sense up until the advent of telecommunication, rapid transport and trade globalisation. Nowadays, especially as candidates represent ideological positions instead of a given allotment of land, the unfairness of rolling up a diverse populace under a single winner-takes-all representative has become quite noticeable.

The electoral structure of governments are defined in their constitutions. The ease of altering a constitution differs from country to country but almost always fails without the support of at least half of the major political parties; preferably all. Which is unlikely for parties that feel they may lose out in the short term in a shift towards proportional representation - putting party interests ahead of the health of their democracy.

Answer 3

I fail to see the point in your system. You weaken the advantages of plurality systems (e.g. clear majorities in parliament, simplicity) while still not really creating a fully representative parliament (if the second candidate/party gets no vote in parliament at all, there are still winner-takes-all effect and some potential for gerrymandering). It's also unclear how that would affect the dynamics in parliament.

Proportional representation is a simpler, more direct way to achieve the same goals. If the electoral districts are large enough (possibly nationwide), a party does get a weight in parliament roughly equivalent to the number of votes they received in the election. You cannot form a government without involving parties that represent a majority of the electorate, every vote counts and gerrymandering also becomes a non-issue.

Besides, from a procedural point of view, I don't see where and how such a system would be adopted. It's unlikely to be attractive to countries that already have PR and in countries that have plurality voting systems, it would break with tradition and obviously upset those who like their safe seats and gerrymandering. Even without your addition, STV is already quite complicated and rather uncommon for this reason. No matter what your starting position is, if the circumstances allow for radical reform, you might as well go for proper PR instead of some complex new variant on STV.

The two things you lose with simple PR is the link between a district and specific representatives (all MP represent the whole electorate) and the ability to choose exactly who gets elected (you vote for a party, not a person).

If the goal is to maintain some form of local representation or connection between a member of parliament and a district (personally, I am not convinced it's a good thing) with a more proportional representation, Germany has another (rather complex) way to achieve that, called “personalized proportional vote” but even that only gives voters control over some of the seats.

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To clarify my answer, here a few examples of gerrymandering in this system:

• Say we have two parties, one with 70%, the other with 30%. If all districts faithfully reflect these proportions, the majority party can end up with 100% of the votes in parliament, the minority is not represented at all. This is the “cracking” strategy (distributing minority votes in multiple districts where they are outnumbered by the majority).
• Say we have three districts of equal size and two parties, one with 55% of the vote and the other one with 45% of the vote. In two districts the second party has 51% of the votes, in the last one, the first party gets 67% of the votes. In parliament, the second party has about 60% of the votes, the first one 40%. A minority has been turned into an majority using the “packing” strategy (putting all the votes from the dominant party in a “lost” district).

In both cases, many votes are wasted and there are massive distortions between the make-up of the parliament and the popular vote so the added complexity does not solve any of the problems you set out to address.

Answer 4

A system somewhat like what you are describing was briefly considered in the UK by the Jenkins Commission on electoral reform, which referred to it as the "weighted vote" system.

The 'Weighted' Vote

89. It should however perhaps be mentioned in passing that there is another system operating entirely on existing constituencies, apart from those systems which have already been discussed and rejected, which has been advocated by a number of those providing us with written submissions. It is what might be called the "weighted vote member system". Members would be elected exactly as now, but where their party was under-represented nationally this would be corrected by giving them an additional voting strength in the division lobbies of the House of Commons. Thus, to take an extreme example, a Liberal Democrat (then Alliance) member in the 1983 Parliament would have been entitled to cast 7 1/2 votes in any division, and more typically, in the present Parliament a Conservative member would be entitled to 1 1/4 votes.

Whether they would carry these numbers round their necks or on their backs, rather like prize bulls at an agricultural show, is not clear, but what is clear is that there would be great problems if one of these vote-heavy beasts were to find himself in a lobby different from his party leader and whips, or worse still, if he were permanently to lumber off across the floor. There would inevitably be the most excited attempts to re-corral him. And the ability sometimes to take independent action must surely be preserved, even encouraged, if MPs are not to become party automata.

90. Therefore, while we respect the ingenuity and conviction with which this weighted vote solution has been put forward, we think that it would arouse more mockery than enthusiasm and be incompatible with the practical working of a parliament.

I think the idea deserves more serious consideration than the rather cursory and mocking treatment given to it by the Commission. But sadly, such is often the quality of debate on electoral reform in the UK.

(Source: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20131205123200/http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm40/4090/chap-5.htm#c5-d)

Answer 5

This system could lead to the death of party politics.

In a parliamentary system, party affiliations are not locked. An election where most seats are won by narrow majorities would result in most of the elected (on both sides)having only negligible voting power. Collect enough landslide winners (again, on both sides) to outvote the powerless majority, get them to agree in a"marriage of convenience", and they can form their own ruling group.