You’ve described, essentially, a weighted-seats closed-list method.
List methods: meh. It’s actually possible to be biproportional — that is, to represent both party/faction and geography pretty fairly — so reducing it to just party (and not geography or even faction) is a step down IMO. But you can make reasonable arguments either way.
Closed methods (party, not voters, decides who gets their seats): yuck. Why take power from the people to give it to some party elite?
Weighted methods: who knows, it’s scarcely been tried. A few points:
If voting weights are too unequal, then effective voting power can get out of whack. For instance, if there are 3 people with 2 votes each, and 1 person with 1 vote, then that last person has no power to ever shift the majority, even though you might have thought they had half as much power as the others.
I think that part of the point of representative democracy is deliberation in the second stage. For that purpose, it’s important to preserve cognitive diversity and equal voice. So that makes me skeptical of weighted methods. But note that this is a theoretical, not an empirical, argument, so add whatever grains of salt you’d like.
General points: I like your willingness to experiment; it is possible to design voting methods that are better than even the best ones in common use. But it’s not easy, so I wouldn’t want to adopt a method that somebody had just come up with; important to at least let experienced theoreticians kick it around some first.
Why should random people who are not experts in “ability to debate,” “ability to read and understand the impact of legal language,” or other attributes that make a good lawmaker get to decide which human beings are tasked with the process of writing and compromising on language?
People have an interest in having their values reflected, but that’s already determined by the party they vote for.
This is especially true in a system that encourages multiple parties, so the, for example, “low taxes” faction, the “low regulation” faction, and the “white power” faction can each be separate parties who collaborate (or not) on individual legislative priorities as needed. And each party can hire whatever mix of lawyers, negotiators, speech writers, and speech givers they want, without forcing “the person who decides who to hire,” “the person who gives speeches,” and “the person who has final say on how to vote” all be the same “candidate.”
You’ve described, essentially, a weighted-seats closed-list method.
List methods: meh. It’s actually possible to be biproportional — that is, to represent both party/faction and geography pretty fairly — so reducing it to just party (and not geography or even faction) is a step down IMO. But you can make reasonable arguments either way.
Closed methods (party, not voters, decides who gets their seats): yuck. Why take power from the people to give it to some party elite?
Weighted methods: who knows, it’s scarcely been tried. A few points:
If voting weights are too unequal, then effective voting power can get out of whack. For instance, if there are 3 people with 2 votes each, and 1 person with 1 vote, then that last person has no power to ever shift the majority, even though you might have thought they had half as much power as the others.
I think that part of the point of representative democracy is deliberation in the second stage. For that purpose, it’s important to preserve cognitive diversity and equal voice. So that makes me skeptical of weighted methods. But note that this is a theoretical, not an empirical, argument, so add whatever grains of salt you’d like.
General points: I like your willingness to experiment; it is possible to design voting methods that are better than even the best ones in common use. But it’s not easy, so I wouldn’t want to adopt a method that somebody had just come up with; important to at least let experienced theoreticians kick it around some first.
Why should random people who are not experts in “ability to debate,” “ability to read and understand the impact of legal language,” or other attributes that make a good lawmaker get to decide which human beings are tasked with the process of writing and compromising on language? People have an interest in having their values reflected, but that’s already determined by the party they vote for. This is especially true in a system that encourages multiple parties, so the, for example, “low taxes” faction, the “low regulation” faction, and the “white power” faction can each be separate parties who collaborate (or not) on individual legislative priorities as needed. And each party can hire whatever mix of lawyers, negotiators, speech writers, and speech givers they want, without forcing “the person who decides who to hire,” “the person who gives speeches,” and “the person who has final say on how to vote” all be the same “candidate.”