Raph Frank wrote:
On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 9:41 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm
<[email protected]> wrote:
Having just a single from each state may be /too/ centrist, but to pick two
senators from each using a proportional ordering might work - as long as it
doesn't introduce partisan division.
You would probably end up getting the centre of each of the 2 parties
if you did that, so it defeats the idea of finding centerists to
cancel out the 2 party system.
You could split states into districts, if you wanted more than 1
senator elected at the same time.
Ofc, districting runs in gerrymandering problems.
I've thought about this, and it makes sense. Any argument I could use
against having a division inside states could also be used to argue
against a division among states (e.g. why have one from each state? why
not one from a block of states? Thus you should have one from a region
of each state if you have more than one).
Districting runs into gerrymandering. I think the solution there is to
let some independent body do the redistricting -- it works in Canada.
That raises the question of why such hasn't been done already, but I
think the parties are just too strong. The initial cancelling-out done
by Condorcet might be enough to pull the system away from that kind of
entrenchment.
More exotic systems might be possible - for instance, some sort of
supermajority requirement for councils of two, or a weighted kind of PR
that pulls the centrists towards the center, or something, but that
lacks the simplicity of the ideas above.
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