The Icelandic Voting System (2024)

4/20/2025 at 5:55:08 AM

This seems to gloss over the major difference between Scandinavian voting systems and e.g. the US one: They are very party-focused. At the end of the day it’s the cabals at the top of the major parties that decide who gets to sit in parliament and how they vote. Sometimes it feels like it would be more honest if e.g. Swedish parliament just had 8 members and their voting buttons controlled more / fewer lights on the voting results dashboard. Leads to a very collectivist political culture.

by bjornsing

4/20/2025 at 8:06:10 AM

I think you may have an overly rosy view of the US system. Search former rep Justin Amash's tweets for keywords like "house", "speaker", and "deliberation":

https://xcancel.com/justinamash/status/1486169720911020036

On the other hand, I suppose we do have primaries in the US. Sounds like that's not a thing in Scandinavia.

I understand a big part of the job of party leadership in the US is simply negotiating with / persuading representatives of your own party to vote for upcoming bills. So perhaps that's another sense in which party leadership is weaker in the US. The focus on local representation also creates problems though, since representatives are incentivized to deliver federal projects in the district they represent, even if that's not best for the nation as a whole.

I really wish there a method for prototyping new democracy designs. I feel that this area has been very stagnant, and radical improvements could be possible.

by 0xDEAFBEAD

4/20/2025 at 11:45:31 AM

I'd argue that primaries are a serious bug rather than a feature of the US political system, at least in places where only registered members of a party can vote in that party's primary. By requiring candidates for the general election to first pass through a gauntlet composed of the most die-hard voters from one part of the political spectrum, you frequently end up with candidates who are way more extreme than the electorate in general.

This seems to be true even if the party in question is the minority party for a given race. Instead of picking a candidate with crossover appeal from voters in the majority, they end up with some raging partisan who can't possibly win, making it effectively a one horse race. Another major failure mode is that even in pretty evenly split areas it encourages pandering to the extreme fringe of the party and winning by a narrow margin rather than winning with a broad coalition because broad coalitions with crossover appeal don't help you get out of the primary. This has been weaponized in recent years, with moderates being threatened with primary challenges if they don't follow the party line, even though this misrepresents the politics of their actual voter base.

by rainsford

4/20/2025 at 12:13:51 PM

A couple states (notably California) simply have a primary election to determine who the 2 candidates will be in the general election. They're often both from the same party in "one party" districts where people overwhelmingly prefer one of the parties.

California's voting districts are gerrymandered along party lines, so the districts are about 75% safe seats for one party, and 25% safe seats for another party, despite the last Presidential election only being 58% for the one party and 42% for the other.

Despite this, California has some of the most egregious pandering to extremes within the parties (due to the safe seats) and has a reputation for having "extreme" candidates.

by trollbridge

4/20/2025 at 4:37:39 PM

> By requiring candidates for the general election to first pass through a gauntlet composed of the most die-hard voters from one part of the political spectrum, you frequently end up with candidates who are way more extreme than the electorate in general.

It's not always that they're more extreme, it's largely the people who have the extra time to go to additional elections or caucusing. Ex: retirees. And this is affected each party differently.

by bobmcnamara

4/22/2025 at 11:26:51 PM

In practice it actually works the other way around - when primaries are restricted to actual party members, it tends to moderate the candidates because the "smoke-filled rooms" emphasize ability to build coalitions through consensus. But once you open them up to basically anyone who is willing to declare party affiliation, those people vote mostly according to their beliefs - they don't participate in internal party politics otherwise so they don't value consensus building - and that's why Repubs got radicalized first.

by int_19h

4/20/2025 at 11:48:48 PM

One way to think about it is: Imagine an electorate that constitutes a bell curve along a left-right axis. The mode of the bell curve represents a milquetoast moderate position, with the tails representing extremes. Different electoral systems can have different biases:

* You can have a "heavy-tailed" congress, where extremists are overrepresented.

* You can have a "thin-tailed" congress, where moderates are overrepresented.

* You can have a "representative" congress, where the range of views in congress looks very similar to the population at large.

At first blush, for the sake of policy stability, a "thin-tailed" congress appears desirable.

But there is also an interesting argument that it's important not to disempower extremists. Democracy could be considered as a "safety valve" that empowers groups to resolve disagreements cooperatively. If some groups don't feel their views are represented, they might condemn the system and seek other ways for their voices to be heard. Something like the 60s civil rights movement in the US could be seen as an example of this. Arguably, the 60s would've been more stable, if the US electoral system wasn't as disenfranchising to minorities with "extreme" views relative to the median at that time.

I can't think of any arguments for a heavy-tailed congress though.

The weird thing about the US system is on the one hand there is the promotion of extremists, but on the other hand, authors like Ezra Klein complain about excessive "veto points" and checks and balances that prevent elected officials from accomplishing stuff. Individually these seem like flaws, but it might be bad to fix one without fixing the other.

I think the US system sucks in absolute terms, but has also worked remarkably well given that it was designed in 1787. "By our estimate, national constitutions have lasted an average of only seventeen years since 1789" https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/lifespan-written-constitut...

People love to complain about "American exceptionalism", but from my perspective, it contributes to a sense of civic pride that's kept the wheels on the bus for such a long time despite a lousy constitution. So I'm concerned that it may be going away.

by 0xDEAFBEAD

4/23/2025 at 7:17:45 PM

The American systems elects unpopular candidates, and then gives them very little power.

Makes sense, I guess.

by pyuser583

4/20/2025 at 1:26:02 PM

> you frequently end up with candidates who are way more extreme than the electorate in general.

I agree (as a non-American), I think the US primaries system is weird, but how does this not apply to other systems where it’s just a small handful of political insiders that select who runs?

Is it the case that this middle ground is the worst of all worlds?

by madeofpalk

4/23/2025 at 7:20:25 PM

If you mean Presidential primaries, they're a mix of both popular selection and insider selection.

Parties always have a favored inside candidate, but they have to actually convince folks of the candidate.

This happens a lot in American politics, especially at the local elections where we elect positions that are non-political. The governor appoints a Sheriff or Coroner, but they have to face an election in a few weeks.

by pyuser583

4/20/2025 at 11:56:04 AM

I'd like to try a system where everybody had to use the same process to get on the ballot and then parties could endorse one of them (and probably have that indicated on the ballot).

by maxerickson

4/20/2025 at 9:46:33 AM

> On the other hand, I suppose we do have primaries in the US. Sounds like that's not a thing in Scandinavia.

Whilst we do not have primary elections, you can vote for individual candidates on the ballots, moving them up on the party list. This strategy does actually work to get candidates further down on the list over other candidates that would have been selected first.

by Svip

4/20/2025 at 9:38:09 AM

I cannot speak fully to the Swedish situation, but in Denmark, MPs are independent as defined in the constitution. Yes, elections are largely party-based, but once elected, MPs are allowed to vote as they want. Of course, if they chose to defy the party line, they risk "losing the whip" as they'd say in the UK, which basically amounts to being expelled from the party.

That being said, it does not take a lot of signatures to get on a ballot as a candidate outside the parties in Denmark (a few hundreds, I believe), though only two candidates have successfully managed to get elected that way. Conversely, Denmark has a high threshold for political parties (requiring signatures amounting to 1% of the vote of the last election, so usually around 21k), but the threshold to get into parliament is only 2% (which I believe is one of the lowest amongst countries that uses similar proportional representative systems).

Returning to the towing the line (or rather lack thereof), the Danish parliament have a lot of independent MPs in parliament, because a lot find reason to quit their party after getting elected. Wikipedia has a fine table of MPs who has changed colours since the last election in November 2022:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_Folketi...

by Svip

4/20/2025 at 12:45:03 PM

MPs are independent in Germany as well, but in practice they vote with their parliamentary group almost all the time. "Fraktionsdisziplin" (discipline of the group) is a common term and generally expected - failure to achieve that is considered failure of the leadership and can quickly escalate.

And even those who are elected directly wouldn't win their local election without their party, so all of them are very beholden to their party. Continuous defection on votes will see them not get re-elected, even if they don't get thrown out of the party.

Theory vs practice makes all the difference.

by luckylion

4/20/2025 at 4:31:26 PM

I don't necessarily think this is a failure of theory in face of practice. Most party members are team members, and are willing to follow party leadership most of the time. Yes, I know the leadership has leverage that ordinary members do not, but I think most of the time, leadership need not exert that leverage. But the list of members who switch party in Denmark between elections suggest that the theory is very much practised, but it needn't be all the time.

by Svip

4/20/2025 at 5:42:33 PM

Most of the time leadership doesn't need to pressure individuals, because they follow the commands -- not because they so well aligned on all topic (they are not).

Of course there's an argument to be made that it would be a lot more chaotic if every elected MP truly was only beholden to their consciousness, because your certainty of how some vote will go would be very low and you'd have to actually convince MPs that it's the right thing to do (that would open up the question of transparency, i.e. who voted for what; official German politics are fundamentally opposed to that idea).

Brokering backroom deals among party elites is far more efficient and predictable -- you can always buy agreement by offering some concessions on a different topic they care about. But then we're back to that question: why do you need hundreds of people if the decisions are made by a few dozens?

by luckylion

4/20/2025 at 9:49:39 AM

In the Norwegian parlament it's actually quite common that only part of the parlament is gathered for votes when it's clear who would win a complete vote. So in that sense it's actually very close to your 8 members.

It still matters who you vote on though, but mostly from the representatives ability to influence what gets discussed. And there is a lot of 'day-to-day' politics where the details gets formed by the representatives, while the 'big lines' are set by the party.

Finaly I can't help but notice that the American political culture is significantly less diverse than the Scandinavian one. Yes, you have the odd representative crossing party lines, but in practice it seems like all this possibility for diverse opinions ends up being lost when they get squashed into two big tents.

by Epa095

4/20/2025 at 8:14:01 AM

I don’t really want to learn hundreds of different individual political platforms. It’s even a stretch to study 7-9 platforms. Instead I tick the party that is closest to my views but the individual that dissents on a specific issue, or who focuses on that particular issue I like. This is how you can, as a non member, try to steer the politics of the parties.

by alkonaut

4/20/2025 at 11:34:14 AM

In modern times the US is really only different in theory. This wasn't always the case, but currently national party positions totally dominate congressional voting with the individuals who happen to fill those seats being largely interchangeable cogs. There are exceptions, but those people are largely notable because they are so rare. And more importantly, they're slowly being replaced by people who will follow the party line.

There have been studies on this that show party line voting becoming more and more common over the years to the point where it's basically the expected norm today. Arguably the US is in an even worse position because it's usually the President who sets the legislative agenda and voting position for their party in Congress, even though the system is set up assuming Congress acts like an independent branch.

by rainsford

4/20/2025 at 12:10:52 PM

Well, not quite. The U.S. house currently has 220 Republicans, and to pass a bill takes 218 votes. If 3 Republicans decide they don't like something, the bill won't pass, and this is happening quite frequently right now. (The Democrats could decide to join the Republicans and pass it anyway, but so far this has not happened.)

The current President keeps wanting to pass bills which simply don't pass.

Likewise, the Senate realistically needs 60% votes to pass controversial legislation, and that just isn't happening either.

You're right that the U.S. congress used to vote far more upon regional lines or other non-party interests than it does now. There is something studied in political science (I can't remember its name) that predicts that well-funded, important elections will eventually converge on being 50/50, with the winner essentially being statistical noise.

by trollbridge

4/20/2025 at 1:12:54 PM

TIL "(convergence to) electoral mean". But also seems to fall apart with more complex issues https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3872446/

by viraptor

4/20/2025 at 2:07:16 PM

You're right that defections haven't totally gone away, but I think the current Congress actually emphasizes how rare they are now. The only reason things aren't passing is because the house is so close that a tiny percentage of Republicans defecting can sink a bill. But the vast majority of Republicans follow the party line and basically none of the Democrats are willing to cross over either. In a system with realistic local representation you'd expect a lot more crossover in both directions.

by rainsford

4/20/2025 at 3:00:43 PM

This was the norm for most of the 20th century. Major legislation passed with votes from both parties - often over ⅔ and immune to a Presidential veto.

My reaction to this is to focus more on things locally.

by trollbridge

4/20/2025 at 4:35:40 PM

I'm sure part of the issue is the move towards giant omnibus bills rather than bills addressing individual issues. They tend to emphasize the ideological differences between the parties.

by amanaplanacanal

4/20/2025 at 7:03:18 AM

That's up to the voters, ultimately. You can choose to vote for independent MPs, right? Or MPs who promise not to always tow the party line? I suppose if people choose to vote based on parties, of course you get party focused politics.

by jakobnissen

4/20/2025 at 9:36:45 AM

Traditionally what a 'independent MP' would do is create a new party. Usually it requires a certain number of signatures, not from people supporting them, just supporting their right to become a party. Then they need to have candidates for the ridings they want to be in.

One example is the Norwegian party 'Patient Focus' which

  was formed in April 2021, as a support movement for an expansion of the hospital in the town of Alta in Alta Municipality in Finnmark county, Norway. In the 2021 parliamentary election, it won one of Finnmark's five seats in the Storting (Parlament).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Focus_(Norway)

by Epa095

4/20/2025 at 7:28:49 AM

No you can’t really vote for an independent MP in the Swedish voting system. They would have to register a party, it’s very hard to win a seat, and there is no guarantee that they will not win two or more seats – thus perpetuating the collectivism.

by bjornsing

4/20/2025 at 7:58:03 AM

At least you don't have the spoiler problem like 3rd parties in the US have though, right?

Why is it hard for a new party to win a seat? In the US, for a 3rd party to win, something like 50% of the relevant electorate has to coordinate their vote to switch to the 3rd party. It sounds like in Scandinavia, the fraction of the electorate which needs to coordinate is just 1 / num_seats, which is way smaller.

If I were a Swede, I would be tempted to troll everyone by setting up an "independents party". The seats for that party are allocated based on a separate vote, open to the public. Candidates of the "independents party" have absolutely no obligation to vote together, and act as free agents once they get elected. Sort of like a democracy-within-a-democracy.

by 0xDEAFBEAD

4/20/2025 at 1:18:21 PM

You're describing direct democracy parties and they exist in other places in non-trolly way. For example the Australian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Direct_Democracy

by viraptor

4/20/2025 at 9:05:24 AM

It might be hard to convince people to vote for a party made up of random people who might have very contradictory views.

by wqaatwt

4/20/2025 at 2:22:51 PM

> Why is it hard for a new party to win a seat?

There are thresholds to avoid too many small parties / independents getting elected. You need to win 4% of the vote nationally or 12% regionally to get a single seat, and if you do then you typically get more than one. Congrats, you’re now a collectivist too.

> If I were a Swede…

I’ve considered it. :)

by bjornsing

4/20/2025 at 8:05:43 AM

> You can choose to vote for independent MPs, right?

Not if they can’t afford to run a campaign.

by lurk2

4/20/2025 at 7:36:04 AM

toe the line, as in keep your toes behind the line at the start of the race, not tow the line.

by barry-cotter

4/20/2025 at 3:04:55 PM

At least in the parliamentary system, you are voting for an abstract notion of how things should be run, a worldview, or a list of policies.

In the American system, the cult of personality rules above all. The vast majority of Americans disagree with what Donald Trump is implementing right now. That’s clear when you ask people in the abstract. But we don’t choose that way. Personality and celebrity rules the day here.

by qgin

4/21/2025 at 3:48:58 AM

Parliamentary systems with proportional party list voting systems are far from immune the cult of personality. See: Hitler.

There's a reason why so many governments with such systems one would consider "free" still have to outright ban parties from elections.

by Aloisius

4/19/2025 at 9:50:57 PM

It's interesting that it's possible to achieve proportional representation with respect to geographic distribution and party votes simultaneously. (Though, as the article notes, Iceland falls short of this ideal.)

This makes me wonder: why stop at two? Some places have explicit quotas for different ethnic or religious groups as a compromise to avoid civil war. Could they use a tripoportional system?

And why not add in even more demographic variables? Age, gender, income, level of education, ... I suppose at some point it stops being a secret election because the number of voters sharing all attributes becomes too small, or the parliament would get unwieldily large trying to represent every hyperspecific constituency.

by yorwba

4/20/2025 at 12:17:53 AM

It is possible! But with more than two dimensions, you have to allow deviations from perfect proportionality to guarantee a solution exists. The more dimensions, the worse it gets, until eventually proportionality breaks down entirely. [1] defines a method to do this and simulates the results on an election where district and party seats are distributed proportionally and divvied up by gender proportionally. The result is a better national proportionality at the expense of worse local proportionality.

[1]: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2109305119

by themadryaner

4/20/2025 at 2:31:19 PM

> Some places have explicit quotas for different ethnic or religious groups as a compromise to avoid civil war

That leads to very dysfunctional outcomes due to obvious reasons. When you vote for the same party/candidate just because they belong to the same religion/ethnicity (and such seats are very easy to monopolize) they a freehand to due to whatever they want. So what if they are exceptionally corrupt or incompetent? It’s not like your are going to vote for other side..

by wqaatwt

4/20/2025 at 12:37:29 PM

That's a fascinating suggestion!

> I suppose at some point it stops being a secret election because the number of voters sharing all attributes becomes too small, or the parliament would get unwieldily large trying to represent every hyperspecific constituency.

I'm not sure about that. Maybe I'm being too optimistic, but I'd like to think such a procedure could be run with a legislature of any fixed size, at the cost of the proportionality being increasingly inexact for smaller demographics. Furthermore, I suspect the representatives from any demographic would be elected partly with votes from other demographics. Anyway, the number of voters would presumably be thousands of times the number of representatives - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cube_root_law - so any voting demographic with dedicated representation would at least be thousands of voters.

by lambertsimnel

4/19/2025 at 9:52:24 PM

> It's interesting that it's possible to achieve proportional representation with respect to geographic distribution and party votes simultaneously.

That would be interesting, but it's not even possible to achieve one of those things by itself.

by thaumasiotes

4/20/2025 at 8:44:05 AM

The main problem with this system: even most university educated people cannot thoroughly understand it. [0] That potentially undermines trust in the system.

[0] https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2014/2014008.pdf

by markvdb

4/20/2025 at 10:01:13 AM

Maybe democracy just has to be a bit complicated to work?

As a bit on an anecdote, I know two Canadians, and I asked them if they were voting in the upcoming election. They both answered 'Maybe, but there is really no point, since liberals/conservatives always wins my riding anyway', and that made me pretty sad. I wonder how many people live in Democracies where their vote just don't matter at all?

The best would be a simple, proportional and geographically representative system. But if we can't have all, I think dropping simple is better.

by Epa095

4/20/2025 at 12:15:47 PM

Parties tend to like safe seats. (This is one thing that dominant parties on both sides of the aisle can agree on.) Unfortunately, the very concept of a "safe seat" means one individual's vote doesn't matter.

by trollbridge

4/20/2025 at 12:28:24 PM

There's a distinction between the complexity of choosing how to vote, completing a ballot paper and administering an election. I don't expect any one can be minimised without raising another.

The tradeoff might be made easier by expecting less of any single elected body/office. If we had a national legislating chamber, elected by at-large proportional representation from a single constituency, and we turned instead to local government for geographic representation, and the second legislative chamber were elected by local government to exert geographic influence over legislation, then maybe voters could make fewer, easier, and more impactful choices. I don't know of any country that works like this, but Germany is close.

by lambertsimnel

4/19/2025 at 10:43:40 PM

The main "feature" of the Icelandic voting system is to dilute the relationship between a voter and their representative representing their interests in their district.

Instead their vote goes to someone in the same political party in another district.

So the entire system is biased away from local representation and towards party policy decided on a national basis.

That policy is in turn heavily weighed towards the interests of geographic areas over "one person one vote". Icelandic law only starts considering that a problem once your vote counts 2x as much as mine, just because we live an imaginary line apart.

by avar

4/20/2025 at 6:29:57 AM

There's an intermediate solution - MMP (used in various guises in AoNZ, Germany, Mexico, Scotland, Bolivia, .....) where we have a fixed number of regional seats much like FPP (house seats in the US) and some nationwide extra seats - people get 2 votes one for their local seat and one nationally for a party, after local seat votes are counted extra seats are allocated from parties' lists.

Essentially it's the same as Iceland but party votes are done nationally, this avoids some of the weird stuff mentioned in the article that allows some parties to have more votes but fewer seats - here in AoNZ we brought in MMP after a couple of elections under FPP where one party got more votes and the other more seats. It's not perfect, but better than what we had before.

by Taniwha

4/20/2025 at 4:54:00 PM

    > There's an intermediate
    > solution

The "intermediate" solution is one Iceland already had in its past.

The number of representatives is fixed at 63. They'd be around 200 if the representatives per capita were the same as in 1903, 140 if it was the same as 1960, and 105 if they were the same as 1984, when the number was fixed at 63.

This "hack" of "moving your vote around" only came about because it became more obviously unfair over time that your representative not making the cut-off left you without representation.

The other "obvious" solution of moving to a national vote isn't possible due to the entrenched interests that benefit from the current disenfranchisement being the ones would need to vote for such a system.

by avar

4/20/2025 at 3:41:26 AM

On the other hand, the whole nation is fewer than 400,000 people on a very compact land mass, so the divergent interests out of district are not all that large.

by joeblubaugh

4/20/2025 at 12:44:08 AM

> So the entire system is biased away from local representation and towards party policy decided on a national basis.

> That policy is in turn heavily weighed towards the interests of geographic areas

Forgive me if I'm missing something, but these sound like contradictory claims to me?

As an American, I feel I'd prefer this system. The number of members of each party that make it to Congress is the main determinant of what policy gets passed. But I can only influence that indirectly, by choosing which party represents my local district. If I'm in a solid minority in the district I live in, I basically have 0 influence on the result of the election. Overall, those invisible lines let politicians crack and pack constituencies so a party with a minority of the votes still gets a majority of the seats.

In this system, the number of representatives of each party would be determined by the national popular vote, meaning I can more directly vote for which party gets the majority. Your vote does two things: it casts a vote for your party against the other parties in gaining them seats, and it casts a vote for your favorite party candidate over other candidates in the party (including those in other districts) to determine which candidates of the party earn the seats the party is given. It reduces the effect of the invisible line in weakening my vote. I'm okay with this meaning that sometimes my vote helps elect someone in a different district, since this would mean my district doesn't have enough members of my party to justify a representative of our own and because a lot of times the lines are arbitrary anyway. It would require bigger districts with multiple winners, and sometimes that the person with the 6th or 7th most votes in the district gets the 4th or 5th seat instead. This, in my mind, is the "gerrymandering correction:" it ensures those parties who were disadvantaged by the line drawing get their fair share of party members.

As for one vote counting twice as much as another, my understanding (and please correct me if I am wrong) is that the main cause of that is differences in turnout between the different districts and rounding representatives to the nearest whole number. Nothing can be done about the later (big problem in the US too -- people per district varies by hundreds of thousands of people, not to mention the disparity in the Senate). For the former, you could proportion representatives between districts based on turnout instead, but this is a bad idea since it makes it much harder to campaign in a district if you don't know how many seats are up for grabs.

by themadryaner

4/20/2025 at 4:35:37 PM

    As an American, I feel I'd
    prefer this system.

You'd like to live in Alaska and vote for say a Democrat, only to have some Democratic representative from say Florida be the one "you voted in" to the House of Representatives?

A representative with absolutely zero self-interest in representing you, as it's highly unlikely you'll be able to "vote for" them the next time around? Your representation being an odd mathematical quirk?

Because that's essentially what the Icelandic system is like. The US has the same lopsided population-to-representative ratio to some degree [1].

    [...]and please correct me if
    I am wrong)

No, it has nothing to do with turnout in Iceland.

You can think of it as an odd way to enact something like the US Senate without a bicameral legislature.

1. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/05/31/u-s-popul...

by avar

4/20/2025 at 8:32:40 PM

  You'd like to live in Alaska and vote for say a Democrat, only to have some Democratic representative from say Florida be the one "you voted in" to the House of Representatives?

I don't see how it makes sense to say that the candidate in Florida is 'the one' you voted it. You casted your vote in Alaska for the party. Your vote mattered there, and either the party got candidates in or not.

Then after that mini-election your vote gets to play a second role on the national level, where IF the party got a bad ratio between the number of representatives they got in, and their total vote-%, they can get another candidate. But that candidate is not 'the one you voted in'. You (possibly) voted in candidates in Alaska already, this is your votes' second chance, to get someone in from the party somewhere else (where the party had a particularly bad ratio between representatives and vote-%).

by Epa095

4/21/2025 at 10:20:08 PM

This should be easier to understand if you suppose that none of your 50 states shares any of its political parties in the House of Representatives.

The Minnesota FLP[1] got members into the house of representatives in numerous elections.

If you'd voted for it in Minnesota, who do you suppose your vote should transfer to in Alaska or Florida?

Of course that's a borderline nonsensical example in the case of both the modern day US and Iceland, as in both cases The Party (whichever one it is) is something you can vote for in any state or district.

But it's important to understand that the cart came before the horse. That purely local parties are unelectable is partly because the incumbents have shaped the system like this, to their own benefit.

In any case. The Icelandic voting system asks you to intern two seemingly mutually incompatible ideas:

- That local politics are so unimportant, that you may as well not care who your local representative is, because you may be getting some party critter from the other side of the country, and the difference shouldn't matter to you.

- That you shouldn't worry too much about some people having up to 2x the voting power you have, based on which district they vote in. That outsized influence being something that transfers indirectly to what constitutes their national party policy.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Farmer%E2%80%93Labor...

by avar

4/22/2025 at 5:05:48 PM

  > If you'd voted for it in Minnesota, who do you suppose your vote should transfer to in Alaska or Florida?

Did it get more than the national cuttof level for adjustment seats (5% in Iceland, 4% in Norway)? Lets assume it did! Then first we calculate the results from all the local elections. Then we look at the total vote-% vs mandates disparancy for all parties across the whole country, and we can calculate how many adjustment seats each party should get nation-wide (we give one seat to the party with the worst disparency, then recalculate until all adjustment seats are used up).

Let's assume now that the Minnesota FLP won one or more adjustment seats this way, which is completely possible in your scenario. Then we figure out which riding the Minnesota FLP should get another candidate from. For this we look at all ridings where they have a candidate, and chose the riding where the disparancy between vote-% and mandates are the worst. In your example, where the party is only registered in a single riding, that will be the riding they get another candidate in from.

You CAN have a system where each riding can get in at most one adjustment seat, and then you can come in the ackward situation where there are no ridings available for a party which should get a adjustment seat if they do not have listings in every riding. But that is not an essential part of the system, you can allow to get multiple adjustment seats in from a single riding.

  > Of course that's a borderline nonsensical example in the case of both the modern day US and Iceland,

Yeah I agree, but its a fun though experiment. The interesting part is really when you have a party in some, but not all the ridings. Then you absolutely get that a lot of votes for the party in riding A helps the party get in another candidate in riding B. But notice that this is votes that in a system without adjustment seats are just lost. So it is not that "your vote escapes" and help some asshole somewhere else, its that your otherwise dead vote gets another chance.

  > as in both cases The Party (whichever one it is) is something you can vote for in any state or district.

Surpisingly(?) this is not true. The list "Ábyrgrar framtíðar" is only represented in Reykjavíkurkjördæmi norður. And this is not a freak occurent, its quite common in the Scandinavian countries. In the Norwegian parlament there is today a single representative from the list "Patient Focus", which was formed in April 2021, as a support movement for an expansion of the hospital in the town of Alta in Finnmark.

  > In any case. The Icelandic voting system asks you to intern two seemingly mutually incompatible ideas: 
  - That local politics are so unimportant, that you may as well not care who your local representative is, because you may be getting some party critter from the other side of the country, and the difference shouldn't matter to you.

This is really not the take-home. Remember that most of the seats are constituency seats, not adjustment seats. From the article it seams like the ratio is roughly 6-to-1 in Iceland (in Norway its 150-to-19, so 7.8-to-1). So most of the parlament will be people voted in with votes soley from their own constituency.

The question is, what to do with the "leftover" votes which were just barely not enough to get a candidate in? The American system is to discard them, they get nothing, they mean nothing. In the Icelandic system they get to participate in the election of the roughly 1/6th of the parlament which is adjustment candidates.

  > - That you shouldn't worry too much about some people having up to 2x the voting power you have, based on which district they vote in. That outsized influence being something that transfers indirectly to what constitutes their national party policy.

So yeah, don't copy this part:-p Of course, this is not in any way a requirement for the adjustment-seat procedure. It is also not unique to the Icelandic system, and the disparancy is even worse in the US, where a single elector could represent between 200,000 and 700,000 people[1].

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_Colleg...

by Epa095

4/23/2025 at 8:46:11 PM

    > The list "Ábyrgrar framtíðar"
    > is only represented in
    > Reykjavíkurkjördæmi norður.

A party that got 144 votes nationwide and ran in one election.

But yes you're strictly correct. It's not illegal to only run for election in a subset of districts...

    > And this is not a freak occurent

It really is in Iceland, I don't know about Norway.

Even new upstart parties run for elections in every district, because to do otherwise is leaving "money on the table", as in were.

The only exceptions are one-off parties with practically no following.

    > This is really not the
    > take-home. Remember that
    > most of the seats are
    > constituency seats, not
    > adjustment seats.

I'm of the opinion that this aspect of the system has a more widespread overall impact than suggested by a mathematical review of who's directly impacted in each election.

It heavily biases the system away from one-district parties, and those parties in turn further encouraged to become monoliths where each representative is merely an interchangeable cog in the party machine, not someone voting with their own conscience.

On the other hand it's not like that wasn't happening before.

Another thing you haven't considered is that whenever you vote for a party your vote can be helping to elect someone nationwide, but you're only allowed to strike out the names of people listed in your local district.

So if you really dislike someone who's running for the party in another district, you might not vote for the party at all, least you help them.

   > So most of the parlament
   > will be people voted in
   > with votes soley from their
   > own constituency.

Those people might be "tainted" too, even if you look at this from a purely mathematical point of view.

Your seat in parliament may not be an "adjustment seat", but you may have pushed out a more popular candidate in your own district.

There's cases like that every election, e.g. the party with 20% in a district getting 3 members, and the one with 25% getting 2 members or whatever, because the difference of 5% in that district is accumulated to elect 4 members overall.

by avar

4/20/2025 at 2:03:20 AM

I wanted more details on how this works. For those interested, I found an English pdf describing the full system [1]. The interesting part is Article 110, which discusses how the adjustment seats are allocated. Here is my best summary:

1. Using D'Hondt [2] on every party's national vote share, determine which party should be given the next seat. 2. For every constituency which has adjustment seats available, calculate the D'Hondt quotient of the first candidate in that party who has not already been elected using the constituency vote share. So if a party received V votes in a constituency and two party members were already elected from this constituency, their quotient would be V/3. 3. Elect the candidate with the highest quotient to fill an adjustment seat for their constituency. 4. Repeat until all adjustment seats have been given away.

There's arguably a step 0 here, which is determining how many constituency and adjustment seats every constituency gets, and this is done before the election is held. This is described in Article 10. It's pretty bad. First, the adjustment seats are hard-coded. Second, unlike the US where we reapportion after every census, Iceland appears to only reapportion the constituency seats when the constitution demands they do it. This happens when there are twice as many voters per seat in one constituency compared to another. Furthermore, they only adjust as few seats as possible to get back under this limit rather than actually recalculate a fair apportionment. I'm not sure what the logic of this was, maybe to minimize how often the number of seats in each place is changing? Either way, in the 2021 election this resulted in one constituency with 199% as many voters per seat as another and no changes were made [3].

[1]: https://www.stjornarradid.is/library/03-Verkefni/Kosningar/K...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Hondt_method

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Icelandic_parliamentary_e...

by themadryaner

4/19/2025 at 9:07:10 PM

Huh, TIL the Constitution doesn’t require Congressional districts. A state could technically switch to a model like this for assigning representatives at large.

by JumpCrisscross

4/19/2025 at 9:59:48 PM

> Huh, TIL the Constitution doesn’t require Congressional districts.

True, but...

> A state could technically switch to a model like this for assigning representatives at large.

No, it can't because Congress itself is given the overriding power in the Constitution to regulate the "time, place, and manner" of elections to the House, and has exercised it to prohibit at-large districts (many times, with lax enforcement, but the most recent mandate, adopted in 1967, has not had the compliance problems the earlier ones often did.) The 1967 mandate was adopted under the dual specter of a some states failing to resolve districting controversies and potentially facing judicially-imposed at-large districts and several states having used at-large districts for non-federal elections to effectively disenfranchise Black voters and concerns that the same might be done to Congressional delegations as a way of blunting the impacts of new rules like the Voting Rights Act.

Additional detail at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43739929

by dragonwriter

4/19/2025 at 10:27:42 PM

Appreciated as always!

by JumpCrisscross

4/19/2025 at 9:26:10 PM

The two main parties in the US are way too happy with the status for any change to happen. If there is one thing they hate more than each other it's another party.

by rqtwteye

4/19/2025 at 9:42:06 PM

I don't think that is actually true. It is in part redistricting that lead to the ascendancy of extremism, by putting all of the strategic emphasis on the primaries in uncontested constituencies.

by whatshisface

4/19/2025 at 9:48:32 PM

"Redistricting" isn't a new recent thing, it is a process done by state legislatures to state and federal legislative district every decade that has been used for both personal and partisan advantage since the founding; the word "gerrymander" was coined in criticism of a particular instance in 1812.

by dragonwriter

4/19/2025 at 11:10:17 PM

I think there is a primary-related problem going on right now that could change historically held positions on the value to financial backers interests of uncontested general elections.

by whatshisface

4/19/2025 at 10:13:50 PM

1. The original 1787 apportionment would result in a House of Representatives of ~30k members[1].

2. That's obviously unwieldy, and so we haven't had a bump in seats since ... 1910.

3. 'Factions' were viewed dimly by the Founders. I would argue in favor of two immediate changes:

- Term limits for everything, including shorter max civil service careers. Capitol Hill, like any compost heap, benefits from regular turning.

- A "bidder bunch" rule, whereby if Congress can't manage its key function--that of producing a budget--then none of these goofs (even the ones I admire) get to run for their seat when next up. There are copious talented alternative people to put on ballots. Do your job or face corporate punishment, say I.

[1] https://thirty-thousand.org/

by smitty1e

4/19/2025 at 10:29:22 PM

> A "bidder bunch" rule, whereby if Congress can't manage its key function--that of producing a budget--then none of these goofs (even the ones I admire) get to run for their seat when next up

This creates an obvious and huge perverse incentive to throw a wrench into the works any time you want a do-over.

by JumpCrisscross

4/20/2025 at 5:28:40 AM

Not having a real budget is just a parliamentary procedure tactic, creating pressure opportunities when various continuing resolutions come up. If they have to make a budget they’ll make one, that doesn’t mean they’ll actually stop being partisan fools and put together a good one. It'll still be subject to all the usual nonsense.

by morpheuskafka

4/20/2025 at 4:49:55 PM

Yep. The US has had several years without a budget, and it meant exactly nothing.

Sort of like the debt limit, it leads to a lot of political maneuvering but doesn't actually limit anything.

by amanaplanacanal

4/21/2025 at 2:16:22 AM

> meant exactly nothing.

"Excuse me?" said the burgeoning national debt.

by smitty1e

4/19/2025 at 11:02:01 PM

And copious peer pressure not to be That Guy.

by smitty1e

4/19/2025 at 11:38:02 PM

> copious peer pressure not to be That Guy

How? You don’t think you could find Democrats, today, who wouldn’t roll the dice on a new Congress? The proposal essentially gives a narrow minority the ability to call no confidence.

by JumpCrisscross

4/20/2025 at 12:06:40 AM

...and self-immolate. You don't work that hard to get elected and then piss it away.

by smitty1e

4/20/2025 at 6:17:19 PM

> You don't work that hard to get elected and then piss it away

If it gives your party a chance at retaking power? It would be an obvious trade for an administration to do.

by JumpCrisscross

4/20/2025 at 7:11:01 PM

So, you're saying that a large number (say, 100) of minority members of the House would scuttle their current seats in order to blow away the majority party's seats?

I remind you that, under the current regime, Sen. Schumer (D-BY) played along with the GOP Continuing Resolution* not because he fancied the CR, but to avoid giving the Treasury the power of the purse that would come with a shutdown.

*And took a napalm shower for it in social media.

by smitty1e

4/20/2025 at 4:34:44 AM

I find it hard to believe the House of Reps could be any more unwieldy than it already is though. More seats would make it far harder to buy and corrupt legislation votes and make it easier for independents and 3rd parties to gain seats.

by AngryData

4/20/2025 at 2:38:31 PM

Just replacing FPTP or any other proportional non-party list system would accomplish that.

by wqaatwt

4/20/2025 at 5:03:58 PM

You can't physically seat them in the current venue, for starters.

Also, for all of the defects of First Past the Post, it's well-understood and supports entry-level participation.

The theoretical superiority of Ranked Choice Voting is overshadowed by the hidden assertion that everyone casting a ballot in RCV has done the homework.

Having served as an election officer for the last 12yrs, the KISS superiority of FPTP is the least-worst alternatives. I wouldn't want RCV even at the county level.

by smitty1e

4/20/2025 at 7:16:45 PM

> can't physically

Why? There is no need to increase their number.

> overshadowed by the hidden assertion

Even then it’s still superior. Even if everyone ignores the individual candidates and votes for a party in e.g. a 5 member constituency where the vote is split ~70:30 the minority party would likely get at least one seat when now votes are effectively thrown into the thrash bin.

> Having served as an election officer for the last 12yrs

The implication being that it would make the job too hard for you?

FPTP is a horrible system any way you look at it. It results in almost 50% of the votes being outright discarded and permanently entrenches a 2 party system.

by wqaatwt

4/21/2025 at 2:15:12 AM

> It results in almost 50% of the votes being outright discarded and permanently entrenches a 2 party system.

I don't see how either of these assertions follow.

The size of the mandate is important, and the connection between a 2 party "system" and FPTP is something that you'd need to elaborate upon, because there is nothing about the ballot as such stipulating the number of parties. I. Fact, other parties are frequently on the ballot, so the dominance of 2 parties is not obviously connected to FPTP as such.

by smitty1e

4/21/2025 at 10:00:46 AM

FPTP has a well documented effect of producing a 2 party system (along with numerous other issues): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting#Two...

RCV works and is simple to understand.

by aragilar

4/24/2025 at 12:35:29 AM

It's so obviously superior that it's facing substantial rejection: https://responsivegov.org/statement-voters-reject-ranked-cho...

by smitty1e

4/20/2025 at 2:37:05 PM

> were viewed dimly by the Founders

Hypothetically that was true. Until those founders started engaging in actual politics and became rabidly partisan.

There was a brief period when the Federalists collapsed and US effectively became a single party state with the Democratic-Republicans controlling everything but that was decades after the constitution was signed.

by wqaatwt

4/24/2025 at 1:50:12 AM

Inviting the question of whether parliamentary systems offer substantial improvement.

For a glance at Europe, I'm firmly in the skeptical camp.

by smitty1e

4/20/2025 at 2:31:28 AM

30k electors sounds great to me. One for ever ~12k people. It could be unpaid citizen body.

by s1artibartfast

4/20/2025 at 3:34:21 AM

Would likely prove unwieldy.

They don't call for a vote without a known outcome; politics hates surprises.

by smitty1e

4/20/2025 at 4:15:32 PM

sounds better and better

by s1artibartfast

4/20/2025 at 7:13:13 PM

The whole point of a Federal government is to make the year-on-year business of government more predictable.

The question here is how to add enough feedback to keep the corruption minimal.

We've known anecdotally for a long time that our government has gone to seed; DOGE has both broadcast the problem and generated will to reform.

by smitty1e

4/20/2025 at 9:06:24 PM

with 30k electors in the house, I expect it would be much more predictable.

It seems plausible to me that it would decrease corruption. It is a lot easier for power brokers and interests to lobby a 435 member house, than 30K member house. Inversely, it is a lot easier for a citizen to lobby their representative when they are 1/12,000 instead of 1/800k.

by s1artibartfast

4/24/2025 at 12:41:10 AM

I submit that Dunbar's Number plays a role. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number

30k members--that's a couple of Army Divisions--is more likely to form rigid authoritarian groupings simple to get in and out of the building in a reasonable amount of time.

People don't scale. The overhead of coordinating among so many people would be stifling.

No, the correct approach in my view is to delegate as much as possible back to the States.

by smitty1e

4/19/2025 at 10:45:41 PM

We need another one whose motto is "Country Over Party," and is backed by locked down solid ethics that always follows right vs. wrong with right (not politically right or left) guiding everything this entity stands for and is guided by. Present day it's neither party standing for right vs. wrong it's the b.s. Right (politically) vs. Left(politically) or Left vs. Right! Gross, there's neither party today cares about right vs. wrong or integrity just divide the country further!!!

by paul7986

4/19/2025 at 10:48:27 PM

> locked down solid ethics that always follows right vs. wrong with right (not politically right or left) guiding everything this entity stands for and is guided by

As in?

People can legitimately disagree about what is right and wrong, or what even falls on a moral continuum. Nailing down a moment’s broad truth is among the most revered roles in any society.

by JumpCrisscross

4/19/2025 at 10:52:16 PM

Can they ... poll a group of people (right and lefties) and ask...

If vandalizing a Telsa and vandalizing the US Capitol are both wrong and my focus is only the act of vandalism in asking this question. Overall, both acts are clear cut wrong!

Those who refuse to say both are wrong their brains are driven now by political emotional mind control babble where they've thrown out knowing and standing for right over wrong.

by paul7986

4/20/2025 at 2:27:47 AM

What are your feelings on vandalizing shipments of tea?

by lostdog

4/20/2025 at 3:19:22 AM

Not driven by feelings or political emotional babble as it's hard to believe anything when it comes to politics. Im all about clear cut right from wrong and clear cut facts, as well that was a wrong act! It was something that led to the revolutionary war, which is a clear cut fact!

I guess you showed that your mind is driven/controlled by political emotional babble & narratives made up by the right (tho maybe your left or an independent who leans right) & it's media (right or left .. all make up narratives) you consume. But I don't want to jump to conclusions.

by paul7986

4/20/2025 at 6:19:09 PM

> you showed that your mind is driven/controlled by political emotional babble & narratives made up by the right

I rest my case that models that cast the world in black and white are the wrongest of the bunch, as they’re essentially a hard default for legalism and the status quo.

by JumpCrisscross

4/20/2025 at 8:16:43 AM

[dead]

by computerthings

4/20/2025 at 2:41:10 PM

They are not the same though. Equating both acts is disingenuous and at the very least distasteful. One is destruction of private property other is an attempt to overthrow the government and possibly murder politicians the mob does not agree with.

The closest equivalent would the a mob breaking into Tesla’s HQ while shouting stuff about hanging Musk.

by wqaatwt

4/20/2025 at 7:29:25 AM

I can easily imagine a myriad of situations where vandalizing a car is ethically the right choice, e.g. if it is made by someone who is the sieg-heiling number one supporter of an president struggling to overthrow democracy.

And I studied ethics. Meanwhile you have supporters of Trump vandalizing the capital because they couldn't accept the result of a democratic election with the goal to force their minority opinion onto the majority.

Those who don't equate the two simply realized that context matters in ethics. Example: Stealing is wrong. Not stealing when a child is starving and no one can help is more wrong. However stealing from someone whose child is starving is more wrong than stealing from a faceless multinational corporation that exploits millions. This is btw. something you can also observe in real life ethical decisions. That doesn't mean the excuse people find for themselves is always factually correct, but in US politics one side sees actively making shit up as a strength now, so that should tell us something about how much care is given for reality.

You likely tricked yourself into equating the two (vandalizing a symbol of a unelected fascist billionair VS a mob trying to force the senate to ignore the will of millions) by drawing a mental bubble around the word "vandalized" and assuming two acts are the same because their description may contain the same word. This is quite frankly an astonishingly simplistic stance to take. Words are things used to describe reality, yes, but reducing real acts down to one word, removing all the context and then equating words is not how ethics work.

Maybe you remember the trolly problem craze from a while ago. The original trolly problem premise is that murder is wrong and you have a lever where you can save 5 lives by switching the lever to a track with only one person stuck. The variations on the trolly problem are essentially a mental experiment to explore the ethical context of a decision. Our ethics prof e.g. liked to propose a variation where you have to push one person off a bridge in order to stop the trolly, suddenly everybody would deem it wrong. Turns out whether it is a lever or you have to touch a person makes a huge difference in how close to murder it feels.

by atoav

4/20/2025 at 10:32:46 AM

I'm not sure you've really demonstrated the ethics of vandalizing the car. In this trolley problem there's a billionaire that you're upset about riding in the trolley and the lever you suggest pulling just destroys some random dude's car without affecting the billionaire. Elon Musk doesn't own the Tesla cars you see driving down the street, they're owned by people who wanted a car that doesn't create smog.

Consider the point the parent of this side conversation was trying to make: What if there was a party with the guiding principal of keeping the country together and pursuing policy based on sound principals rather than "what will own the libs" or "stop the fascists"? The things you complain about are happening because of divisive politics. Trump is powerful because he listened to people who were being ignored or attacked by the political hegemony, and it turned out that was a small majority of the country. It's a shame that someone with admirable personality traits didn't think of it first.

How would you reform the political and voting system to improve the total happiness in the united states?

Another ethical question for you: that mob believed the election was rigged and that the senate was ignoring the will of the nation. Based on that belief, were they acting ethically? Keep in mind that this is bigger than the trolley problem. Sort of an iterated trolley problem, if you will.

by dornan

4/20/2025 at 2:47:41 PM

Not that it justifies burning random cars but it’s not entirely irrational. If some people stop buying Tesla just because they are afraid that someone would vandalize it etc. that does achieve something..

by wqaatwt

4/20/2025 at 9:31:42 PM

[dead]

by dornan

4/20/2025 at 2:57:35 PM

Im being downvoted by those who love the division and do not want unity! They've all lost sight of being able to stand for clear, cut right and wrong as if i told any them a story saying my friend's car got vandalized then they went into their office building where they work and that was vandalized too they'd definitely agree that is wrong. Yet add politics into the mix and they lose their minds/ability to properly judge/stand for right and wrong cause they allow their minds to be bought and sold to poltical emotional babble/narratives in which they have zero way of verifying if any are true!

I think AI should be the next party where people and all their b.s. cant affect it's rock solid moral and ethical code. It follows clear cut right over wrong, it is all about unity, peace/love for all human beings of all different types of backgrounds and it uses massive amounts of data to adjust how its ethics changes over time. So, it's M.O. (one i described) remains updated to per how society changes. Of course that could lead to an even worse system but just thinking out of the box as i do and getting downvoted for such thinking as usual lol

As well AI could be used to monitor all politicians day and night routine to ensure veracity in everything they do/push for and ensure those politicians are following the AIs ethical code of law and they're serving the people not the politician or any of the politicians cronies or interest groups that do not serve the people as a whole!

by paul7986

4/19/2025 at 9:33:01 PM

> two main parties in the US are way too happy with the status for any change to happen

California could make this change by referendum.

by JumpCrisscross

4/19/2025 at 10:17:57 PM

> California could make this change by referendum.

No, it could not, because Article I, Section 3 (emphasis added): "The times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing Senators." (the last part of that about choosing Senators has its effect eliminated by the 17th Amendment, but that isn't important here.)

And Congress has exercised its authority in U.S. Code Title 2, Section 2c (emphasis added): "In each State entitled in the Ninety-first Congress or in any subsequent Congress thereafter to more than one Representative under an apportionment made pursuant to the provisions of section 2a(a) of this title, there shall be established by law a number of districts equal to the number of Representatives to which such State is so entitled, and Representatives shall be elected only from districts so established, no district to elect more than one Representative (except that a State which is entitled to more than one Representative and which has in all previous elections elected its Representatives at Large may elect its Representatives at Large to the Ninety-first Congress)."

by dragonwriter

4/19/2025 at 9:50:55 PM

Many states could, but why would they if other states retain a system that disproportionally skews sits towards one party?

by int_19h

4/19/2025 at 9:55:29 PM

> why would they if other states retain a system that disproportionally skews sits towards one party?

Because your constituents are better represented. California strikes me as a potent place to do this because I could see a constitutional amendment passing at the ballot box.

by JumpCrisscross

4/20/2025 at 6:53:14 AM

But they aren't better represented unless everyone else does the same.

Suppose California were to do it, resulting in a proportional allocation of seats in the House for its delegation. If this causes the House to swing from Democratic majority to Republican majority, the net effect is the opposite of what most Californians wanted.

Don't get me wrong, I get the point that it is a more fair and equitable way of doing things, and in principle, I agree. But if you play fair at a table where everybody else cheats, you lose. My state (WA) also has referendums, and if such a proposal would come up, I would absolutely vote against it - unless it was some kind of interstate compact where another similarly-sized red state were to implement the same reform at the same time.

by int_19h

4/20/2025 at 2:38:31 PM

I’ve had this exact thought: that Texas and California should have some sort of compact to do it at the same time. That would be a boon for Texas Democrats (of whom there are many) and California Republicans (ditto).

by Taikonerd

4/19/2025 at 9:41:20 PM

Yes but Ds and Rs will come out in force to rally their base against it. That's what happened in Colorado this past election.

by googlryas

4/20/2025 at 9:06:32 AM

Or just use a sane system like STV with multi member districts.

by wqaatwt

4/20/2025 at 10:07:37 AM

You might need some kind of MMP part if you want it to be truly proportional. If the voters can only rank about ten candidates before it gets unwieldy, that would give an effective 9% absolute threshold. A party that gains 8% support everywhere would get no candidates elected.

Here's a paper by Markus Schulze proposing such a method: https://aso.icann.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/schulze4.pd... He uses some very large districts, but it should work for smaller districts too.

by 986aignan

4/20/2025 at 10:26:58 AM

Yes, STV is non perfect but IMHO it’s worth it to not have party lists.

Also one of the main criticism of people opposed to proportional system is the lack of direct representation. STV solves that and even is superior to FPTP in that way because you are more likely to find a MP who is more sympathetic towards your cause/views if there are e.g. 3-5 members in your district.

Of course I’m not talking about the system proposed in the paper your linked, but rather about how MMP works in Germany. You get both part list and FPTP style party appointed candidates.

by wqaatwt

4/19/2025 at 9:28:26 PM

There was a time when senators were not elected by popular vote. The constitution leaves a lot of this up to the states and just by convention they mostly do the same thing.

by SoftTalker

4/19/2025 at 9:34:50 PM

The nexus of stupidity in our Republic has less often been the Senate; I’m unkeen to mess with it.

The House is a mess. So is SCOTUS. My proposal for the latter is redefining the Supreme Court as one drawn by lot from appellate judges for each case. This not only solves the appointment lottery. It also incentivises expanding the judiciary, which we need to do, and removes the modern perversion which is the Supreme Court just not bothering with controversial cases.

Most importantly, the edits to SCOTUS can be done by the Congress. The edits to the House can be done by the states. (EDIT: Nah.) Senate requires a Constitutional amendment; that window isn’t open at this time.

by JumpCrisscross

4/20/2025 at 2:35:42 AM

Here are my proposals:

The Senate is elected similar to a parliament from other countries. Country-wide votes for parties, with proportional representation. It would balance out the regionality of the House.

The Supreme Court justices serve terms of 12-16 years. Each presidential candidate must select 2 supreme court picks at least 4 weeks before the election, and whoever wins has their picks placed on the court. (After their term, supreme court justices retire to the DC circuit).

by lostdog

4/19/2025 at 9:45:39 PM

This is something that was defined in the Constitution, however. Article 1, Section 3 called for the selection of Senators by state legislatures. This is superseded by the 17th Amendment, and calls for Senators to be elected by the people of their states.

This is important to understand, because the 17th Amendment is an on-again-off-again political issue; Republicans have, in recent history, held most state legislatures, so repealing the 17th Amendment would basically guarantee that the Republican Party would control at least one house of Congress for the foreseeable future, and give the party greater control over who is selected to the office.

by brendoelfrendo

4/19/2025 at 9:50:34 PM

Thanks… didn’t remember that detail and admittedly didn’t check the source.

by SoftTalker

4/19/2025 at 10:46:11 PM

There is a federal law.

There has been numerous proposals in the Congress to get rid of it, but they don't get ratified because two parties like the status quo.

People will have to make it an issue.

by nabla9

4/19/2025 at 9:02:45 PM

Sadly, these tweaks don't address any of the more obvious oddities that people have with proportional representation in the legislature. While such a system won't necessarily end up with Dutch levels of weirdness, it is still possible:

https://demodexio.substack.com/p/why-does-proportional-repre...

by lkrubner

4/19/2025 at 9:52:46 PM

If your source for "Dutch levels of weirdness" is just that article, then keep in mind that the VVD being "in power" meant that they were one of the parties in the government coalition. They have had to compromise with other parties through all of that time, and so it was not the case that those governments were only representative of a very small party of the electorate, as that article makes it sound.

(In my opinion, the Dutch system is one of the best implemented in practice, precisely because of its proportionality.)

by Vinnl

4/20/2025 at 3:20:57 AM

this analysis of (mostly European) democracies is not based on some metric of how well the population is faring, oecd has some of those, but based on handpicked anecdata and peak examples.

the most massive political injustices, poor housing, health care, education, elderly care, affordable transportation, queer human rights, all of them despite high GDP, just to name a few quantifiable properties of a state... the worst digressions happen in FPTP systems currently.

also the article throws both hands in the air as if no mechanisms exist to further improve democracies. it doesn't mention popular vote, or some mechanisms for balance of freedom of speech vs freedom to slander and distort and lie ("hate speech", the word polemics has 'polemos', war, as root), or press codex, or application thereof on all media, including "social" media, ad engines made of letters to the editor largely left alone and unmoderated... nor does it mention panachage and cumulating of votes on lists, the right to adjust the party list proposals in the voting booth.

the article does mention the brazen influence of financial power as a problem though.

but really, proportional representation is part of the solution.

by froh

4/19/2025 at 9:40:32 PM

That didn't really make sense. On the one hand, the author complains that proportional elections favor a limited number of parties, which don't always give voters good options to choose from. And on the other hand, the winner usually doesn't get the majority of seats, forcing them to negotiate with other parties instead of governing unilaterally.

Then there the focus on the left vs. the right, which is no longer as relevant as it used to be during the cold war. If you choose a single faction (such as the left, conservatives, or environmentalists), that specific faction is almost always smaller than everyone else combined. When there are multiple major issues instead of a single overarching question, political divisions become more nuanced than simple X vs. not-X.

by jltsiren

4/20/2025 at 2:55:20 AM

[dead]

by curtisszmania

4/19/2025 at 9:09:56 PM

Nnnneeeeeeeeerds!

by krapp

4/19/2025 at 8:50:47 PM

I absolutely love that you need to read a list of axioms with Greek symbols in their descriptions to make an informed vote in Iceland. Sets a minimum bar of education to vote, which is reasonable.

by dheera

4/19/2025 at 8:57:36 PM

Nah, just vote for the party you like the most. The nerds at the elections office take care of the math themselves. "Better" than US/UK/Canada where you have to consider a primary system or multiple elections or "Liberal Democrats win here" signs to not split the vote.

by smlavine

4/19/2025 at 8:59:12 PM

It does underline the comparative disadvantage of America’s uneducated population: something like this wouldn’t get through because most of the population is too stupid to grok it. We’re foreclosed from an entire domain of solutions because idiots won’t or can’t tough through understanding them.

by JumpCrisscross

4/20/2025 at 7:57:31 AM

The United States has one of the best education systems in the world, as proxied by the PISA test. US Asians have better results than anywhere but Singapore, Macau and Taiwan. US whites have better results than every majority white country besides Estonia and Switzerland. US Hispanics do better than every Hispanic country bar Spain. US Blacks outscore Jamaica, the only majority Black Country in the OECD and many European and South American countries.

I guarantee you the average Icelander does not understand how votes are distributed among parties. They trust the people who do it though.

by barry-cotter

4/20/2025 at 10:13:55 AM

Interesting that they do so good as young and end up mediocre (or below) as adults https://gpseducation.oecd.org/CountryProfile?plotter=h5&prim...

by Epa095

4/20/2025 at 11:44:38 AM

That’s for the entire US population. If you look at the US population without even attempting to correct for demographic factors the US looks unimpressive at all ages.

by barry-cotter

4/19/2025 at 9:02:44 PM

This is true, this is an inherently more complex system. Personally I prefer the French two-round system as a balance between complexity and proportionality -- America sorta has this with primaries, although them being months in advance and the districts being gerrymandered to hell doesn't help.

by smlavine

4/19/2025 at 10:10:33 PM

The French two-round system is wildy unproportional to the point that it is just very marginally less undemocratic than first past the post.

by vidarh

4/19/2025 at 9:16:46 PM

The good thing is — you don’t have to suffer the idiots. It’s a choice

by Muromec

4/19/2025 at 10:59:05 PM

> you don’t have to suffer the idiots. It’s a choice

Sure. And I don’t anymore. But the casualty of that choice is social empathy.

by JumpCrisscross

4/19/2025 at 9:29:42 PM

And yet we push the idiots to vote.

by SoftTalker

4/19/2025 at 9:13:02 PM

[flagged]

by rayiner

4/19/2025 at 10:10:31 PM

I think you’re both underestimating the education of immigrants and overestimating the abilities of your neighbors.

A lot of bad shit hides in the averages. Some US states have poor or no standards, or allow kids to bypass standards through various means.

Unless they got remedial education in the military or something, the average high school graduate from a poorly performing place is much less capable than a Mexican or Filipino graduate.

by Spooky23

4/19/2025 at 11:06:30 PM

[flagged]

by rayiner

4/19/2025 at 11:16:55 PM

> You’ve internalized an anti-American racism that’s quite shocking to see.

And you’ve internatilized an American racism that’s not so shocking to see, unfortunately.

Less than a day later, and you’re back at it. Not even a DEI specific post, but the racism still seeps out.

by chimpanzee

4/19/2025 at 11:25:16 PM

[flagged]

by rayiner

4/19/2025 at 11:43:30 PM

You brought up “racism” when you cracked about gp somehow displaying anti-American racism.

Suggesting uneducated immigrants are a major problem is a common trope of racist discussion even if the word “race” is not specifically used. Especially in the context of a system that is currently trying to kick out immigrants who have voluntarily entered our educational system.

And our population is among the most educated in relation to which countries? Half the country is below a 6th grade reading level. A quarter is below a 3rd grade level. Abysmal for a developed country.

It’s inappropriate to compare the US education level to countries that have historically struggled economically and politically, especially when their struggles have been only exacerbated by self-serving US interference. And when enforced illiteracy is often used as a weapon to keep people down. Granted, GP made the first mistake there it seems, and you responded in kind. (Though I’m not sure because he is specifically comparing the lower percentiles. I haven’t seen data on that.)

But more to the point, you’ve previously claimed that your passion for these topics is due to a belief that ethnic identity and DEI is a threat to your children and to the American individualist culture. Yet, here you are bashing immigrants when neither ethnic identity, DEI, nor American individualism are being discussed.

by chimpanzee

4/19/2025 at 11:53:30 PM

> Suggesting uneducated immigrants are a major problem

@JumpCrisscross said uneducated Americans are a problem. If that’s true, then immigration must really be a problem, because most of it is from countries with much worse education. If you think “uneducated” people are a problem, then own that. Don’t hide behind this “punch up versus punch down” bullshit where it’s okay to call Americans uneducated but not people who are objectively more uneducated than Americans.

Look at the PISA scores I posted up thread. The U.S. performs around the same as Sweden. It’s not hanging with the very top, but it does fine compared to big western countries. And it vastly outperforms every Latin American country.

by rayiner

4/20/2025 at 12:12:55 AM

Uneducated immigrants are a far smaller group than uneducated natives. Believing that they are nonetheless the bigger problem is a sign of a racist perspective, albeit not a guarantee of one, perhaps it’s simply anti-immigration.

Additionally most immigrants don’t vote, so it doesn’t account for the current circus. When they do vote, they’ve become citizens by passing a test that many native Americans couldn’t pass.

Uneducation is a problem in general. Doesn’t matter who it is, immigrant or native. But uneducation is fixable problem if we as a society/culture wanted to fix it. We are currently working towards the exact opposite goal and doing it faster than ever.

PISA is not the only measurement. And it is not used by many countries, particularly Asian countries. It isn’t hard to look up other stats on US reading levels.

And again, comparing education levels outside of a historical context of politics and economics is not helpful, to say the least. And it says nothing about an individual’s ability or willingness to become educated once the opportunity presents itself, especially if they’ve already self-selected by making the effort to enter an environment that offers said opportunity. That should be obvious to a person who values and desires to protect American individualism, as you claim to be.

by chimpanzee

4/20/2025 at 12:34:17 AM

> Uneducated immigrants are a far smaller group than uneducated natives.

Work out the score distributions implied by the national PISA scores and you’ll see this isn’t true. Countries like El Salvador and Guatemala are more than a standard deviation below the U.S., meaning the average person from those countries would be in the bottom 10% of the U.S. scores. And the immigrants from those countries are less educated than average. So immigrants are going to be quite a disproportionate share of the bottom 10% of the U.S. education-wise.

> Believing that they are nonetheless the bigger problem is a sign of a racist perspective, albeit not a guarantee of one, perhaps it’s simply anti-immigration.

Just use your brain without trying to label everything. If you think uneducated people are a social problem, then it logically follows that it’s a problem to have low-skill immigration from places with more uneducated populations. And contrary to your point above, you don’t actually have to care about whatever historical circumstances caused them to be less educated. That doesn’t change the effect on American society.

> PISA is not the only measurement. And it is not used by many countries, particularly Asian countries. It isn’t hard to look up other stats on US reading levels

PISA is the most commonly used test for international comparisons.

by rayiner

4/20/2025 at 12:55:14 AM

Recognizing a duck as a duck is using my brain. My mistake is trying to teach it to sing rather than quack.

by chimpanzee

4/20/2025 at 3:39:16 AM

[flagged]

by rayiner

4/19/2025 at 11:46:45 PM

Like I said, the problems hide in the averages. You don’t interview average high school graduates to work your shitty job in nowhereville - you’re talking to the 25th percentile for the most part. The 25th percentile Florida, Oklahoma or Arizona 8th grader performs 30% worse that his peer in New York or Massachusetts. I can assure you that NY and MA aren’t some paradise of educational achievement.

The people able to gtfo an emigrate from many places are usually the smarter people. The 75th percentile Filipino probably went to a Catholic school and had a better education than many US districts.

I’m sorry this upsets you, and I assure you I share your anger and disgust.

by Spooky23

4/19/2025 at 9:21:12 PM

Hong Kong used to have a proportional voting system. The pro-China camp is often very efficient, sometimes winning a seat with half the votes compared to another candidate

by charlieyu1

4/19/2025 at 9:33:55 PM

You absolutely don't. The formula they give for calculating seats from votes is very simple and only uses a few letters from the standard alphabet.

The section further with the complicated Greek formulae is for a different voting system, explicitly not the Icelandic one.

by AndrewDucker

4/19/2025 at 10:09:30 PM

> The section further with the complicated Greek formulae is for a different voting system, explicitly not the Icelandic one.

What? It's for all voting systems. It just defines a set of criteria that are desirable; it doesn't describe any system.

by thaumasiotes

4/20/2025 at 10:21:06 AM

The axioms just state what criteria the Swiss system (but not the Icelandic) obeys. You don't need to know them in order to vote in Iceland any more than you need to know that first past the post fails the Condorcet criterion in order to vote in the US.

by 986aignan

4/20/2025 at 8:17:12 AM

I have voted my entire adult life in a similar system but never knew how the sausage was made. I have complete confidence in it despite not knowing exactly how it works.

by alkonaut