Let’s say you have multi-member constituencies. You hold an election with an outcome that looks roughly like this:
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Candidate #1 received 12,000 votes
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Candidate #2 received 8,000 votes
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Candidate #3 recieved 4,000 votes
All three get elected to the legislature, but Candidate #1’s vote on legislation is worth three times Candidate #3’s vote, and #3’s vote is worth half Candidate #2’s vote.
I know that the British Labour Party used to have bloc voting at conference, where trade union reps’ votes were counted as every member of their union voting, so, e.g., if the train drivers’ union had 100,000 members, their one rep wielded 100,000 votes. That’s not quite what I’m describing above, but it’s close.
Bonus question: what do you think would be the pros and cons of such a system?
This reminds me of an idea I had for a hybrid between representative and direct democracy where every citizen would be entitled to vote on any bill, but if they didn’t have the time/will to do their research, they would be allowed to delegate their vote to one of the political parties. Thus, you would have some votes coming from individuals, and some coming in batches from political parties voting on behalf of individuals.
You’re not alone! This concept is called Liquid Democracy
Good to see I’m not the only one who had this idea
I’ve heard of that idea but frankly I’d be frightened by how many people would be parted from their votes by manipulative tactics or people finding ways to buy such votes (even if explicitly disallowed, they’d find an indirect way). That second point in particular would be a big concern because the people who have little else to sell but their own vote would be the ones most likely to sell it and organizations buying such votes would likely be those with a vested interest in keeping the poor, poor which would now be even easier.
That’s just what we have now though. At least under the proposed hybrid approach people would have the option of voting directly.
Yes that’s what I was thinking too. The worst case scenario under what I propose would be what we have now.