Weighted votes based on received votes
Representatives of districts get a voting weight in the senate equal to the percentage of votes they got
The Idea:
Representatives of districts (or other local areas) get a voting weight in the senate (or other assembly) equal to the number of votes they get from their district.
Example:
Imagine a scenario where a senator from Utah wins an election with a 51% approval rate, using an approval voting method1. Instead of the traditional system where the senator has full voting power (1 vote) in the legislature, they would now have a voting weight of 0.51 (as if they only get 0.51 of a seat instead of a “full” seat). Conversely, a senator from Idaho, who secures a whopping 99% approval rate, would have a voting power of 0.99.
Potential Benefits:
Reflects Constituent Support: The primary advantage of this approach is that it mirrors the level of support a representative has in their district or state. A representative with a higher approval percentage indicates broader consensus and should arguably have more influence.
Encourages Voting/Political Participation: In the current system, if you hold a minority position, your vote doesn’t really matter because the representative will get a majority of the votes and therefore get all the power. However, in this new system, voting does matter because you can lessen the amount of power the representatives get.
Protection for Minority Voices: Minority voices now have a mechanism to influence the results of the election by limiting the power of undesired representatives.
Encourages Bipartisanship: Politicians may be incentivized to build broader coalitions and appeal to a wider range of constituents. The promise of greater legislative influence could drive politicians to find common ground and "reach across the aisle".
Potential Objections
Complexity: Implementing such a system would require modifications to existing legislative procedures. It could also make legislative outcomes harder to predict.
Counterpoint: This is a logistical objection, not a normative one. Furthermore, it is logistically possible to implement this.
Erosion of One Person, One Vote: Central to many democratic systems is the idea that each person's vote has equal weight. This proposal could be seen as undermining that principle by giving some representatives more power than others based on election results.
Counterpoint: Representatives (often) already have unequal voting weight without undermining our belief in ‘one person, one vote’.
Potential for Gridlock: If a significant number of representatives have low voting weights, it could lead to difficulties in passing legislation, as there might not be enough "weighted" votes to achieve a majority.
Counterproposal: The new 'majority vote’ in the senate doesn’t work with the number of seats, but with the percentage of accumulated approval. So if a senate has a 100 seats but the representatives have only accumulated 60% approval, you now need more than 50% of that 60% (30 “full” seats) to pass a bill.
Some might, conversely, like the gridlock and think that since only 60% approves of the representatives it should be harder to implement policy. While I philosophically agree, in practice, a legislature needs to be able to react to upcoming problems.
Perhaps something in between could be implemented. Something exactly between the two would be halving the disapproval, e.g. if 40% of the voters disapprove of the representatives (there are 60 “full” seats in the senate), it’s treated as if 20% disapprove, and the representatives need to have 40 full seats instead of the 50 full seats in the pro-gridlock system, nor the 30 full seats in the anti-gridlock system.
This same method can be used with other voting systems. For the sake of simplicity I stick with approval voting in this post.
I have an even better version of this which I was planning to write a post on at some point - just have each district run an only-vote-for-your-first-choice election, but rather than selecting only the plurality winner as if they represented 100% of the constituents, select everyone who got any significant fraction of the vote, and send them to the legislature with voting power proportional to the number of votes they got.
This would mean:
1. Gerrymandering is completely impossible, and the result is guaranteed to be proportional to people's preferences (e.g., whatever percentage of people vote for Party A, that will be the percentage Party A gets in the legislature). It is even better than proportional representation in this respect, since PR is still discontinuous due to each party having a discrete number of representatives. It is also more proportional than your system, since minorities in a district still get representatives, rather than just being able to reduce the majority's voting power.
2. Everyone is represented. You will always have a legislator from your district who represents you, not just one who was voted for by the majority of your district who you may disagree with.
3. Every vote matters equally, regardless of what district you're in, since every votes gives one representative the same amount of extra voting power. Participation is therefore encouraged everywhere, with no need to focus only on competitive districts. Parties are encouraged to maximize their support even in districts where one party is guaranteed to have the majority.
4. Unlike regular PR, local interests can still be taken into account because there are still local districts. Everyone still has a small number of representatives who are specifically meant to be their representatives.
5. People still vote for specific candidates, rather than parties, unlike in regular PR. This gives people the chance to make sure the parties are putting forward the best candidates possible and sometimes break party lines.