The house is Local Representation. You don’t vote for what party you want to see control the house, you vote for a local representative to represent you and your neighbors.
By making them the same thing, you encourage gerrymandering. In the US, there’s no way for a third party to gain any representation. A national, proportional election would force the issue and allow for more diversity in political thought.
Proportional representation is where parties get a number of seats proportional to the percent of votes they get.
Proportional voting methods are often nation-wide, although there’s also e.g. mixed member proportional and local 3-5 member districts elected via STV like they do in Ireland.
But not in the same way that actual proportional representation works. They’re distributed by population yes, but they’re tied to a geographical location. Real proportional representation is national. So you have one legislative body tied to a district they’re supposed to represent, and another tied to the base of voters across the country that elected them.
That’s what the House is for.
The house is Local Representation. You don’t vote for what party you want to see control the house, you vote for a local representative to represent you and your neighbors.
It is also that. The two are by necessity the same thing.
By making them the same thing, you encourage gerrymandering. In the US, there’s no way for a third party to gain any representation. A national, proportional election would force the issue and allow for more diversity in political thought.
No?
Proportional representation is where parties get a number of seats proportional to the percent of votes they get.
Proportional voting methods are often nation-wide, although there’s also e.g. mixed member proportional and local 3-5 member districts elected via STV like they do in Ireland.
But not in the same way that actual proportional representation works. They’re distributed by population yes, but they’re tied to a geographical location. Real proportional representation is national. So you have one legislative body tied to a district they’re supposed to represent, and another tied to the base of voters across the country that elected them.