Rank choice and optional preferential voting have their own special tyranny. I just voted for a council election where I had to order at least 5 alderman out of 55 listed candidates. No parties, no voting guides. It was a lot of reading for me.
Right or wrong, it is fair to assume many will cast their vote without doing the reading in such a system. Speaking from a German perspective, I sometimes think how inefficient it is to count 60M votes - just counting 1M votes will give you the exact same result, iff you get the sampling right. What if we could choose a subset of 1% of citizens at random for every election (still far too many to directly bribe), giving them some pride in their responsibility, make sure they have some/better access to the candidates etc.. Again, if the sampling is sound, this won't change the outcome (other than the average voter being more motivated/informed). Of course, I see the problem that people will not feel represented if they, by chance, never get to vote in their whole life ...
Is there a way to guarantee that you "just get the sampling right?" Even if there is, is it possible to explain it to someone with a high school education such that they understand it?
Even if you could do both of those, will it hold up when the populist candidate loses and starts railing about how they have so much support, the best support, and the election was stolen from them by the elite-chosen sample?
Well I did vote and I did read all 55 pitches from the candidates. They only recently made the voting compulsory so that's going to make things interesting for all the people out there who don't do any reading and want to avoid the fine.
Yeah, parties do make that sort of thing a lot easier.
In Netherland we have elections for "waterschappen" ("water council"), apparently our oldest governmental body and responsible managing surface water, dikes, etc. So obviously very important in a country like this, but I have no idea what the actual issues involved are, and yet I have to vote for these people.
A weak executive would seem to reduce representation in government though?
As each member of parliament must necessarily represent the biggest groups in their constituencies.
So a decent size group scattered across many dozens of constituencies into relatively tiny groups would simply never get taken seriously without a strong executive.
No, you've got that exactly backwards. Parliament is the representation. Because of proportional representation, parliament represents all groups in the country, and not merely the majorities in each district.
You're right. Parliament represents only the entire electorate. And only really those opinions that are shared by enough people to be worth an entire seat. Still, it's far better representation than you get in a district system, where only local majorities of the electorate in each district are represented.
