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Comment by yarg | Hacker News Reader

The fact that gerrymandering is even possible is a symptom (albeit an severely exacerbating one) - not the cause - of the problems in the US electoral structure.

It could be countered quite effectively by a system using larger jurisdictions each with multiple representitives.

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Ditto the voting system.

I support replacing our winner takes all (first past the post) elections with approval voting. Maybe as a step towards PR. But we'll always have executive races that'd benefit.

Benefits

  * super easy to explain, administrate
  * per Duverger's Law, would end our two party system
  * eliminates separate primary elections
  * reduces voter fatigue
  * reduces admin costs
  * greatly reduce mudslinging, because everyone wants to be your second choice

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law

Note: I prefer approval to the slightly mathematically superior score voting, we'd get most of the benefits but much more simple.

Yeah, you can't really do anything like it in a proportional system. For gerrymandering to be possible It is crucial that there is a large number of parallell contests so that winning many contests is more important than winning overall support.

Totally agree. The winner takes it all system is the real problem. You can start a third party and get 30 percent of the vote and still end up with zero representation.

The system the US help setup in Iraq was that half the house was local represention, then the wasted votes (didn't get your candidate locally, your candidate votes over majority) are given to the party they represent to buy seats in the other half of the house.

So the second half should be proportional to the error in the local representation.

Large jusrisdictions with multiple representatives has its own set of problems too. In the current system, people, at least, know who their representative is, and there is more accountability.

I would say the biggest problem by far is voter education--people simply are not educated on issues. They listen to idiotic MSM sound bites and narratives and are influenced by identity politics rather than anything of substance.

I must disagree. As person with an education and half a wit it doesn't matter how I vote in Omaha Nebraska. We will always vote republican and because of gerrymandering my local reps won't change.

No amount of education can be accepted by this crowd that doesn't amount to propaganda or brainwashing.

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