Proportional Representation Amendment

[StevenNick]

Due to the controversy over the redistricting plans, I would like to propose a constitutional amendment that would completely end redistricting entirely.  I think this has shown to be a great weakness of the constitution.  It leads to confusion as districts will be constantly redrawn.

Proportional Representation Amendment
Upon ratification of this amendment, all district boundaries will hereby be frozen regardless of potential voter registration disparities between districts.

Each district will hereby receive one representative to the forum senate per six registered voters.  Every six months a census will be taken to determine the number of voters in each district.  Each district will receive at least one representative to the senate regardless of the number of registered voters.

Well guys, how does it sound?

[StevenNick]

That is an interesting idea actually Stevennick, I will think on it.

It actually wasn't my idea, to give credit where credit is due.  I think it was Brambila who suggested it on a different thread.

[StevenNick]

Why don't we just use regions for this and totally scrap districts

We could certainly.  The whole regions districts thing was a major mistake to begin with and I think something needs to be done to fix the situation.

[StevenNick]

Why don't we just use regions for this and totally scrap districts

We could certainly.  The whole regions districts thing was a major mistake to begin with and I think something needs to be done to fix the situation.

Then again... what will governors do now?

Actually this would make so much more sense for governors.  Right now governors are the executives or regional entities that have no power, authority, or reason for exitence.  Scrapping districts and moving to proportional representation from regions would make so much sense.

Then the Governors could start going about the business of passing legislation on the regional level if they so desired.  But then again, the governors never really did have much to do to begin with.

[StevenNick]

If a region has 60 voters, then won't they send 10 senators of the same party?

I suppose once a region gets that big it should really be split up.  

[StevenNick]

Then will people be voting for a candidate or a party? How will it be decided which nominees a party will run?

I suppose this could be done by some kind of preference voting as well, and the person with the highest preference vote will be the first person from a particular party to win a seat based on the party's result. In this case there will only be party line voting and no split-ticket voting.

There's a lot of ways that part of the process could work.  For instance, say there were a total of three senate seats at stake in an election.  Each party could conduct a preferential voting primary in which three candidates would be selected.  The candidate with the highest vote totally would get the first senate seat should the party win one, the second would get the second seat the party won, etc.  If the party only won one seat, only the top primary candidate would become a senator.

Or we could even hold party primaries after the elections.  Say in a region of three senators, the UAC won two seats and the republican won one.  At that point the UAC and the republican parties could hold open primaries, in which the winners would automatically be elected to the senate.

Of course, there are many other ways this could work.

[StevenNick]

I just have a problem with the way the redistricting has gone so far and I think there should be some kind of regional continuity.  Proportional voting is one way to solve this problem.

I'm very open to suggestions as to how to solve this problem in a way that is acceptable to everyone.

[StevenNick]

I actually like Josh's idea.  I think it would help maintain some regional continuity in redistricting.

[StevenNick]

What if we moved to a more real life system?  Every region would get at least two senators in addition to any extra representation they are entitled to based on population.

[StevenNick]

I wish to withdraw the amendment from consideration before the senate.