Thursday, March 26, 2009

One Description of Proportional Voting

"Through proportional representation electoral systems, like-minded groupings of voters win legislative seats in better proportion to their share of the population. Whereas winner-take-all elections award 100% of power to a 50.1% majority, proportional representation allows voters in a minority to win a fair share of representation. Proportional representation describes a broad range of methods that require at least some legislators to be elected in districts with more than one seat."

From FairVote.com

2 comments:

Wayne Smith said...

"winner-take-all elections award 100% of power to a 50.1% majority"

It's far worse than that. In a multi-party system, candidates are routinely elected with less than 40% of the votes in their district, and "majority" governments are formed with less than 40% of the votes cast overall.

Machi said...

A pictorial musing on the essence of democracy:
http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/so-moved/