Forms of representative government

I just spotted this at David Friedman's blog, and realized it looked familiar.

I cannot, however, resist the temptation to offer my own proposal for an improved version of representative democracy. Not, I hasten to say, one that I have any reason to think would work better, merely one that more nearly lives up to the label.

In the world I created for role-playing games, I have one land, the Federated Althing, that uses a very similar system.

1. Anyone who wishes may be a congressional representative.

1.  Anyone who wishes may stand for election to the Althing.

2. Any voter may choose any representative to represent him, but only one at a time. A voter is free to switch from one representative to another on 24 hours notice--less if the relevant technology makes it practical.

2.  Any citizen may cast his vote for any candidate to represent him in the Althing.  He may register his vote for only one candidate at a time, but may change his vote to any other candidate at a few days' notice.

3. A representative casts a number of votes in the house, or on committee, equal to the number of voters he represents.

3.  Nope.  Each candidate who wins a seat on the Althing gets one vote.

4. Any representative representing at least 240,000 voters gets a seat in Congress, can introduce bills, speak on the floor of the House, act as a representative now does. Representatives with fewer than that number of votes can group with other such representatives to satisfy the requirement, giving them one seat which they can share among themselves in any mutually acceptable fashion. The limit can in the future be adjusted to keep the total number of seats in the house at about its present level.

4.  Any candidate who wins a number of votes equal to or above a "floor" of a certain number of votes wins a seat on the Althing.  (There is no provision for sharing a seat among candidates who have a qualifying number of votes among them.  They would have to decide among them which candidate would serve as the head of their coalition, and then convince their voters to throw their support behind the head of their coalition.)

 

I had worked out a couple of the incentives that would exist in the Althing.

 

Firstly, any seated candidate would have an incentive to accumulate extra votes above the threshold for being seated, to serve as a buffer against people changing their votes.  (Or dying.)

 

Secondly, as the population has grown, the number of available votes has increased.  The Althing has tended to raise the "floor" over time, so the number of seated representatives hasn't increased in proportion to the population.  Since no one on the Althing wants to be squeezed out by having the "floor" raised above his number of votes, there's been some pressure against raising the threshold too quickly.

 

Thirdly, seated candidates who feel their vote totals are getting too close to the threshold tend to vote for watering down the standards for becoming a voting citizen.

 

Fourthly, because there's no such thing as a district, anyone, with any position, can draw the votes of anyone else in the Federated Althing who holds the same position.  So the equivalent of a "911 Truth" candidate can draw the votes of everyone else who holds the "911 Truth" position.  If enough of these people exist to push an otherwise marginal candidate above the threshold, he, and his extreme views, are now seated on the Althing.  This is a feature I may use in a game some day.