by John Lawrence
From: http://gawker.com/the-constitution-old-bullshit-1723875534
We embark on a series of studies of the world's Constitutions. In particular we want to know how the representative portions of democracies are set up. That would have to do with the voting systems, whether the governments are set up as Parliaments, bicameral or monocameral Houses of Congress, how members are elected, how many branches or government there are and what are the functions of each etc.
The following is information supplied by Frank Thomas, an American ex-pat living in the Netherlands who has contributed much to the California Free Press, in particular on global warming:
From reports I've studied in the past, proportional representation voting is by far the dominant voting system among European countries. The basic approach of proportional representation is: legislators are elected in multi-member districts instead of single-member districts, and the number of seats a party wins in an election is proportional to the amount of its support among voters. So, in a 10-member district where Republicans win 50% of the vote, they receive five of the seats; if Democrats win 30% of the vote, they get three seats; and if a third party gets 20% of the vote, they win two seats.
Designers of electoral systems have devised several ways to achieve these proportional results. Thus, there are three basic kinds of PR: party list, mixed-member, and single-transferable vote (also called choice voting). Closed and open party list systems are by far the most common form of proportional representation.
Most European democracies use the open list form of party list voting including the Netherlands. This allows voters to express a preference for particular candidates, not just parties. Voters are presented with random lists of candidates chosen in party primaries. Voters vote for an individual candidate and this vote counts for the specific candidate as well as for the party.
So the order of the final list depends on the number of votes won by each candidate on the list. The most popular candidates rise to the top of the list and have a better chance of being elected. For example, if the Democrats won 2 seats, and Lawrence and Keller received the highest and next to highest number of individual votes, they would rise to the top of the list and be elected.
In Dutch elections (for example, to the House of Representatives), the voter can give his or her vote to any candidate on his party list (or to a candidate on another party's list assuming the voter wants to switch his or her vote to another party). The vote for this candidate is called a "preference vote." If, for example, a party list got 5000 votes and the electoral quota is 1000 votes, then the party wins five seats. Candidate(s) who get at least 25% of the electoral quota of 1000 votes, or 250 votes, would then take priority over other candidates in the list who got fewer preference votes.
As a rule, decades of experience shows that PR voting systems provide more accurate representation of parties, better representation for political and racial minorities, fewer wasted votes, higher levels of voter turnout, better representation of women, greater likelihood of majority rule, and little to no opportunity for gerrymandering so prevalent in America.
