A Proportionately Powered, Isotropically Selected Senate

[Strider]

Follow along with me on a thought experiment.

Suppose that some nation wished to create a Senate-like body in its government, and had a couple requirements for it:
1) All votes cast by all citizens to select representatives shall be as equal in value as possible, regardless of where those votes are cast, the statistical makeup of the votes of all other citizens, or the relative popularity of the selected representative.
2) The number of representatives in such a body must be of order of magnitude N.
3) The body of representatives should approximate as closely as possible the beliefs and principles of the electorate, in proportion to their preponderance that electorate.

To fill this order, I propose this method of election:
All citizens receive a ballot with the names of every candidate running for the Senate and must select one candidate to vote for. For a candidate to appear on the ballot, it must be determined to be possible that the candidate will receive at least a 1/(2N) share of the vote (This can be done through signatures of voters or some other method). A name may also be written in on the ballot if the voter desires.

All of the ballots are then collected and the total votes are then tallied. Any candidates with less than a 1/(2N) share of the vote are thrown out, and all others become Senators. However, these Senators are not equal in power; a Senator's vote in any circumstance is worth the total of the votes which elected him. This means Senators which received more votes will wield more power, and Senators with less votes will have less.

An example: Let's say a country with 20,000 voters wishes to select a Senate composed of roughly 10 members. a number of candidates run for office, and the vote goes as follows:

Radical Liberal: 1,000
Moderate Liberal A: 1,000
Moderate Liberal B: 3,500
Centrist: 5,000
Libertarian: 1,500
Fiscal Conservative A: 1,500
Fiscal Conservative B: 1,000
Fiscal Conservative C: 500
Religious Bible-Thumper: 2,000
Neo Nazi: 500
Random Comedian: 1,500
Washed Up Actor: 1,000

In this case, the threshold is 20,000*1/(2*10) = 1,000 votes, so Fiscal Conservative C and Neo Nazi aren't elected and their votes are thrown out. All other participants are now Senators, and the Senate now has 19,000 total votes in a Senate of 10 members (lucky coincidence). For a measure to pass, it must receive a majority of votes, 9,501. So if a measure came on the ballot, and Centrist (5,000), Random Comedian (1,500), and Moderate Liberal B (3,500) voted Yes, it would have 10,000 Yes votes and pass.

Discuss.

[Duckie]

Wouldn't this essentially be the same as having a senate with a lot more members, with the political party replaced with the person and members of a party replaced with voting power? Coalitions between parties would be replaced with Coalitions between Senators. Essentially it just shifts the level down.

[Strider]

The difference is this helps break a two-party deadlock on politics. If an Independent candidate wants to run for Senate and can get 5% of the vote everywhere, then he would have a seat in a 100 person Senate. In the current US system, if he couldn't get a majority vote in any one election in any one place, and even though he represents the beliefs of 5% of the electorate, he can't get a seat in any major governing body (even those with far more than 20 members). My essential point is that it's silly to arbitrarily group voters together based on where they live, especially in an age of information and transportation where people can talk across the ocean in an instant or fly around the world in a day.

[darthdavid]

I find your ideas intriguing and wish to subscribe to your newsletter...

No but really, this is a pretty good idea on the surface but I'm wondering what sort of checks you'd suggest putting into place so I charismatic sociopath can't con the sheeple into giving him a shit ton of votes and then use all the power that gets invested in him to fuck over the country.

With a system like the current US Congress/Senate you can have a lot of people there who are corrupt/incompetent but good at convincing people to like them get into office but you need people to pick bad candidates for at least two thirds of the seats to do constitution level damage.

[Lusankya]

It sounds similar to Senate voting in Australia, except that after a politician meets the quota, their excess votes get allocated to the voters' second preference. Here's the AEC's description of how it works. They can explain better than I can.