Vote No to the Electoral Reform Amendment

[ilikeverin]

Hello there.  I am probably the only Atlasian still around who was actually involved in redistricting discussions when they were still done (Al, were you ever a Governor when there were districts?).  During my long tenure as Governor of the Midwest, I served on several redistricting commissions.

And I rise in opposition to this Amendment.  I am not opposed to districts.  Indeed, such a plan seems relatively sensible.  I remember with great pleasure my time on the redistricting commissions.  But the problem is in the seats that are being abolished.  At-large seats allow the will of Atlasia as a whole to be noted.  Proportional representation is an important part of the Atlasian system.

Regional senate seats, meanwhile, do nothing whatsoever that district seats would not also do.  As a member of many redistricting commissions, my primary self-assigned purpose was to continuously remind folks in charge of redistricting that districts were not regions; most every time, my advice was ignored, and the commission picked seats that looked suspiciously close to regions.  There's no reason why this would not persist in the future.  Under the plan currently considered, this would lead to effective double-representation of regions, while, under a much more sensible plan that abolishes regional seats, the regions could maintain their current levels of representation.  Regional seats have the added detriment of being distributed unfairly across different parts of Atlasia.  District seats could allow for continued constituency elections that do not represent Atlasians unequally.

As such, I oppose the idea of bringing back districts, if all we do with them is replicate the continued regional Senate seats.  Please vote "no" on this Amendment.

[ilikeverin]

Hello there.  I am probably the only Atlasian still around who was actually involved in redistricting discussions when they were still done (Al, were you ever a Governor when there were districts?). 

*Cough*

I was a governor during at least one re-redistricting process.

I didn't even know you were still around in Fantasyland! *hughughug*

Complaints about the way districts were ran just ring so hollow to me, anymore. That was, what, 7+ years ago? We have boatloads more people than we did then and many of the individuals in charge have dramatically less interest in this place anymore, if at all. I think we've deserved another try.

Um, considering this system requires an active process every so often, isn't that a bad thing?

I meant from those days. Sorry. Many of the complaints about districting seem to boil down to the way it was implemented by the people that did it back in the day. Such complaints can't last forever.

I just don't see any reason why the process would be any different this time around.  When implementing a 5-district plan, why wouldn't people mentally default to something similar to the 5 regions?  It's just too big of a mental signpost that people can hitch themselves to.  It's not like there wasn't turnover in Governors when there was redistricting in the past, besides me and bgwah, but over and over again the committee kept passing districts that differed as minimally as possible from the regions.

[ilikeverin]

It's a legitimate concern actually. The trouble is that the at-large seats don't work now that well either: we just had an election with six candidates for five seats. The large national parties tend to approach these elections in a very considered and conservative manner, and given that it happens to be in their best interest to do so...

I actually don't strongly disagree with that.  I myself did some analyses when bgwah once challenged me on that point, and, well, it showed that regional elections were more competitive than at-large ones.  But I'm not sure that having regions and districts does anyone any good.  One solution might be something like 10 districts, maybe?

Perhaps it could be pointed out that abolishing them and replacing them with districts would actually increase the power of the Regions? It would transform overnight the Governors into some of the most powerful actors in the game, and this, in turn, would increase the prestige of regional politics.

That is true, but one of the reasons why I support the abolition of regions is how very boring their politics are.  Maybe they could use more excitement.  I'm not sure.