Election time makes you think about a few things. When I first heard of the Electoral College in the US I was a bit surprise. How come something like the 2000 election could have happened? Where somebody wins the public vote, but loses the presidency.
My americans friends point out that this is to keep the system fair and avoid small states of not having any representation. I can't get over how stupid this is.
And then I realize another problem with elections, which is widespread on all countries of the world...
Why is representation by geography?
That is another thing that can be perceived as stupid.
Why people from Washington State gets to elect 9 representatives and people from Vermont gets to elect 1? Clearly, this is because the population of Vermont should be about 1/9th of the population of Washington. So far so good. But the laws being approved at the federal level are mostly about national or global issues, so why geography matters?
What if, instead of dividing the House of Representatives and the Senate by state, it would be divided by race, age, gender, religion, social class, etc.
Right now 13% of all Americans are Black, the Senate has 100 seats and the House has 435 Representatives. That means to be a true representation of the US, there should be about 13 black senators and 56 congressman on the house. Let's see...
In the House there are 40 black representatives (by my account) which is not bad, but on the Senate there is Barack Obama, and ... Nope, that is it. One black senator. Clearly, Whites are over-represented on both houses.
Now, we can use the same type of math for the other factors:
- Age: this is the oldest congress in history with an average of 56 years-old for Representatives and 61 for Senators. The median american age: 35.3 years old.
- Gender: Women should have a few more representatives, since 51% of the population is female, but according to Wikipedia, only 15% are congresswomen, while 85% of congressmen.
- Religion, Social class, etc.
My suggestion is a new House of Representatives that is effectively a representation of the US population. Clearly you can't have a 7-years-old representing his age group, but besides some minor issues, you can get a pretty honest and representative system.
Divide each candidate into the following profile:
- Ethnic group: Caucasian, African-American, Hispanic, Others
- Age group: 18-35, 36-49, 50-65, 65-older;
- Gender: Male, Female
- Religion: Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Other Christian, Jewish, Others
- Social class: A, B, C, D, E
Divide each voter into the same profile as above, so that each one can only vote for people that fit their profile. Each profile is considered 100% of the votes, which means if a black candidate gets 80% of the votes for black candidates, he ranks higher than a white candidate that gets 60% of the votes from white voters.
Stack rank all the candidates and you've built yourself a representative House of Representatives.
Now, there is some complicated logistic to make it work, but if it did, it would be awesome.
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