If possible, I'd like to open up some discussion on Ziu reform. This has been a topic of perennial interest to many, and I think it might be smart to have a good-faith discussion about some possibilities that might be useful for us. We just recently switched to a 20-seat Cosa instead of a 200-seat Cosa, but that doesn't fundamentally change that much.
A few things from my perspective, to begin:
- We should probably err on the side of preserving things like the Senats, as an important institution that has often been important to slowing down the pace of very significant legislation (without ever actually becoming an undemocratic block on it forever) and as a provincial representative. So at least for me, I wouldn't want to make changes that would just be an obvious set-up to eliminating the Senats.
- There are numerous good things we should try to achieve: proportionality, direct accountability, low barriers to entry, simplicity, intuitiveness, and ease of implementation. Not all of these are equally important, but we should be honest about trade-offs.
- While we're a highly educated people, with 71% of our citizens holding some form of college degree, we have a majority of American-Talossans, and so most of our electorate is going to be familiar with our current system and then their own American one. In recent elections, many people failed to use RCV even when directly and repeatedly instructed to do so. Simplicity is going to be key!
Some people have been talking about Mixed-Member Proportional systems. As best I understand it, this entails people voting for a candidate for their area and also for a party. Each candidate wins based on the local vote, and then a big chunk of seats are divided up according to the national party vote. Sometimes it's always the same number of seats, and sometimes it's a fluid number that varies depending on how many additional seats are needed to make the results very proportional. There's also a version where the plurality party gets a "majority bonus" of extra seats.
So what are some ideas people might have about this system, or a different system that might work better?
My country has used Mixed Member Proportional for more than 30 years and I think it works pretty well, ask me anything.
The simplest way to work it in Talossa would be to have one Cosa seat elected by each Province (8 seats) then the other 12 seats "topping up" to proportionality. So: say a party wins 2 provinces, but 40% of the vote. 40% of the vote entitles you to 8 seats. So: they also get 6 seats from the top of their party list.
There is a quirk called "overhang" which happens if a party gets *more* local seats than their party vote would justify - for example, if an Independent who didn't have a party won a province. Then that local seat is ignored when the party seats are handed out; which means there end up being "extra" party seats, in our case, more than 20. Not a big problem IMHO.
The only real issue I see here is that if you want to keep the Senäts as is, then you have each province electing an MC *and* a Senator, which seems otiose and redundant. The clear compromise here is: elect the Senäts differently. The best alternative I've hard so far is Lüc's suggestion of electing 4 Senators from the whole Kingdom at large every term.