This is an update to a post originally made in April 2017, triggered by my recent read of a book by Lawrence Lessig, They Don't Represent Us. Also see this 2022 post with results reflecting the 2020 elections. This much shorter post analyzes the results of the 2022 elections.
The "crackpot" notion, which would require some Constitutional tinkering: Any candidate for the US House of Representatives who receives greater than 1% of the popular vote in the general election shall be entitled to a vote in the House equal to the fraction of the vote he or she receives. More details available at the articles linked above.
The natural question: how would that have worked out in an actual election? Well, we don't know, and there's no way to tell, because the voting incentives would be totally different under this scheme. That won't stop us from speculating anyway. The MIT Election Data + Science Lab recently updated their data to include the 2022 elections, and I wrote a simple script to show the results for party breakdown, assuming this crackpot scheme was in place.
For example, given the 2022 vote breakdown, here are the Congresscritter-counts and votes for each party that grabbed a vote fraction over 1%:
| Party | Representatives | Votes |
|---|---|---|
| REPUBLICAN | 429 | 216.20 |
| DEMOCRAT | 416 | 206.56 |
| LIBERTARIAN | 70 | 2.72 |
| NO PARTY AFFILIATION | 51 | 2.32 |
| INDEPENDENT | 33 | 1.69 |
| DEMOCRATIC-FARMER-LABOR | 4 | 1.50 |
| CONSERVATIVE | 23 | 1.25 |
| WORKING FAMILIES | 14 | 0.76 |
| GREEN | 3 | 0.24 |
| WORKING CLASS | 8 | 0.19 |
| LEGAL MARIJUANA NOW | 4 | 0.17 |
| CONSTITUTION | 5 | 0.11 |
| UNITED UTAH | 2 | 0.10 |
| DEMOCRATIC | 3 | 0.05 |
| SOCIALIST WORKERS | 1 | 0.05 |
| AMERICAN CONSTITUTION PARTY | 2 | 0.04 |
| PROGRESSIVE | 1 | 0.04 |
| INDEPENDENT AMERICAN | 2 | 0.03 |
| INDEPENDENT-MODERATE | 1 | 0.03 |
| LIBERTY CAUCUS | 1 | 0.02 |
| PACIFIC GREEN | 1 | 0.02 |
| GRASSROOTS-LEGALIZE CANNABIS | 1 | 0.02 |
| JOBS AND JUSTICE | 1 | 0.02 |
| FOR THE PEOPLE | 1 | 0.01 |
| U.S. TAXPAYERS | 1 | 0.01 |
The grand total: 1078 Representatives, with a total of 434.13 votes. Some notes and observations:
The Republicans still "win", as they (barely) did in 2022. In this fictitious scenario, however, they fall just short of a majority (49.8%).
70 Libertarians go to DC! Yay! Or not, given the recent LP takeover by lunatics. Or, if you aren't lib-sympathetic: "even crazier lunatics".
Party labels sometimes confuse things. For example, see the "Working Families" party in the table? That's a New York thing. It appears a single candidate can be listed under more than one party on the ballot.
Drilling down: In NY-14, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez got 60.41% of the vote as a Democrat. But she picked up another 6.86% on the "Working Families" ballot line.
(Why do I suspect that many people voting for "Working Families" candidates aren't actually working?)
Unfortunately, my favorite party name from 2020, the "Justice Mercy Humility" party, didn't show up at all this year.
To repeat: if the election had been held under this scheme, the voting incentives would have looked a lot different, so too the results.
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