I traced the two-party dynamic back to something underneath district size a while ago: how we vote. One person, one vote, actually encourages first past the post winners. Shrink the district, grow the district, doesn't matter, you're still forcing every voter into a single binary mark, and a binary mark always collapses into two stable attractors.

Consider the Olympics instead. Judges score, and 1st place, 2nd place, 3rd place simply fall out of the scores, nobody had to design a tournament bracket to make that happen. Give voters that same instrument: score every candidate on desirability. For a pooled multi-seat district, take however many winners the pool needs, ranked by score. Nothing stops someone from voting like they do now, give the candidate you despise a 0 and the one you want a 100, but most people think in preference, a first, second, third choice, not a single binary mark.

The numerology of district size and pop-per-rep will always be heuristic at best. If the goal is to improve representation, we should focus on the mechanism of selecting people and elevating them into office. That's the biggest bang for the buck.

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hash872 18 hours ago | parent [-]

Because the median voter doesn't realistically have that detailed a level of knowledge on legislators/their policies. This is tough for a lot of people to believe- especially the kind of high-information voters who propose these sorts of reforms to begin with. But there's an enormous, multi-decade literature on voter ignorance. They simply don't know much about who's running or what their policies are

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SubiculumCode 18 hours ago | parent [-]

But if they came from your own small town and had a reputation in that small town based on years of living there?

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hash872 17 hours ago | parent [-]

1. I grew up in a small town, and occasionally ask my parents how mayoral/city council politics is going there. (Or, I check out the latest drama on Facebook about it). My good friend's uncle was our mayor for a long time, etc. People might know personalities, but they're still not following national policy positions. Not to mention that people would be voting purely for personalities/clan/ethnic affiliations, and again not policy- we have a term for that in poly sci, personalism

2. A country of 340 million people with an elected representative from every small town would have an unrealistic number of representatives. 1 for every 5k citizens would be 68,000 reps in the House

I get that you're fetishizing hyper-localism to the exclusion of all else, but it's just a bad basis to run a modern society. This is not a realistic vision

	▲	SubiculumCode 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Was it hyper localism in the years between 1776-1930 to have 1 Representative per <=70k citizens. We do not need to go to 5k, and no one said that. But there are ways to aggregate and distribute processes for a larger House, and you have provided no reason for why the current fixed small number of 435 should be preferred, why that is workable, but not 870 (1:350k) or 1740 for 1:175k. Practically, and with all due respect, you keep stating opinions why it is a "bad basis to run a modern society" but you never articulate why exactly. To my mind, the increased complexity of the world can use more Representatives to work and specialized in more specializes committees.