Bob, I think I confused you by using the term American. It is right in top of the article, the starting point.
Sweden, the Netherlands, and Spain have the American voting system. There is no manipulation in that voting system. The voters are expressed in most-optimal manner.
I mentioned that the American voting system is what Thomas Jefferson devised. It is the same as proportional voting.
This system is American in origin therefore. It is the American voting system.
The voting systems we are using are old-European in origin, in my words I declared them English.
In Astoria, you vote in wards, right? That is the English voting system.
--
So let's do the math, and use the worst possible condition to show how the systems differ:
All ward council members got their seat with 50% of the voters (plus one) picking them.
Then, since there are five voting members (including the Mayor), we see that 60% is the minimum for anything to pass on the council, three out of five members agreeing.
Therefore in Astoria, a 'majority' decision on the council represents in worst possible condition:
50% x 60% = 30% of the voters directly supporting the decision made by the council.
That is exactly how they did it in old Europe.
--
Now, let's investigate the worst possible outcome in the Thomas Jefferson, American, proportional voting system:
With four members elected in one election at the same time by all voters picking one choice, we have at minimum:
80% of the voters getting the one they hand-selected themselves.
Leaving out how the Mayor got voted in (the minimum is 50% plus one vote and this did not change), we have again 3 out of 5 on the council making the decision: 60%.
Conclusion:
80% x 60% = 48% of the voters directly supporting the decision made by the council.
That is very close to the majority of support by all voters, being the worst possible outcome, a more than half-more improvement over the current situation.
--
If we select five members in the proportional system (and then have a mayor picked from among them), then the worst scenario is a minimum of 83.33% of all voters having selected the five members.
83.33% x 60% = 49.99% of the voters as worst possible outcome of direct support via the voters.
--
Someone else said it better than I ever can:
"Two very different ideas are usually confounded under the name democracy. The pure idea of democracy, according to its definition, is the government of the whole people by the whole people, equally represented. Democracy as commonly conceived and hitherto practiced is the government of the whole people by a mere majority of the people, exclusively represented. The former is synonymous with the equality of all citizens; the latter, strangely confounded with it, is a government of privilege, in favor of the numerical majority, who alone possess practically any voice in the State. This is the inevitable consequence of the manner in which the votes are now taken, to the complete disfranchisement of minorities."
—John Stuart Mill, Representative Government, 1861
