Hacker News Reader

Comment by deadbadger | Hacker News Reader

A related effect, of course, is that it becomes practically impossible for politicians to plan for any sort of career, or parties to make personnel plans with more than a single-parliament horizon. Even a candidate with a hefty 60% support can expect only a single term at more than even odds.

Not only would this rob the legislature of experience, it would also mean politicians towards the end of each term would be focused on securing their next job, rather than performing their current one.

View on HN

Better that than the current career plan for a politician:

- Oxford PPE

- Policy researcher

- Safe seat

- Minister

- Non-exec chairman/director

Well, possibly - but the point is that while ubiquitous safe seats are obviously detrimental, so is their elimination at all costs. The problem with safe seats isn't that popular politicians are consistently elected; it's that minority voices in those constituencies are marginalised. You can certainly address the latter by preventing the former, but it's a far from ideal way of doing so.

(Edited for ghastly sentence construction, sorry)

Och yes, I don't think I'd be quite so cavalier about my advocacy of this particular voting system if there was any chance of it actually being used.

(A bit like the one time I voted for the Scottish Socialist Party - I only did so for their entertainment value, not because they would have any likely control over policies).

> Not only would this rob the legislature of experience,

I'm not sure it does, or at least not drastically: It robs the legislature of individual experience, but on average there's no reason you'd expect each politician to be in for the first time. They could even rerun later.

> it would also mean politicians towards the end of each term would be focused on securing their next job, rather than performing their current one.

This is a really easy problem to solve: You give a recently ousted MP a paid vacation after their term is up.

(This works better of course if you stagger elections rather than electing everyone at once, but it's fine without)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com