http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation discusses this issue. There are a fixed number of seats, but you collect together by party. So if you formed a new party (say the Hacker news party), people all over the US could vote Hacker News. And the intent of the system is that at the end of the day, if x% of the US population voted Hacker News, approximately x% of the representatives would be Hacker News reps.
The difference is that people self-identify to group together by party, instead of location. So your rep would then be the Hacker News rep. Problems with this system involve fragmentation (you end up with dozens of parties and nothing gets done). Imagine instead of one Ron Paul voting no on every issue, every congressman votes no on every issue because they are all so fragmented. You need a civilized bunch of people who actually believe in consensus and giving ground to get things done (good luck with that).
Look, we all know the US electoral system is broken. It's designed by a group of dead guys, who were smart and forward thinking, but they didn't know of things like Arrows Impossibility Theorem or mechanism design. If we got the smartest 10 guys alive today to design a new constitution from the ground up, we'd surely do better. But of course that's a non-starter. And I've surely destroyed the conversation by not adhering to the current convention of mindless hero worship of the founding fathers. But face it, the constitution is obsolete. It is over 200 years old and aging and creaking. Will Wilkinson's take on the original Fareed Zakaria article here is probably the best Piece I've read on this issue: http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/04/co...
The difference is that people self-identify to group together by party, instead of location. So your rep would then be the Hacker News rep. Problems with this system involve fragmentation (you end up with dozens of parties and nothing gets done). Imagine instead of one Ron Paul voting no on every issue, every congressman votes no on every issue because they are all so fragmented. You need a civilized bunch of people who actually believe in consensus and giving ground to get things done (good luck with that).
Look, we all know the US electoral system is broken. It's designed by a group of dead guys, who were smart and forward thinking, but they didn't know of things like Arrows Impossibility Theorem or mechanism design. If we got the smartest 10 guys alive today to design a new constitution from the ground up, we'd surely do better. But of course that's a non-starter. And I've surely destroyed the conversation by not adhering to the current convention of mindless hero worship of the founding fathers. But face it, the constitution is obsolete. It is over 200 years old and aging and creaking. Will Wilkinson's take on the original Fareed Zakaria article here is probably the best Piece I've read on this issue: http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/04/co...