Proportional Representation Quotes
Despite his warning---and that of others—all that they could get agreement upon had each of these three weaknesses. After winning the American Revolution, the new country found the Articles of Confederation and the Continental Congress completely inadequate and finally in 1787 there was a Constitutional Convention held in secret in Philadelphia to overcome the weaknesses of the existing structure of which the warnings of Rush were three of the problems that had to be fixed.
The motion was accepted and became part of our Constitution. This protection for the smaller States was proposed by the delegate from one of the largest States.
This seeming abnormality was the result of most of the House of Representatives Congressional Districts being heavily weighted to one party or the other, some the result of demographics and most the result of intentional gerrymandering by the politicians in the State Legislatures. The Republicans at that time were much better at this than the Democrats and very few of the districts were competitive between the parties. Many Democratic urban districts had small democratic areas of the suburbs added to them giving them a larger majority than they needed to win while taking them out of the suburban districts making them easier to win for the Republicans. The original Constitutional concept that the House represented the people proportionately was then undermined as the Republicans could easily win the vast majority of the congressional seats and at the some tome garner millions of votes less nationally than the Democrats,
The Chinese law requires the candidates who are selected to run in elections be chosen in a “broadly representative” manner. To the Democratic protesters in Hong Kong this means primary elections. However Leung and the authorities in Peking argue that numerical representation does not necessarily result in “broad” representation in that the majority can decide to freeze out or prevent minorities from running for office. See {642336}.
These were the same issues that were being fought over in every industrialized nation at the time.
