[kelnos]

The original point of having districts was because states are "too large" and you want people representing an even smaller geographical area so that truly local issues are represented.

And in many places that's still the case, and is actually useful and important to get local issues surfaced properly.

For states with heavily gerrymandered districts, though, I agree: might as well just do away with districts and have the entire state vote for their entire roster of representatives.

[triceratops]

So instead of making a choice between 2-5 candidates (major 2 plus a few independents/smaller parties), every voter has to rank up to 50 candidates (assuming ranked choice voting)? How do you expect voters to know the policy positions of that many candidates? They may as well be picking at random.

If not ranked choice voting, how would this even work?

[caf]

If you're going to have a large multi-member district with proportional representation, it's not essential to use ranked-choice voting - you can get a reasonable result just by having people vote once for the ticket of candidates they prefer, then allocating the seats proportionally.

That said, ranked-choice voting in large multi-member districts is certainly possible: It is usual to require voters to rank only as many candidates as there are vacancies, though they can number more if they wish to (consequently they don't need to understand the detailed policy positions of the minor candidates that have no realistic chance of election). Voters in such systems tend to firstly order the parties based on the policy positions of those parties, then order the candidates within those parties if they have a strong opinion of the relative merits of those candidates.

Here's an example of a media summary of the candidates running in such an election: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-17/federal-election-2019...

[triceratops]

Thanks TIL.

[zhoujianfu]

Yep, via ranked choice voting and open primaries!