At the subnational or individual level? Apportioning e.g. states this way has the issue of being arbitrary and sensitive to the specific borders you draw, but was proposed by Madison IIRC. You can “gerrymander” these states (intentionally or unintentionally) by packing a lot of high-productivity citizens into a state with a majority of low-income voters.
At the individual level, weighted setups like this were very common in the 19th century. I know Prussia/Germany, Belgium, Austria, and France used class-based voting systems of this sort. These systems were mostly swept away in the late 19th and early 20th centuries under pressure from liberals and social democrats (sometimes peacefully, as in Belgium, and sometimes by revolutionaries as in Germany).
Of these, the Prussian three-class franchise was the “purest”/closest to what you describe: people were assigned one of 3 classes based on how much they paid in taxes, with all three groups paying the same amount overall. (Taxes were roughly proportional to income.) Each of these groups received the same number of representatives.
the three-class franchise seems like one reasonable implementation of this type of policy within a unitary state. within a US-like federation, you could have the house continue to function as it does right now, and have a senate where the number of senators is proportional to the tax revenue contributed by each state.
Yep! Like I mentioned, this has the problem that state borders are fairly arbitrary and let you “launder” one group’s wealth into another group’s voting power.
But I just remembered—before Reynolds v. Sims established “one man, one vote”, New Hampshire used this exact system. From 1784 through 1964, districts were apportioned based on taxable wealth.
To be more precise—I don’t think it’s logically coherent to apportion voting power between states according to wealth, but between people by population (i.e. equally). Either you want to upweight high taxpayers or you don’t.
At the subnational or individual level? Apportioning e.g. states this way has the issue of being arbitrary and sensitive to the specific borders you draw, but was proposed by Madison IIRC. You can “gerrymander” these states (intentionally or unintentionally) by packing a lot of high-productivity citizens into a state with a majority of low-income voters.
At the individual level, weighted setups like this were very common in the 19th century. I know Prussia/Germany, Belgium, Austria, and France used class-based voting systems of this sort. These systems were mostly swept away in the late 19th and early 20th centuries under pressure from liberals and social democrats (sometimes peacefully, as in Belgium, and sometimes by revolutionaries as in Germany).
Of these, the Prussian three-class franchise was the “purest”/closest to what you describe: people were assigned one of 3 classes based on how much they paid in taxes, with all three groups paying the same amount overall. (Taxes were roughly proportional to income.) Each of these groups received the same number of representatives.
the three-class franchise seems like one reasonable implementation of this type of policy within a unitary state. within a US-like federation, you could have the house continue to function as it does right now, and have a senate where the number of senators is proportional to the tax revenue contributed by each state.
Yep! Like I mentioned, this has the problem that state borders are fairly arbitrary and let you “launder” one group’s wealth into another group’s voting power.
But I just remembered—before Reynolds v. Sims established “one man, one vote”, New Hampshire used this exact system. From 1784 through 1964, districts were apportioned based on taxable wealth.
To be more precise—I don’t think it’s logically coherent to apportion voting power between states according to wealth, but between people by population (i.e. equally). Either you want to upweight high taxpayers or you don’t.