Crossing the floor analogy

My MP's weekly chat touched on whether a by-election should be required after an MP crosses the floor. One participant proposed that having a by-election every time someone crossed the floor is like requiring a referendum on every single issue. His logic was that you choose the individual to represent you, and they should represent their constitutents no matter what. Moments after the chat ended, I thought of a mostly-apt analogy to counter this point. It's a bit weak in places, but it communicates the general point.

Affiliation with a political party is giving a pre-arranged set of positions on issues. When a candidate is affiliated with a particular party, you don't have to find out their position on every issue on an ad-hoc basis - you can just look at their party platform. For some people, the individual representative may be more important, but others consider this set of positions on issues to be more important.

Think of a cable TV company. The party's position is like a channel bundle. It shows you the kind of messages you can expect to receive. Obviously you don't know the exact shows you'll get because TV lineups are changing all the time, but it gives you a general idea. The TV company also offers regular and high-definition broadcasting.* The type of broadcasting is like the individual you vote for. It is the medium through which the message is communicated.

Now imagine you call up your TV company.

"I would like to subscribe to the News and Documentary bundle, so I can get all the latest current events, and documentaries on all kinds of interesting subjects," you say. "And I just got a brand new high-definition TV, so I would like to get a high-definition signal, so I can see terrorist attacks and lions eating zebras in vivid detail."

The TV company says, "Yes, that's perfectly fine, we can do that. You will have the News and Documentary bundle in high definition."

Then, a few days later, you turn on the TV and your news and documentary channels are gone. In there place, you have all kinds of sports channels. You call up your cable company and ask what's up.
"Oh, we decided to switch you to the Sports bundle. It's far more popular," they tell you.

"But I specifically requested the News and Documentary bundle!" you say.

"I know," they say, "But with the Sports bundle you can get all the hockey and baseball games, plus World Cup soccer and even cricket matches from India!"

"But I don't want to watch those things, I want to watch news and documentaries!"

"But the Sports bundle will make much better use you for HDTV. More sports are broadcast in HDTV, so you can enjoy the colour and clarity of your brand new set. After all, you watch TV for its technical quality, not for its content."

Now I know some people do prioritize technical quality over content, but you can at least see why content is important. Similarly, while some people do vote for an individual, you should be able to see why party platform is important, and it's disrespectful to the voters for their elected representatives to go switching on them, as though party affiliation is negligible.

*(I know broadcasting isn't the correct word for distribution of high-definition TV signals, but I forget the correct term and it's really beside the point. Feel free to give me the correct term in comments)