03/31/02 - Re: More on Gerrymandering Prevention: Greetings list,
Years ago I read about a study of gerrymandering and multi-seat districts. The conclusion is that seven is the cut-off number of seats for the ability of any faction to gerrymander a district. So, eight or ten would be a good minimum number of seats for districts. But, if the public wants a closer member-link, I suggest my system of Districts Within Districts. As an example, we could take the current single-seat districts and pair them up to form two seat sub-districts and then take five or more of these sub-districts to form a Greater District. Some elections would only need a few Greater Districts while very large elections would use many Greater Districts. The voter is allowed to rank candidates and/or parties in any mix. The only party candidates a voter can rank are the candidates running in his local sub-district, but he can rank any party that has at least one candidate running somewhere in the Greater District. An independent candidate is treated the same as a political party, that is, a voter can rank any independent candidate running anywhere in the Greater District. It is as if the independent candidate is a small political party which has only one candidate running. The votes of all the sub-districts are added together to yield the first count of the ballots for the Greater District. Preference Voting/STV will be the method of tallying the ballots and the quota is based on the seats and total votes of the Greater District. Districts Within Districts will give us the gerrymandering prevention ability of eight or more seats and the closer member-link of two-seat sub-districts. Regards, Donald Davison, host of New Democracy at http://www.mich.com/~donald +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ | Q U O T A T I O N | | "Democracy is a beautiful thing, | | except that part about letting just any old yokel vote." | | - Age 10 - | +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ APV Approval Voting ATV Alternative Vote aka IRV Instant Runoff Voting aka IRVing FPTP First Past The Post aka Plurality NOTA None of the Above aka RON Re-Open Nominations STV Single Transferable Vote aka Preference Voting aka Choice Voting aka Hare Clarke aka Hare Preferential Voting Please be advised that sending email to me allows me to quote from it and/or forward the entire email to others.
