Alex, thanks for the answer. This was the question I was shooting for...
Demorep offered numbers like... AZ House +20.53% GOP overrepresentation KY House +23.43% Dem overrepresentation One can't just add those two numbers to find out, overall, which party, and by how much, is overrepresented in our Congress. -----Original Message----- From: Alex Small [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, April 03, 2002 3:44 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [EM] Josh wrote and Demorep replied: >>Is there any way to sum the House and Senate over/under representation >>figures? > >D- It depends a bit. > >Votes for losers in gerrymander/ plurality areas are obviously ALL >*wasted*--under-represented votes. > >Votes more than the votes for the second place choice are *wasted* (though >unknown before the election). (with the winner getting a plurality only or >a majority). > >Thus -- it depends on how one looks at the math. My take on Josh's question was that he wanted to know if there's a way of saying "Overall in Congress, state X has twice as much representation per person as state Y." In a bicameral legislature comparing the power of each state is tricky. I don't know if you were on the list when I proposed an axiomatic approach to the Electoral College. Briefly, you can't always say that the power of a bloc is proportional to how many votes it has. If 4 states each had 100 votes and 1 state had 1 vote, if the quota is a majority of votes (201) and each state votes en bloc then the tiny state has just as much power as the others. Any combination of 3 states will suffice. Using my axioms (look for a post called "Electoral College: Axiomatic Approach" or something like that) if we generalize to Congress, a large state always has more power than a small state (assume that each state's Hous delegation votes en bloc, because that means the state brings all of its potential power to bear). The reason is that there may be situations where a bill needs just 2 more votes in the Senate but 10 more votes in the House. Any state can give 2 Senate votes but not all states can give 10 House votes. So one-on-one large states have more power. To quantify absolute power, rather than just establishing a ranking order, is impossible in our Congress. The reason is this: Look at two state with identical numbers of Reps, and compare them with larger state that has more Reps than those two combined. There are situations where those two small states can turn the tide but the big state can't (because the bill needs 4 more Senate votes) and there are situations where the big state can turn the tide but the two small states together can't (because the bill needs more House votes than those 2 can muster). It's really dubious to say that those two small states have equal power to the large state, or less power, or more power. If for any situation where the two small states could turn the tide the big state could also do so, and vice versa, we could say that the small states (which have equal reps and hence equal power) have half of the power of the big state. It may be tempting to say that since there are times where the big state matters more than the two small states, and times when the two small states matter more than the big state, they are equal. Here's the problem: Suppose the two small states are Alaska and Rhode Island (1 Rep each) and the big state is Texas. We could also say that Alaska and Rhode Island combined are stale-mated with California. If we say that CA is equal to {AK, RI} and TX is equal to {AK, RI} does that mean that CA and TX are equal? Not if we want equality to be transitive. There are obviously cases where CA can turn the tide but TX can't, but there are no cases where the reverse holds true. Point is, it all becomes a big mess, and it's hard to say that CA has twice the power of some other state or whatever. Hence it's really hard to measure Congressional power per person in absolute terms. We can measure Senate power per person or House power per person, but not Congressional power per person in each state. Alex ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This message is intended only for the personal and confidential use of the designated recipient(s) named above. If you are not the intended recipient of this message you are hereby notified that any review, dissemination, distribution or copying of this message is strictly prohibited. This communication is for information purposes only and should not be regarded as an offer to sell or as a solicitation of an offer to buy any financial product, an official confirmation of any transaction, or as an official statement of Lehman Brothers. Email transmission cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free. Therefore, we do not represent that this information is complete or accurate and it should not be relied upon as such. All information is subject to change without notice.
