James Gilmour wrote:
> You can have both districts and PR for the same chamber.
Yes! I like the viewpoint that both needs, ideological PR and regional PR, may
be sought after in the elections. In this process there may be rounding errors.
There is typically a tradeoff between these two needs (and possible other needs
too like simplicity).
> Of course, you cannot have single-member districts and PR, ... ...
I think there are methods that allow even this. It is possible for example to
first count nation wide the votes of each party and decide the number of seats
each party will get based on the number of votes they got. In the second phase
one would pick the winners from the single member districts so that the overall
("already agreed") distribution of seats to parties will be respected. Now we
get the rounding errors. In some single member districts where party/candidate
A won with a narrow margin we would have to violate the local plurality opinion
and pick some other candidate as the winner instead. The algoriths todo this
are simple. Voters maybe wouldn't like if some candidate with only 10% support
would be elected to represent their district. But this is tradeoff. We got
really good ideological PR and very local regional PR (one member districts)
but at some regions we had to satisfy with poor local political match. The
calculation methods should simply reflect what values
the soci
ety values the most.
BR, Juho Laatu
_____ Original message _____
Subject: Re: [EM] Competitive Districting Rule
Author: "James Gilmour" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 08th July 2006 7:26:27
> Brian Olson Sent: Saturday, July 08, 2006 8:53 AM
> I still think I want a bicameral legislature with one
> districted body and one PR/proxy/asset body.
If you want a bicameral legislature, why would you want one chamber elected so
that it is unrepresentative of those who
voted for its members? You can have both districts and PR for the same
chamber. Of course, you cannot have
single-member districts and PR, but STV-PR offers a good compromise of
effective local representation (in modestly sized
multi-member districts) and overall PR.
I would strongly support Brian's view that districting (of any kind) should
have nothing whatsoever to do with party
representation. If your voting system doesn't give acceptable PR of parties,
and you want that (an objective I would
support), then change the voting system to one that will. Don't mess with the
district boundaries in the hope of making
the elections more "competitive" - do the job properly. And to do that you
have begin by recognising that no matter
what wonderful single-winner voting system you may devise or use, you will
never get PR of parties or of voters (except
by chance) until you have got rid of the single-member districts.
For the State legislature you could easily build your multi-member districts
around the geographical features
(especially mountain ranges and uncrossable rivers) and the recognised social
and economic communities (travel to work,
travel to shop, travel to entertainment). The experience of the independent
Boundary Commissions here in Scotland has
indicated that this will be done more effectively by human beings with access
to a good database and GIS than by any
computer algorithms.
James Gilmour
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