Dear Elections List,
On Dec 9, 2006, at 3:13 PM, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote:
Joe--
You wrote:
The issue of whether or not a particular method of apportionment is
biased is rather complex it seems to me.
I reply:
If we consistently and systematically give more seats per person to
smaller states,
What is your definition of a small state?
that is biased.
That's what Hill does. Hill is biased.
How do YOU measure bias?
Can you provide the data for bias based on your definition of small
state and bias?
Furthermore, apportionments can be used for other problems other than
the US House of Representatives. Does this data show no bias too?
That's what bias is: A systematic disparity in seats per person.
Plainly Hill has that, and plainly Webster does not have it.
Complex? I suggest that Huntington and Hill invented complexity
that isn't really there.
I agree that Huntington and Hill managed to obfuscate the subject
for Congress, and may have come up with their own creative and
complicated definitions of prioportionality and bias. But those
things have simple definitions that are universally agreed-upon.
As for how to deal with the requriement that each state get a House
seat, that's a separate subject. Of course Hill, just by its own
rules, automatically gives a seat to every state that contains at
least one person. But I think that most people interpret the
Constitution as saying to give each state a seat, and then allocate
the other seats in proportion to population.
By systematically favoring small states, Hill is in clear violation
of the Constitution.
When a relatively recent case reached the Supreme Court the Court
unanimously disagreed. The mathematician who prepared the brief for
the government was Lawrence Ernst. I thought that the briefs he
prepared raised some interesting issues and he published his work in
a scholarly journal afterwards. In the new edition of Balinski and
Young's book they not only fail to comment on Ernst's paper but also
they do not list it in their biblography. It seems to me Ernst's
paper is worth looking at:
http://www.bls.gov/ore/abstract/st/st940450.htm
Cheers,
Joe
Mike Ossipoff
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------------------------------------------------
Joseph Malkevitch
Department of Mathematics
York College (CUNY)
Jamaica, New York 11451
Phone: 718-262-2551 (Voicemail available)
My new email is:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
web page:
http://www.york.cuny.edu/~malk
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