I agree in principle with Gilmour that some PR systems - such as my own "asset voting" and "reweighted range voting" as well as PR-STV systems - see
http://www.rangevoting.org/Asset.html http://www.rangevoting.org/RRV.html http://www.rangevoting.org/PropRep.html for background - should cure underrepresentation of racial minorities. BUT this conclusion is NOT based on real world data. Neither asset nor RRV have ever been tried as far as I know; and while PR-STV has been tried, it plainly has NOT led to tremendously representative legislatures. Instead it is based on the mathematical theorem that if people vote in a racial manner, then if X percent of people vote black, and enough black candidates are available, then we get X percent black winners. Party-list-based PR systems should also lead in principle to representativeness, e.g. if X percent vote for the "black party" then X percent of the seats will be won by that party. But, for example, Israel with a party-list PR system has an extremely ethnically biased legislature. Far more so than the USA's plurality-single-winner-district legislature. So in practice this mathematical conclusion too can fail to be realized. I believe that is mainly because Israel's system is rigged in various ways reminiscent of the USA's "Jim Crow" era and South Africa "apartheid." Finally I've been asked (since I advocate RANGE VOTING) what that would do for/against racial minorities. I must admit that I currently do not have the faintest idea. -- Warren D. Smith http://RangeVoting.org <-- add your endorsement (by clicking "endorse" as 1st step) and math.temple.edu/~wds/homepage/works.html ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
