> On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 1:43 PM, James Gilmour wrote: > > In fact, the BEST method of ensuring fair representation for ALL > > minorities, including those concentrated in particular localities, is > > to elect all the members at large. If the voting support for any > > particular minority is large enough to justify one seat on the city > > council, then that's what they will win. No single-member district > > system can ever ensure that.
Kathy Dopp > Sent: Sunday, February 01, 2009 10:30 PM > Gee. I wonder why in practice that never seems to work in > locales where STV methods have been implemented. Please provide references to the evidence for this statement with regard to STV-PR. (NB My comments related assemblies elected by STV-PR, not to IRV elections.) > Simple correct mathematics say that your claim is wrong as > far as single-member district systems. Here are the results of the 2005 UK General Election (UK House of Commons at Westminster, London) for the 59 single-member electoral districts in Scotland in which the "winner" is determined by plurality. Only four political parties contested all districts and only candidates of those four parties won seats. The fifth party contested 58 of the 59 districts. Party %votes %seats Labour 39.5 69.5 Lib Dem 22.6 18.6 SNP 17.7 10.2 Conservative 15.8 1.7 SSP 1.9 16 other parties 2.5 That doesn't present a picture of fair (proportional) representation to me. NB These results are fairly typical of single-member plurality elections in the UK. In that election 39 of the 59 MPs (66%) were elected without a majority of the votes in the respective single-member districts. The lowest level of support for a "winner" was 31.4% of the votes in that single-member electoral district. 54% of those who voted in that election (1,265,097 voters) elected no-one and have no representative in the UK House of Commons, the most powerful House in our Parliamentary system. If these 59 MPs had been elected "at large" by STV-PR the results of that election would have been VERY different. NB I do not advocate electing 59 MPs "at large" - it is not necessary to elect so many in each multi-member district to obtain the advantages STV-PR would give in fair representation. James No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.10.16/1928 - Release Date: 31/01/2009 20:03 ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
