On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 4:20 AM, Aaron Armitage<eutychus_sl...@yahoo.com> wrote: > I would think that presetting the desired boundaries would avoid that.
Pre-set boundaries have the disadvantage that the lead to imbalances in the voter to seat ratios. A 5 seat district could have a population of anywhere between 4.5 and 5.5 of the national average (roughly). This gives a potential imbalance of +/- 10%. Ofc, if the districts are very large, then this is less of an issue. Also, the elimination of gerrymandering might be worth the slight imbalance. The imbalance is worst when the districts are small. One option is to have a process for combining smaller districts. For example, any district which has less than 5 seats is combined with a neighbour. Once that is done, any district with more than 12 seats is split in 2 so that each part has at least 5 seats. Ofc, that would like not be acceptable in the US, assuming by district, you mean State. > [if both used PR-STV] I see no reason for having two houses, in that case. It probably depends on how you do it. In the US, you could in principle elect the 2 Senators using PR-STV and the N Representatives using PR-STV. This would mean that there is still an imbalance between the 2 Houses, due to the population imbalance between the States. Another option is longer terms. For example, you could expand the terms for the Senate. If you elected 5 Senators by PR-STV, every 2 years, for a 20 year term, then that would give you a 50 member Senate. The House could also be elected by PR-STV, but as a single block. The effect would be that the Senate is more stable (as it is the average viewpoint over a 20 year period), while the House would be a snap-shot. Also, at any time at most 10% of the Senate would be seeking re-election, so it would be less subject to short terrm election planning. Ofc, with 20 year terms, many Senators would probably just seek 1 term. This may lead to the Senate being considered "old and wise" or maybe just massively corrupt due to the lack of having to stand for re-election. In Ireland, the Seanad doesn't have veto powers over legislation. It only has the ability to delay legislation for 180 days. It isn't actually very powerful anyway, as the Government has the right to appoint 11 members (out of 60), so they always have a majority in the Seanad (though at the moment, their majority is zero, so they rely on the Chairman's casting vote). I would also add a rule that Senators and Representatives can't become members of the other House for at least 5 years after they have left their original house. This is to try to encourage different types of people to stand for each House. ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info