On 13.6.2012, at 3.06, Michael Ossipoff wrote: > Though census-based re-districting is usually discussed for > single-member districts, there's no reason why it couldn't be used for > multi-member districts.
That's true if the district borders are just random borders drawn on the map. The borderlines may hower be also natural borderlines. For example in Finland the districts are for the most part historical areas further back from the history than the country's independence. I guess many people would feel upset if they would be forced to be represented by other than the representatives of their own historical area. One key element in democracy is to structure administration (families, municipalities counties, states, countries) and representation based on natural borders. If people trust, have same viewpoints and feel connected to their fellow citizens, the system is likely to work better as a whole. (Btw, in Finland the government is currently actively trying to rearrange the municipalities and make them bigger. Many people don't like the idea of making such changes to the historical municipalities with stong identity. In Finland municipalieties are quite autonomous and they have strong democratic traditions.) I also note that of course the differences in regional disproportionality due to the sizes of multi-member districts are much smaller than regional disproportionality caused by single-member districts. In the case of Finland the main problem with regard to district sizes is the problem that it is very difficult for the smallest parties to get any representatives in the smallest districts. There will thus be bias in political proportionality (not so much in regional proportionality). Juho ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
