On 14.6.2012, at 8.12, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
>> One key element in democracy is to structure administration (families,
>> municipalities counties, states, countries) and representation based on
>> natural >borders.
>
> Well, if you mean rivers and ridges, gullies, etc., if that's what
> people want, it too would work fine with PR.
Maybe more cultural than geographical but of course these two do correlate. In
Finland this includes e.g. dialects, which means prehistoric tribal borders,
somewhat different mentality and traditions of these areas, traditional
influence areas of some major cities. (Note btw that few centuries back the
rivers and lakes were the highways of those times, and therefore also today
they are typically the tying elements inside the historical regions rather than
elements that would separate regions from each others.)
>> 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.
>
> Not a valid comparison. Single member districts aren't intended or
> meant to be proportional.
I meant regional proportionality (not political proportionality), i.e. making
the number of representatives per population equal in each area.
>> 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).
>
> If political proportionality and inclusion is considered important,
> then maybe some of the existing districts could combine, to improve
> that.
Yes, the current government that rejected the reform proposal of the previous
govenrment plans now something like this. Many people don't like the idea of
mixing the representation of areas that are considered historically separate
("I want my own people represent me, not those of the neighbour region", "who
guarantees that the neighbour region does not get disproportionally large part
of the shared seats", "why do you plan to combine the regions that way and not
this way"). This approach would make the districts more artificial than the
current districts that are based on historical areas.
> But, if optimally equal district representation per person is desired,
> then you want Sainte-Lague for allocating seats to districts.
They ended up using Largest Remainder back in history. I'm ok with that. :-)
Juho
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