Juho: Ok, I'll let this subject go, but I just want to say one more thing, and then show an example.
Your justifications for LR sound arbitrary. Just as you said, anyone could express preference for any sort of standard, and no one can say that your standard isn't right for you. That's why it's best to look at _objective_ standards that we can all agree on. Say a Hare quota of people has a certain number of representatives. Another Hare quota has a different number of representatives. Surely no one would deny that the number of representatives that a Hare quota of people has is its "representation". Now, if a Hare quota of people in your district has more representation than a Hare quota of people in my district, that's what we want to avoid in PR. We could speak of the difference or the ratio of your and my representatives per Hare quota, but, as I said, difference is what is relevant in Congressional and Parliamentary voting. In the following example, Hall's method gives the same seat allocation as Sainte-Lague/Webster. To dramatically bring out the difference between LR and SL, this example has districts greatly differing in size. In this example election, there are 3 districts, A, B, and C. S/Q means seats per Hare quota. Largest-Remainder: District......Hare.Quotas.......Seats......S/Q A................50.332................50............9934 B................1.335...................2.............1.498 C................1.333...................1...............0.75 Sainte-Lague/Webster: A................50.332................51............1.0133 B.................1.335.................1...............0.749 C.................1.333.................1...............0.75 Difference between largest and smallest S/Q: SL: .2643 LR: .748 The difference in the representation per Hare quota, between the best and least represented districts, is about three times as great with LR, in comparison to SL. In LR, you'd have Hare quotas in those two districts differing in their representaton by 3/4 of a seat. Is that really what you think is fair? Mike Ossipoff ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
