Juho: You said:
> Btw, this strategy is much less risky when we talk about splitting > districts, since the population of districts is very stable when compared to > possible risky changes in party support. I don't know if U.S. states are allowed to split. Are Finnish PR districts allowed to split? But remember that, in order for that strategy to really gain anything, they'd have to split to, say, a size that barely rounds up to 1 seat. They'd become single-member districts. Or 2-member districts at the most. I just can't believe that California would split into about 53 states, even if allowed to, for apportionment advantage. Each new state, then, would be the population-size of barely over half of a House of Representatives district. Note that during the years during which we used Webster, California didn't split into lots of HR-district-size states. > > > But what if it isn't the result of splitting strategy? What if those are the > natural spontaneous parties and their vote totals? Does the result look > wrong? It isn't wrong. SL, by doing what it does, is minimizing the > deviation of each party's s/q from the ideal equal s/q value. > > It might _look_ wrong at first glance, because it "violates quote", but it > isn't wrong,in terms of fair s/q. > > > Yes, some people might look at the s/q values Some people? But not you. :-) Remember, I tried to agree to disagree about whether people have a right to equal representation. You refused to disagree about that. You said that you agree that people have a right to equal representation. Equal representation means the same representation for everyone. The same representation for everyone means the same representation per person. The same representation per person means equal s/q. So, do you or do you not agree that people have a right to equal representation?. If you do, then I have good news for you: Sainte-Lague/Webster puts each party's or district's s/q as close as possible to the ideal equal s/q. You said: >, but I'd expect someone to > notice also the unfair use of the quotas / votes. What unfair use of the quotas/votes? Are your referring to splitting strategy in SL? I addressed that. I said that, if there turned out to be a splitting strategy, and if it remained even when SL's 1st denominator is raised from 1 to 2, then Largest Remainder would be the solution. If you aren't referring to splitting strategy, then what are you referring to. > > > >> >> . In the S1+N seats case the large party gets 43.48% of the seats with 61% >> of the votes. Or in other words, all 20 seats with only 12.2 quotas (7.8 >> extra seats), or only 20 seats with 28.06 quotas (8.06 seats too little). > > > [endquote] > > That's ok if the parties are genuine, natural and not the result of > splitting strategy. As I described above. > > > I'm afraid some people might get upset if they think they were entitled to 8 > seats more but will get none Undoubtedly. But thinking that they're entitled to 8 seats, and being entitled to 8 seats aren't quite the same thing. , and will lose a very clear (28 seats vs. 18 > seats) majority. There are thus many approaches to measuring the fairness of > the results, and the quota based approach may be a very natural one to check > first. You're espousing a fairness-measure that is different from equal representation for all, one that is in conflict with equal representation for all. You speak of "the quota-based approach", as if you think that the Hare quota is the only divisor to use, or has some privileged status among divisors. Dividing the parties' votes by the same divisor, any common divisor, and rounding off the quotients to the nearest whole number, will put the parties s/q as close as possible to the ideal equal s/q. If you use the Hare quota as the divisor, for that procedure, you'll often get a total number of seats different from the desired house-size. So you use a different divisor. Don't be wedded to the Hare quota. If we allow a variable house size, then we could say: Divide each party's votes by the Hare quota (based on some most preferred house-size), and round off the quotients to the nearest whole number. That rounded off quotient is the number of seats to assign to each party. That would be a fine method. But the fact that that divisor is a "Hare quota" based on some preferred (but not required) house-size doesn't make it special or privileged. How can you think that is somehow fairer to use that divisor instead of some other divisor? Mike Ossipoff ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
