Re: [EM] No geographical districts
On Sep 5, 2008, at 2:26 , Raph Frank wrote: On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 10:13 PM, Juho [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The simplest (not necessarily optimal) approach to implement multiple dimensions is one where you simply elect representatives starting from the ones with strongest support (e.g. best candidate of the largest party in the largest district), skip candidates that can not be elected any more (e.g. district already full, party already full), and continue until all seats have been filled. At some point in the chain all requirements of all dimensions are met if they are strong enough (and if there are suitable candidates left). I would probably elect the weakest of each party's strongest candidates, e.g. find the strongest candidate from each party and then assign a seat to that weakest of them. Why weakest? What is the weakest of each party's strongest candidates? Juho Once a party gets its allocation of seats, it can't be assigned any more. This is to allow small parties fill in their seats before large parties can lock them out. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info ___ All new Yahoo! Mail The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use. - PC Magazine http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] No geographical districts
On Sep 5, 2008, at 4:00 , Stéphane Rouillon wrote: Hello Juho, using age, gender or other virtual dimension to build virtual districts replaces geographic antagonism by generation antagonism. Ok, also that may happen. Each society should pick dimensions that suit them best. (I'm just listing different options.) The idea is to get equivalent sample that are not opposed by intrinsec construction. If the intention is not to divide people to groups that defend the interests of that group (or just feel like being part of the same group), then one could get rid of the districts altogether and use only one nation wide district. Thus we may find neutral decision takers that will minimize the overall bad impacts of a decision, thus maximize to the best of their knowledge the decisions for all the electorate. If you split representative into groups who have divergent opinions, the result will not optimize common interest, it will only illustrate the rapport de force (maybe translated as power struggle) between the representatives. Age representatives would hardly stay neutral while deciding retirement fees and pensions for example. The Irish senate based on profession seems one step toward getting neutral decision takers for deciding the localization of projects for example. I prefer equivalent samples of the entire electorate (phone numbers or hash tables using names could work too, but it has some slight discrepancies and problems...) Yes, if one wants to avoid any groupings (like age groups, regional groups, races, political parties) then maybe electing a random set of citizens (trying to avoid giving them the opportunity to organize themselves) could be the best approach. Some groupings are however likely to emerge afterwards even if we would elect the representatives by some random selection method. Juho From: Juho [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Election Methods Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [EM] No geographical districts Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 00:13:34 +0300 Geographical proportionality is one specific dimension. Most other dimensions could be called political dimensions. Also groupings that do not live in any specific compact area could be called political groupings. In principle they could form a party and that way get a proportional number of representatives. (This is also in line with the geographical proportionality related target of guaranteeing representation from all _geographic_ areas.) Many political systems have chosen geographical districts to be fixed in the sense that people automatically vote for the district where they live in. In the political dimension people are typically allowed to pick the group that they want to represent them. It is possible to have election methods that support multiple dimensions, i.e. more than these two. One could e.g. simply have multiple orthogonal party structures and then in the vote counting process force the representatives to be elected so that proportionality will be respected in all dimensions. There could be also additional fixed dimensions like automatic fixed sex or age based proportionality. Some of the additional dimensions could also be virtual districts in the sense that each voter would be registered in exactly one of them, and probably also vote only for candidates that belong to one's own virtual district. I understood that you would use virtual districts to replace the current geographical districts (and the geographical proportionality that they represent). The simplest (not necessarily optimal) approach to implement multiple dimensions is one where you simply elect representatives starting from the ones with strongest support (e.g. best candidate of the largest party in the largest district), skip candidates that can not be elected any more (e.g. district already full, party already full), and continue until all seats have been filled. At some point in the chain all requirements of all dimensions are met if they are strong enough (and if there are suitable candidates left). (Some dimensions could be one-directional in the sense that one would aim at guaranteeing at least a proportional share of the seats but would not limit them to this number. For example one could allow all members of some minority to require proportional representation by marking this in their ballot. Other voters would however not be required to vote either for or against this minority. Any candidate (or any party, of any regions etc.) could belong to this group. One should however not allow these lists to overrule party proportionality or other complete dimensions (to avoid riding under two flags (party and minority) and getting also corresponding double representation).) Small ad here too. Trees (hierarchical candidate lists) offer multiple dimensions in a simplified
Re: [EM] No geographical districts
On 9/11/08, Juho [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Why weakest? What is the weakest of each party's strongest candidates? It means find the candidate in each party with the highest vote. These are the party's stongest candidates. You then assign the seat to the weakest of them (but only if the party is entitled to another seat). My thinking was that if you assign them in a different order, you could end up with a situation where a small party cannot be assigned a seat that they are entitled to as they only ran in a few districts and those districts have already been filled. By assigning to the weakest party first, the chances of that are lessened. A larger party would likely have someone running in all constituencies, so should have someone to take their seats near the end. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] No geographical districts
On 9/5/08, Stéphane Rouillon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://www.citizensassembly.bc.ca/public/get_involved/submission/R/ROUILLON-65 You are welcome to comment. At least I hope you have fun reading it if you find the time. Your implementation of IRV is non-standard (though I agree with the none of the above change and it is needed for your 2nd step). Perhaps, votes would only go to none if the voter actually ranks none. E.g. A 1 B C None 2 would transfer to none if A is eliminated, but would be exhausted if the voter didn't vote for None. However, that would mean that the voter has no effect on the PR stage, so probably a bad idea. it might be better to use a divisor method (d'Hondt or Webster's methods) to share out the seats. This has some advantages in terms of resistance to weird effects (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabama_paradox#Alabama_Paradox ). Your method looks like the largest remainder method. I also don't agree with independents getting a seat with 0.51 seats worth of votes, but that is another discussion (see previous PR thread) Also, you could include the None votes as a None-party. This party could be assigned seats. They would be left vacant. My opinion is that they should be considered to vote against every bill (though with the crutch option, it probably doesn't matter). Alternatively, they could just trigger a by-election. For example, of all the valid arrangements (each party has the correct number of seats), find the one where the elected representatives have the highest total votes. I am not sure I agree with the 'crutch' but, if you must have it, I would suggest a modification. After the election, the new parliament tries to nominate a PM. First they vote to keep the current PM. If he fails to get a majority, he becomes a caretaker-PM and he and the cabinet can't excersise major powers, without consent of the House. They can then try to nominate others in the ordinary way. If after 1 month, no nomination motion has obtained majority support, they can attempt to use the crutch rule. Any member of the House may stand as a candidate. The House holds three sequential votes. In the first round, an approval ballot is used. For the last 2, each member votes for 1 candidate. The candidate who wins the plurality of the vote is considered nominated to be PM (with crutch support). The additional candidates are added, but they only remain members of the House for as long as the PM remains PM. Also, they cannot vote in motions which nominate someone else to be PM (or motions which declare that the PM has gained support of the majority of the House). They also cannot vote in motions which call for a new election to be held. The term limit is reduced on a pro-rata basis. If the PM is PM for 1 year and then they manage to get a majority, then under your example, that would count as 7/4 * 1 year = 1.75 years used. Thus the term would have 2.25 years left (of 4). This system has the advantage that it allows the smaller parties the option to try to form a coalition. If the split was 40%, 30%, 30%, under your rule, the 40% party could declare a minority government against the wishes of the 60% of the other 2 parties. It also allows 2 parties which has a larger vote between them access to the crutch system. For example, if the split was 40%, 30%, 15%, 9%, 6%. It would allow a coalition of the 30%+15% parties to form the minority government as it has more votes than the 40% party. In addition, it allows a moverment by the House back to a majority government. In the above example, if the 40% party finally managed to get the 9% and 6% parties into a coalition, they could vote to nominate the leader of 40% party as PM. The additional members due to the crutch would not be allowed to vote for this motion, so the new coalition would win by 55% to 45%. It might also be worth allowing them to switch crutch-coalition. For example, once the 40% party gets support of the 6% party, it now has the plurality of the vote. It might also be worth having a rule that within 1 year of the end of term, the crutch rule cannot be used. I was thinking that a better way of having Heterogeneous districts would be to based them on polling stations. If each district needed 10 polling stations, then you could randomly allocate polling stations to districts. This doesn't get perfect blinding, but is much easier to implement. This might be better than social security number as the districts could be completely different each election. Also, social security numbers are static (and set by the government), so districts might have overlap from the previous election. If you waited until the last possible moment to decide the polling stations, then a politician wouldn't know where to direct pork and in any case, it would be hard to direct it at a specific polling station area. I don't know if a party 'front-bench' member would actually be willing to stand against the cabinet.
Re: [EM] No geographical districts
Raph Frank wrote: On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 2:00 AM, Stéphane Rouillon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello Juho, using age, gender or other virtual dimension to build virtual districts replaces geographic antagonism by generation antagonism. The idea is to get equivalent sample that are not opposed by intrinsec construction. A simple option would be to convert the date of birth into a number, but have the year the the least significant part.. 16-04-82 would become 160,482 The public could then be sorted by those numbers. In effect, you are splitting people by the day of the month they are born on, if there is a tie, you use month and only use year at the end. This would give a mix of ages, genders and any other measure in each district. It is pretty much equivalent to just randomly distributing the voters between the districts, but unlike a random system, it is harder to corrupt. It could have a similar result to having alphabetic ranked ballots, only with birthdays instead of last names. The selection would be biased in the direction of those that are born close to January. It may not matter, but it would appear unfair. If you have computers, you could just sort by SHA512(name concatenated with birthdate concatenated with the year of the election). That's probably overkill (since even if you could break SHA-512, which would be a feat by itself, you'd have to convince the favored member to change his name to something suitable), but then there'd be a sufficient margin of safety. Randomness without randomness. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] No geographical districts
On 9/4/08, Stéphane Rouillon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Why not self-chosen districts ? Because then the last half of voters would be able to pick between district already composed of majoritarians ideologies. Again the least organized and the smallest group would finish splitted between several districts where they would be in minority. Do you really believe that if you represent 1% of an ideology, others political parties will keep the last of 100 seats for you? With an FPTP system they would gang up as much districts to 51% and let you be minoritarian in the district(s) you want. Self chosen districts can work in many ways. If they are completely free, you are right. The optimal for a majority group is to spread out evenly and win them all. If you assign by birth date, you get near perfect spreading out by default. A majority party will likely end up with a majority in every district. It even neutralises any geographic variation in the State. One option would be to allow the group itself decide who can and who can't join their district. For example, it could be based on a candidate or committee. They get to vet any potential new members. Perhaps, any group of at least 11 people could form a committee and register as a 'seed' district. Also, the might have the right to kick members they don't like. Unless another party managed to infiltrate the group so that a majority of its members were for the other party, any infiltration just means that they have less people in their own groups. For example, 1) 6 months before election day, the N largest district groups are 'locked-in'. 2) For another 3 months people are allowed to register to change from their district to another one, as long as their district is to large and the target is to small (or they weren't in a district and want to join a small one). 3) 3 months before the election, all the districts that are still to large have random members reduced to make them the right size and unassigned people are then randomly assigned to the small districts to make them large enough. 4) Each district then selects a winner using approval voting The randomness wouldn't necessarily have to be random. It could use some fixed method to decide the ordering. For example, it could be based on social security number and date of birth. You could pass them into a function that re-orders them. Also, the prcesses weakens the secret ballot as district formation becomes part of the process and it isn't secret. You could argue that a proportional system would solve the representation problem, whatever district definition used. But it would not solve the ability that politicians have for bribing a geographical district, simply by targeting an area that is an undecided district. It comes down to what you think representation is. That is representing their district at the national level. It isn't bribing anyone, it is getting them what they want. What if an area has no hospital and nobody seems to care because they are concerned about the national issues? I think single seat districts aren't a good idea anyway. Most modifications are just a hack to a broken system. With astrological districts, subventioning an hospital that would treat only people born between january 11th and january 16th would be: 1) complex to implement; 2) easy to be proven; 3) an obvious case of political bribery attempt. It might be that people who meet the criteria get some benefit in any hospital. Also, if 'everyone' is doing it, then it might be less frowned upon. It would bring regions to discuss between one another instead of confront each other, having all representatives of the whole country instead of each defending its piece of cake. Party list PR is designed to do this. Everyone represents the whole country. It gives lots of power to the party leader though. My thoughrs on the whole national representation thing is to have multiple layers of representatives. In the US, it might work as A) 30 elected in six districts (districts of ~50 million (10 mill per seat)) B) 100 elected in 20 districts (districts of ~15 million (3 mill per seat)) C) 300 elected in 60 districts (districts of ~5 million (1 mill per seat)) This districts would end up crossing State lines. One option is that C is designed so that it doesn't. Small States would just have smaller districts. A State with 2 Representatives would just hold a 2 seat election. The A) and B) districts would need to cross State lines for sure. This would require a constitutional amendment. This creates a mix of national level, regional level and State level representatives. If you wanted to get fancy, you might give group A) Representatives 4 votes, group B) 2 votes and group C) 1 votes. This is to take into account that an A) representative represents a larger number of voters. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] No geographical districts
Stéphane Rouillon Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2008 6:03 AM STV-PR suffers from three principal problems that are exacerbated when trying to push the proportionality limit. Why would you want to try to push the proportionality limit? The law of diminishing returns applies to representation and proportionality, as I said in a recent EM post under another topic heading. The available evidence from countries with a history of FPTP elections from single-member districts (UK, USA, Canada) indicates that real electors would be very content with much less than proportionality at the limit - indeed, they would demand such a trade-off in return for guaranteed local representation. In any event, proportionality at the limit would bring its own political problems and so would be undesirable and unwanted for that reason alone. They are all caused by the large number of candidates: Why need the numbers of candidates be large? Of course, to some electors who are used to single-member districts contested for decades by only two parties, any number greater than two might be considered large. In my experience such comments usually come from those who are completely opposed to any reform of FPTP in single-member districts, but I know that group does not include Stéphane. Such comments do, however, play into the hands of the anti-reformers. 1) A pre-selection occurs within each party, in order for the star candidate of each party to get elected, that star often tries to kill concurrency having bad collegues running with him or none at all in order to increase its own election probability; If the districts are of a size that would give an acceptable balance between proportionality and guaranteed local representation, all the major parties would want to promote teams of candidates because they would have realistic chances of winning more than one seat. So while the star might well want to behave like a prima donna, any party that allowed that to determine its team of candidates would be heading for electoral disaster. Also, internal party democracy should prevail. 2) It is hard to make fair debates when the number of candidates is huge and they are not even the same for several parties: in the end the candidates having the most means (money and visibility) have the opportunity of getting heard and the others may simply not; Why would the numbers of candidates necessarily be huge? The issues arising from the availability of money have nothing to do with the voting system. To level the democracy playing field, there clearly has to be reform (limitation) of the money that can be spent by parties and by candidates during any election campaign - though I can see such limitation being extremely unpopular in the USA. However, we could do much to reduce the impact of those differences by using a voting system that gave proportional representation of the voters. 3) voters complain about the large number of names on the ballot adding several undesirable behaviours like random completion or following a party pre-selection. Why would there be large numbers of names on the ballot? I agree that random selection might be considered an undesirable behaviour (though some have suggested random selection would be better than selection by election!), but I don't think it is for you or me to say that a voter who has knowingly followed his or her favoured party's selection has engaged in an undesirable behaviour. Indeed, it could be said to be an extremely rational behviour. Equivalent virtual districts have no such problems: they allow comparing all candidates with every party proposing a unique candidacy per district. The result is you can obtain PR results like using only one district for STV-PR, without the previous problems. Virtual districts may not have the three problems you specified, but they do have one real problem: real electors live (and vote) in the real world - they do not live in a virtual world. They want their votes to reflect the real world in which they live, by giving an acceptable balance between proportional representation of differing political viewpoints and local representation of the geographically recognisable communities within which they live. James Gilmour No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.526 / Virus Database: 270.6.16/1650 - Release Date: 03/09/2008 16:13 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] No geographical districts
Hello James, (for other readers , please let me state again that, in my humble opinion, STV family of electoral systems are the best multi-winner methods on the market actually. However, it should not stop us from criticizing aspects we think could be enhanced. It is not because you have a radio and a photographic apparel that you should not try to invent TV...). Yes most electors would be very content with much less than proportionality at the limit because they are convinced they have to sacrifice something else to obtain it (local representation for some, government stability, access to a representative,...). No one has ever presented them with an option that conciliate all these goals. Several demand a guaranteed local representation (although this demand is a lot stronger in rural areas not urban ones). But we all already have a municipal level that is based on geographical management and can facilitate access to a local representative. Thus: -I want to push the proportionnality limit to obtain a true representation of the electorate. I can cope with the stability problems that could occur using other tools, like the crutch option for example. - I want a large number of candidates because the more option you get as a voter, the more ideas you can choose among and the more representative is the result of the election. -I want list built for a party from the electoral result of the voters would expressed a preference for that party. Thus, no party oligarchy can impose a hierarchy to its supporters and still individual imputability plays a role because we would vote for somebody and not for a cause. STV or STV-PR with one big district would give me these properties, but I try to get rid of the problems it produces. Am I logical enough? For the purpose of presenting different debates per district, I see very well putting each debate onthe web, on a political youtube. Thus speech time and not money would have to be fairly attributed. And finally about the real world issue, it seems it all comes to how we see the world. I am very proud of having a municipal level which solves most of my geographical problems (removing the snow, taking the garbagge, giving access to a library, managing street parking,...). However, my major concerns go through boundaries most of the time (SRAS, hurricanes, acid rain, animals, epidemia, religions, ideas, money, inflation, planes, violence on tv, bombs, terrorists, free trade products, gay weddings, abortion, drug legalisation, add as much actuality major issue you like...) . Virtual districts would fit better the real world. I want my vote to reflect the real world in which I live, by assessing that major debates are now some that concern the overall planet. Having representatives elected from non-geographical districts does not remove their geographical link. We all come from somewhere we know well. It just removes their geographical dependance about being elected or not. Governing is taking decisions. We want defendors of the options and neutral judges to choose between them like in a justice court. How can we expect our current system to behave properly when MP's have to do both! Defendors should be elected from a ground territory to defend the rights of the people they know well. Judges should have no link to take decisions in the best interest for all. Hence, decision takers (country representatives) should be elected from non-geographical districts. The real world now spreads ideas all around the globe in a minute like I am doing right now. Distance is less and less relevant. We should adapt our political structures to this reality. Thanks for taking the time to read, Stéphane. From: James Gilmour [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [EM] No geographical districts Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2008 12:06:10 +0100 Stéphane Rouillon Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2008 6:03 AM STV-PR suffers from three principal problems that are exacerbated when trying to push the proportionality limit. Why would you want to try to push the proportionality limit? The law of diminishing returns applies to representation and proportionality, as I said in a recent EM post under another topic heading. The available evidence from countries with a history of FPTP elections from single-member districts (UK, USA, Canada) indicates that real electors would be very content with much less than proportionality at the limit - indeed, they would demand such a trade-off in return for guaranteed local representation. In any event, proportionality at the limit would bring its own political problems and so would be undesirable and unwanted for that reason alone. They are all caused by the large number of candidates: Why need the numbers of candidates be large? Of course, to some electors who are used to single-member districts contested for decades by only two parties, any number greater
Re: [EM] No geographical districts
Good Afternoon, Stephane Rouillon I, for one, find your suggestion original and elegant. You have described a simple way of dividing the people into districts, independent not only of their geographic location but of their ideological predispositions, as well. Candidates who seek to represent such 'districts' must attract the support of the entire community. They must be truly representative of the district they seek to represent. That is enormously different than the monstrosities we endure because of partisan politics. Thank you very much for a wonderful idea. It seeks to empower the people rather than any group. I fear it bears little chance of adoption because it protects no vested interest. The only way such a process will ever be adopted is if the concept can be made a topic of discussion, particularly among students interested in achieving a righteous government. Fred Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] No geographical districts
Geographical proportionality is one specific dimension. Most other dimensions could be called political dimensions. Also groupings that do not live in any specific compact area could be called political groupings. In principle they could form a party and that way get a proportional number of representatives. (This is also in line with the geographical proportionality related target of guaranteeing representation from all _geographic_ areas.) Many political systems have chosen geographical districts to be fixed in the sense that people automatically vote for the district where they live in. In the political dimension people are typically allowed to pick the group that they want to represent them. It is possible to have election methods that support multiple dimensions, i.e. more than these two. One could e.g. simply have multiple orthogonal party structures and then in the vote counting process force the representatives to be elected so that proportionality will be respected in all dimensions. There could be also additional fixed dimensions like automatic fixed sex or age based proportionality. Some of the additional dimensions could also be virtual districts in the sense that each voter would be registered in exactly one of them, and probably also vote only for candidates that belong to one's own virtual district. I understood that you would use virtual districts to replace the current geographical districts (and the geographical proportionality that they represent). The simplest (not necessarily optimal) approach to implement multiple dimensions is one where you simply elect representatives starting from the ones with strongest support (e.g. best candidate of the largest party in the largest district), skip candidates that can not be elected any more (e.g. district already full, party already full), and continue until all seats have been filled. At some point in the chain all requirements of all dimensions are met if they are strong enough (and if there are suitable candidates left). (Some dimensions could be one-directional in the sense that one would aim at guaranteeing at least a proportional share of the seats but would not limit them to this number. For example one could allow all members of some minority to require proportional representation by marking this in their ballot. Other voters would however not be required to vote either for or against this minority. Any candidate (or any party, of any regions etc.) could belong to this group. One should however not allow these lists to overrule party proportionality or other complete dimensions (to avoid riding under two flags (party and minority) and getting also corresponding double representation).) Small ad here too. Trees (hierarchical candidate lists) offer multiple dimensions in a simplified framework, but with priorities involved too. One can e.g. be a greenish red or a reddish green. Juho On Sep 4, 2008, at 1:01 , Stéphane Rouillon wrote: Hello electorama fans, regarding that last comment, I invite those interested in non- geographical district to consider astrological district. The idea is to obtain equivalent samples of the electorate in term of any distribution (age, geography, profession, language, religion,...) like poll survey use. For example, in Quebec with near 4 000 000 electors, we could obtain around 73 (73 x 5 = 365 days) of less than 55 000 electors each. Thus electorate results could indicate a better performance from some candidates instead of reflecting the district bias produced by its design. For example the first district could be formed with all Quebecors born between 1st and 5th of january, the 2nd with Quebecors born between 6th and 10th of january and so on... For more details of an electoral system using such districts, search for SPPA (Scrutin Préférentiel, Proportionel et Acirconscriptif in french). An english version is available on the electoral reform website of the British-Colombia citizen assembly. ... However, even something like they should be compact favours some people. If you are part of a group that is spread evenly, then you do worse if the districts are compact. The problem is that philosophy that districts should be geographically based. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info ___ Try the all-new Yahoo! Mail. The New Version is radically easier to use The Wall Street Journal http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] No geographical districts
On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 10:13 PM, Juho [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The simplest (not necessarily optimal) approach to implement multiple dimensions is one where you simply elect representatives starting from the ones with strongest support (e.g. best candidate of the largest party in the largest district), skip candidates that can not be elected any more (e.g. district already full, party already full), and continue until all seats have been filled. At some point in the chain all requirements of all dimensions are met if they are strong enough (and if there are suitable candidates left). I would probably elect the weakest of each party's strongest candidates, e.g. find the strongest candidate from each party and then assign a seat to that weakest of them. Once a party gets its allocation of seats, it can't be assigned any more. This is to allow small parties fill in their seats before large parties can lock them out. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] No geographical districts
Hello Juho, using age, gender or other virtual dimension to build virtual districts replaces geographic antagonism by generation antagonism. The idea is to get equivalent sample that are not opposed by intrinsec construction. Thus we may find neutral decision takers that will minimize the overall bad impacts of a decision, thus maximize to the best of their knowledge the decisions for all the electorate. If you split representative into groups who have divergent opinions, the result will not optimize common interest, it will only illustrate the rapport de force (maybe translated as power struggle) between the representatives. Age representatives would hardly stay neutral while deciding retirement fees and pensions for example. The Irish senate based on profession seems one step toward getting neutral decision takers for deciding the localization of projects for example. I prefer equivalent samples of the entire electorate (phone numbers or hash tables using names could work too, but it has some slight discrepancies and problems...) From: Juho [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Election Methods Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [EM] No geographical districts Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 00:13:34 +0300 Geographical proportionality is one specific dimension. Most other dimensions could be called political dimensions. Also groupings that do not live in any specific compact area could be called political groupings. In principle they could form a party and that way get a proportional number of representatives. (This is also in line with the geographical proportionality related target of guaranteeing representation from all _geographic_ areas.) Many political systems have chosen geographical districts to be fixed in the sense that people automatically vote for the district where they live in. In the political dimension people are typically allowed to pick the group that they want to represent them. It is possible to have election methods that support multiple dimensions, i.e. more than these two. One could e.g. simply have multiple orthogonal party structures and then in the vote counting process force the representatives to be elected so that proportionality will be respected in all dimensions. There could be also additional fixed dimensions like automatic fixed sex or age based proportionality. Some of the additional dimensions could also be virtual districts in the sense that each voter would be registered in exactly one of them, and probably also vote only for candidates that belong to one's own virtual district. I understood that you would use virtual districts to replace the current geographical districts (and the geographical proportionality that they represent). The simplest (not necessarily optimal) approach to implement multiple dimensions is one where you simply elect representatives starting from the ones with strongest support (e.g. best candidate of the largest party in the largest district), skip candidates that can not be elected any more (e.g. district already full, party already full), and continue until all seats have been filled. At some point in the chain all requirements of all dimensions are met if they are strong enough (and if there are suitable candidates left). (Some dimensions could be one-directional in the sense that one would aim at guaranteeing at least a proportional share of the seats but would not limit them to this number. For example one could allow all members of some minority to require proportional representation by marking this in their ballot. Other voters would however not be required to vote either for or against this minority. Any candidate (or any party, of any regions etc.) could belong to this group. One should however not allow these lists to overrule party proportionality or other complete dimensions (to avoid riding under two flags (party and minority) and getting also corresponding double representation).) Small ad here too. Trees (hierarchical candidate lists) offer multiple dimensions in a simplified framework, but with priorities involved too. One can e.g. be a greenish red or a reddish green. Juho On Sep 4, 2008, at 1:01 , Stéphane Rouillon wrote: Hello electorama fans, regarding that last comment, I invite those interested in non- geographical district to consider astrological district. The idea is to obtain equivalent samples of the electorate in term of any distribution (age, geography, profession, language, religion,...) like poll survey use. For example, in Quebec with near 4 000 000 electors, we could obtain around 73 (73 x 5 = 365 days) of less than 55 000 electors each. Thus electorate results could indicate a better performance from some candidates instead of reflecting the district bias produced by its design. For example the first district could be formed with all Quebecors born between 1st and 5th of january, the 2nd
Re: [EM] No geographical districts
On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 2:00 AM, Stéphane Rouillon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello Juho, using age, gender or other virtual dimension to build virtual districts replaces geographic antagonism by generation antagonism. The idea is to get equivalent sample that are not opposed by intrinsec construction. A simple option would be to convert the date of birth into a number, but have the year the the least significant part.. 16-04-82 would become 160,482 The public could then be sorted by those numbers. In effect, you are splitting people by the day of the month they are born on, if there is a tie, you use month and only use year at the end. This would give a mix of ages, genders and any other measure in each district. It is pretty much equivalent to just randomly distributing the voters between the districts, but unlike a random system, it is harder to corrupt. Thus we may find neutral decision takers that will minimize the overall bad impacts of a decision, thus maximize to the best of their knowledge the decisions for all the electorate. You make a good point. It would reduce the pork issue, but it gives minorities no representation. A group with a majority will probably win all the seats. The probability of a group with 55% of the votes not getting a majority in all the districts would be tiny due to the law of large numbers. If that group is geographically concentrated, you are back where you started. The Irish senate based on profession seems one step toward getting neutral decision takers for deciding the localization of projects for example. Professionals are also a defined group. However, I like your idea to use a group that is non-local to decide localisation issues. What about having 2 houses. The geographic house is elected by PR-STV. The national one is elected using your method. The geographic house might decide that a hospital needs to be build, but the national house would then decide where. Ofc, if the country was ethnically divided and the majority ethnic group lived in the East, then the national house would probably direct most projects in that direction. Btw, the Irish Senate looks (somewhat) good in theory, but doesn't actually work that way in practice. The nominating boards (which represent different professions) have very little power. The county councillors are the ones who actually vote for the Senators. It is a secret ballot, but most councillors vote for their party (or as part of a voting pact). This means that the Senate elections tend to follow the distribution of county councillor seats. The exception is the university seats, they are elected by graduates of certain universities (but not all ... grrr). Also, the Taoiseach (PM) gets to appoint a few. The combination of the county councillor (the governing coalition should have at least a strong minority of those seats) and the fact that the Taoiseach gets to appoint some mean that generally the Government has an easy majority in the Senate. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] No geographical districts
Dear Raph, your understanding is perfect. Of course using still FPTP with virtual districts would typicaly produce an assembly with all the seats of the same party. It was designed to be used with an open list system, as much proportional as possible (to the integrality limit). The list is filled from individual support gathered from each candidates, having equivalent sample of the electorate let us suppose that the one which have the best results promote the best ideas. SPPA provides some other details like the possibility to vote None and an option to garantee an almost majoritarian government at most for stability purpose. http://www.citizensassembly.bc.ca/public/get_involved/submission/R/ROUILLON-65 You are welcome to comment. At least I hope you have fun reading it if you find the time. From: Raph Frank [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Stéphane Rouillon [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [EM] No geographical districts Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 02:25:24 +0100 On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 2:00 AM, Stéphane Rouillon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello Juho, using age, gender or other virtual dimension to build virtual districts replaces geographic antagonism by generation antagonism. The idea is to get equivalent sample that are not opposed by intrinsec construction. A simple option would be to convert the date of birth into a number, but have the year the the least significant part.. 16-04-82 would become 160,482 The public could then be sorted by those numbers. In effect, you are splitting people by the day of the month they are born on, if there is a tie, you use month and only use year at the end. This would give a mix of ages, genders and any other measure in each district. It is pretty much equivalent to just randomly distributing the voters between the districts, but unlike a random system, it is harder to corrupt. Thus we may find neutral decision takers that will minimize the overall bad impacts of a decision, thus maximize to the best of their knowledge the decisions for all the electorate. You make a good point. It would reduce the pork issue, but it gives minorities no representation. A group with a majority will probably win all the seats. The probability of a group with 55% of the votes not getting a majority in all the districts would be tiny due to the law of large numbers. If that group is geographically concentrated, you are back where you started. The Irish senate based on profession seems one step toward getting neutral decision takers for deciding the localization of projects for example. Professionals are also a defined group. However, I like your idea to use a group that is non-local to decide localisation issues. What about having 2 houses. The geographic house is elected by PR-STV. The national one is elected using your method. The geographic house might decide that a hospital needs to be build, but the national house would then decide where. Ofc, if the country was ethnically divided and the majority ethnic group lived in the East, then the national house would probably direct most projects in that direction. Btw, the Irish Senate looks (somewhat) good in theory, but doesn't actually work that way in practice. The nominating boards (which represent different professions) have very little power. The county councillors are the ones who actually vote for the Senators. It is a secret ballot, but most councillors vote for their party (or as part of a voting pact). This means that the Senate elections tend to follow the distribution of county councillor seats. The exception is the university seats, they are elected by graduates of certain universities (but not all ... grrr). Also, the Taoiseach (PM) gets to appoint a few. The combination of the county councillor (the governing coalition should have at least a strong minority of those seats) and the fact that the Taoiseach gets to appoint some mean that generally the Government has an easy majority in the Senate. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] No geographical districts
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED] (on 3 September 2008 22:01:24 +), [EMAIL PROTECTED] (=?iso-8859-1?B?U3TpcGhhbmUgUm91aWxsb24=?=) wrote: Hello electorama fans, regarding that last comment, I invite those interested in non-geographical district to consider astrological district. How about self-chosen districts? One element of current geographical districts is that people at least theoretically (and in some actual cases - see Libertarians moving to New Hampshire, Alaska, etc for instance) can choose to move to be more around people they agree more with; that even this (frequently impractical) method would be impossible with such a system would be one objection to it. ... However, even something like they should be compact favours some people. If you are part of a group that is spread evenly, then you do worse if the districts are compact. The problem is that philosophy that districts should be geographically based. Yes. -Allen -- Allen Smith, Ph.D. http://cesario.rutgers.edu/easmith/ There is only one sound argument for democracy, and that is the argument that it is a crime for any man to hold himself out as better than other men, and, above all, a most heinous offense for him to prove it. - H. L. Mencken Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] No geographical districts
Why not self-chosen districts ? Because then the last half of voters would be able to pick between district already composed of majoritarians ideologies. Again the least organized and the smallest group would finish splitted between several districts where they would be in minority. Do you really believe that if you represent 1% of an ideology, others political parties will keep the last of 100 seats for you? With an FPTP system they would gang up as much districts to 51% and let you be minoritarian in the district(s) you want. You could argue that a proportional system would solve the representation problem, whatever district definition used. But it would not solve the ability that politicians have for bribing a geographical district, simply by targeting an area that is an undecided district. With selfchosen district, anyone can say to teachers, automobile workers, or any other segment of the population: gather in one district, mine, and I'll flood your field with fresh investment With astrological districts, subventioning an hospital that would treat only people born between january 11th and january 16th would be: 1) complex to implement; 2) easy to be proven; 3) an obvious case of political bribery attempt. It would bring regions to discuss between one another instead of confront each other, having all representatives of the whole country instead of each defending its piece of cake. But I concede: it would not stop a classical influence traffic which consist of giving money to a politician to tell him how to vote... That would still be a police job. From: Allen Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [EM] No geographical districts Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 18:51:28 -0400 In message [EMAIL PROTECTED] (on 3 September 2008 22:01:24 +), [EMAIL PROTECTED] (=?iso-8859-1?B?U3TpcGhhbmUgUm91aWxsb24=?=) wrote: Hello electorama fans, regarding that last comment, I invite those interested in non-geographical district to consider astrological district. How about self-chosen districts? One element of current geographical districts is that people at least theoretically (and in some actual cases - see Libertarians moving to New Hampshire, Alaska, etc for instance) can choose to move to be more around people they agree more with; that even this (frequently impractical) method would be impossible with such a system would be one objection to it. ... However, even something like they should be compact favours some people. If you are part of a group that is spread evenly, then you do worse if the districts are compact. The problem is that philosophy that districts should be geographically based. Yes. -Allen -- Allen Smith, Ph.D. http://cesario.rutgers.edu/easmith/ There is only one sound argument for democracy, and that is the argument that it is a crime for any man to hold himself out as better than other men, and, above all, a most heinous offense for him to prove it. - H. L. Mencken Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] No geographical districts
On Sep 3, 2008, at 10:02 PM, Stéphane Rouillon wrote: STV-PR suffers from three principal problems that are exacerbated when trying to push the proportionality limit. They are all caused by the large number of candidates: 1) A pre-selection occurs within each party, in order for the star candidate of each party to get elected, that star often tries to kill concurrency having bad collegues running with him or none at all in order to increase its own election probability; That assumes a rather high degree of agenda manipulation by the parties. Why need we assume that parties would be the exclusive gatekeepers to an STV ballot? For that matter, behavior like that seems like a good way to guarantee the formation of new parties that don't kill their good candidates. 2) It is hard to make fair debates when the number of candidates is huge and they are not even the same for several parties: in the end the candidates having the most means (money and visibility) have the opporunity of getting heard and the others may simply not; In an STV election, though, candidates need not appeal to the entire electorate. Sure, if we insist on running American-style campaigns, money will play an undue role, and STV is not a magic bullet to fix that problem. 3) voters complain about the large number of names on the ballot adding several undesirable behaviours like random completion or following a party pre-selection. It's an issue. On the other hand, I recently voted in a FPTP election with 135 gubernatorial candidates. Equivalent virtual districts have no such problems: they allow comparing all candidates with every party proposing a unique candidacy per district. The result is you can obtain PR results like using only one district for STV-PR, without the previous problems. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
