[Fwd: [EM] request for proportional representation info]

[Bart Ingles]

I'm not Mike, but here are a few sites.

As a preface, it's important to remember that proportional
representation (PR) is only applicable to council or legislative-type
elections, where you are electing candidates to fill several (or many)
seats.  The 'proportional' in proportional representation comes in when
you allocate these seats in proportion to the size of the various
parties or factions.  So if the electorate at large is 40% Republican,
55% Democrat, and 5% Green, and you are filling a 100-seat legislative
body, then ideally there should be 40 Republicans, 55 Democrats, and 5
Green members elected.

A non-proportional system would have 100 single-seat districts.  Whether
the system used is first-past-the-post, approval voting, instant runoff,
or any of the other winner-take-all systems, there is no guarantee of
proportionality.  In fact if the voting population is 40%-55%-5% across
all districts, then the Democrats would win all 100 seats with 55% in
each district.

Proportional representation is NOT applicable to executive-type
elections, where there is only one seat to fill.  These are by
definition winner-take-all.  There are still better alternatives to
first-past-the-post in these elections, but here the purpose of seeking
an alternative should be to elect a candidate with the most popular
support, and to avoid vote-splitting problems which turn third-party
candidates into spoilers.

Here are some pages containing information on PR and some single-winner
systems:
   http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/pol/votefaq.txt
   http://www.fortunecity.com/meltingpot/harrow/124/multi.html

For single-winner elections, the method I favor is described here
(contains links to a number of other sites, with info on other systems):
   http://bcn.boulder.co.us/government/approvalvote/center.html

Some recent voting system articles:
   http://www.discover.com/nov_00/gthere.html?article=featbestman.html
   http://whyfiles.org/shorties/068voting/

Good luck,
Bart Ingles
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