[EM] Minmax under-representaton causes small-bias

[RLSuter at aol.com]

This is just another example of a lengthy comment by a person
who has not taken the time to learn about the subject he has decided
to pontificate about. I'm close to 100% certain that Lomax will never
read or even take a serious look at the book I mentioned ("Sizing
Up the Senate"), yet he doesn't hesitate to write a message purporting
to express authoritative opinions about the issue addressed in
that book, whose authors have spent literally years of their lives
researching the issue and taking great care to get their facts straight.
See below for more specific responses to Lomax's comments.

-Ralph Suter

In a message dated 2/6/07, abd at lomaxdesign.com wrote
(quoting my previous message):

>> Mathematical analyses of this issue that are not informed and
>> tempered by a good understanding of the issue's history and
>> political consequences are close to worthless, if not worse than
>> worthless in that they muddy the issue and are used to justify
>> one of the most undemocratic aspects of the U.S. political
>> system and the least representative legislative body of any
>> major nation (and possibly any nation) in the world.
>
> There are two activities of value here: one is theoretical 
> mathematical analysis and the other is practical, having to do with 
> applications of election methods and, in this case, apportionment 
> issues and their effects. The activities are independent, and it is 
> not correct to claim that the first activity, in particular, is 
> worthless merely because it does not currently impact the second.

Few if any people do strictly theoretical analyses of Senate
representation, because it is not a subject of much if any
intrinsic theoretical interest. It is of interest because of the
importance of the Senate to the U.S. political system.

Even if someone were to do a strictly theoretical analysis,
it would be perfectly reasonable to say their analysis is "worse
than worthless" if it were totally unhelpful in any conceivably
practical way and had the further effect of causing confusion
about the issue, distracting attention from much more important
aspects of the issue, and/or being used for the purpose of
justifying the way the political system is now structured.
That's just my opinion, of course, but your comment was also
your opinion, not any sort of "correct" analysis. I'll leave it up
to others to judge whose opinion is the most persuasive and
worthwhile.
 
> This list, in general, focuses on theory. If you want more focus on 
> actual political work with Election Methods, the place to look is 
> probably the Range Voting list on yahoogroups, which does not confine 
> itself to Range Voting but is concerned with election and related 
> reform in general.

Spoken by someone who has been on this list less than two
of its 12 or so years and has not hesitated to write on many
occasions and at great length about all kinds of subjects,
including "actual political work."
 
> Now, there is no doubt but that the Senate is in some respects 
> "undemocratic." It wasn't intended to be the representative of the 
> "people." It was intended to lend balance, "gravitas," to be an elite 
> institution. I'd suggest that any replacement for the Senate should 
> ideally perform a similar function. As an example of a reform that 
> could move the Senate toward democracy without sacrificing its elite 
> and state-representational character, the state representation for 
> states below a certain population could be reduced to a single Senator.

You don't have any credible understanding of why the Senate
was constituted the way it was. It was a very contentious issue
during the Constitutional Convention, and the "Great Compromise"
that resulted was strictly a result of political necessity without
which representatives of the slave states would not have signed
on to the Constitution.

As for the remainder of your comments, including your advocacy
of Asset Voting, these are just the kinds of comments about "actual
political work" that you have just claimed this list is not intended for.
Asset Voting is actually a terrible as well as impractical form
of representation. Any theoretical advantages it has are far
outweighed by its serious theoretical disadvantages and its
impracticality.
 
> But, still, the Senate is vulnerable to shifts in the majority, just 
> like the House. Some kind of proportional representation could be 
> more stable. (When you have representation by district, elected by 
> majority vote within each district, a small shift in which party 
> holds the majority can create a drastic shift in party 
> representation. This would seem to be undesirable if gravitas is what 
> we want.) I'd suggest, in fact, Asset Voting with the Senate being 
> elected nation-wide. Asset Voting for PR has the benefit that no vote 
> need be wasted. You end up with a Senator who either you picked, or 
> someone you picked, picked. And you know exactly who your Senator is. 
> And quite likely your Senator would be based relatively close to you, 
> unless you find yourself affiliating with some group that is thinly 
> spread about the nation, in which case all of you could share one 
> Senator. Asset, if the candidates use vote transfers by precinct, 
> essentially is districting-on-the-fly; that is, a Senator could 
> generally represent a set of precincts geographically contiguous, but 
> would not be limited to that.
>
> Personally, I don't understand all the fuss about more fixed PR 
> methods when Asset is such a brilliant solution, one which Warren 
> should more frequently take credit for. (His Asset Voting is more 
> complex than what I generally proposed, which is Fractional Approval 
> Asset Voting, where the ballot is essentially an Approval ballot, 
> but, because no vote is wasted, unlike standard Approval 
> single-winner, the votes are divided by the number of approved 
> candidates on the ballot. I think most voters would pick just one and 
> leave it at that.)