Adjusted Majority Preference Voting for PR?

DEMOREP1 DEMOREP1 at aol.com
Thu May 7 14:47:04 PDT 1998


The obvious extreme example--

50 districts, 1000 voters in each district (50,000 total votes), in every
district the Party X candidate gets 501 votes (total 25,050 votes for all
Party X candidates) and is elected.

The body would have 99 or 100 members. If Party X is to have a majority of the
voting power in the body, then the body should have 99 seats.

A more likely example of current gerrymander results- Party Z gets 53 percent
(PVP- party votes percentage) of the total first choice votes and wins 31
seats (62 percent of the districts) (party seats percentage-PSP).

Thus-
PVP x Total seats adjustment factor (TSAF)= PSP
TSAF= PSP / PVP

O.62 / 0.53 = 1.17

1.17 X 50 seats = 58.5  ---> 59 seats

Check 59 x .53 = 31.27 seats for Party Z

One of the parties will have the highest discrepancy ratio between the seats
won and the seats it proportionally should get. Such ratio would be used to
determine the total seats adjustment factor.  

It should be noted that since first choice votes are being used, that the
adjustment factors could be large (e.g. a party gets only 34 percent of the
total first choice votes, its candidates win all of the district seats because
of second choice votes- the adjustment factor would be nearly 3)

Whether highly cynical taxpayers would like having variable sized legislative
bodies (with the cost of possibly having more legislators and more legislative
staff folks) is another question.

I note that the U.S. can survive with multi- member districts as do sundry
other countries having p.r. systems.  The fixation with single member
districts is dangerously obsolete.   I note again the possibility of having
each legislator have a voting power equal to the number of votes he/she
receives to avoid ALL fractional math problems.



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