[EM] My nasty system for advantaging urban parties

[David Catchpole]

The Imperiali quota is designed for large-scale party-list elections, and
isn't appropriate given the constitutional restrictions.

If we were to remove stage I from the system, it would become quite
asymptotically proportional. However, there is a side effect that I
mention. If you
don't mind a party whinging because some extremist party that they really
don't like sharing the government benches with ( and which probably 
even though its voters prefer you, would side with the other lot in 
the House) managed to split their
vote, my system's quite nice because it proportionally represents 60%+ 
of the voters (as against unproportionally representing only 50% of the
voters)

I like (no- I love) proportional representation, but there are other goals
I have- I
like parliamentary democracy and government representing and
responsible to the people. For a regime that doesn't constitutionally
require direct
election, two-stage or at-large
(maybe (because of the occasional difference between people's choice of
representative and choice of government- but that's another story, and one
to be continued in another thread probably even more offensive to
Americans) semi-)PR
is really good. Where, however, geographical distortions will cause damage
and where you just know that the major parties won't swallow PR in the
lower house (yet) and with a tiny bit of reform that you have the
reasonable hope will occur in your life time the upper house will be
completely proportional) you have to moot
alternatives that don't always fit your ideals. Hence, "nasty system."

On Sun, 16 May 1999, Donald E Davison wrote:

> Dear David Catchpole,
> 
>      You seem to be hell bent on stealing representation from the smaller
> factions. You would have a large faction with sixty plus percent gain all
> the seats in your three member district.
>      So be it, if you must be that way, but there is no need to go through
> all your rigmarole of pretending to be proportional.
> 
>      Instead, the Imperiali quota will fill your nasty requirements quite
> nicely.
> 
>      I-quota = (votes)/(seats + 2) + 1
> 
>      The I-quota for your three seat districts will be twenty percent plus
> one vote, which will allow a sixty percent plus faction to gain all three
> seats.
>      The other near forty percent of the voters will be shit out of luck
> with no representaion, but then that is your wish.
> 
>      How long do you think it will take for you to outgrow your evil
> thinking and realize that representaion is for everyone and that the
> government of the future is the government that does include everyone at
> the table. (no ? mark because no answer is expected)
> 
>     In closing, I will agree that your plan is a "nasty system".
> 
> Donald E Davison
> 
> 
>