[EM] RE: A 48% Group elects 60% of the Droop Members

[David Catchpole]

On Tue, 16 Nov 1999 DEMOREP1 at aol.com wrote:

> O
> X-Status: 
> 
> In case folks have not guessed--
> 
> Droop fails with multi-member districts because a Droop quota is wasted in 
> each district.  That is, N districts = N wasted Droop Quotas.

Whereas for a Hare district roughly N(3n-1)/2n(n+1) of the total
voting population have their votes wasted...(more further down)

> 
> Also, in real elections the number of votes per district will obviously not 
> be equal.  Result- smaller Droop quotas in the below average districts which 
> means a lower overall indirect minority rule percentage.

Same result- even more often indirect minority rule effects occur for
Hare- with a nice "soak-up" gerrymander.

How's a gerrymander work? It concentrates your enemies in the one place
without letting the number of representatives they get increase. Guess
what Hare does- it restrains your enemies from getting more seats for an
increase in votes! (more further down)

> 
> Result- Droop can only be used at large (if one seat = one vote in the 
> legislative body).  Even the wasted at large Droop Quota votes is 
> unacceptable however (which may be a large percentage of the total votes with 
> a small number of seats - e.g. just under 25 percent of votes are wasted if 
> there are 3 seats).
> 
> How many countries use Droop in their at large and/or district p.r. systems 
> ???  Folks in Cambridge, Mass taking notice ???

Ce Wha...?

> 
> Thus, as Mr. Davidson has been noticing for quite a while, use the Hare Quota 
> (total votes/ total seats) if there must be one seat = one vote in the 
> legislative body.    Otherwise- use proxy p.r. which wastes ZERO votes and 
> would allow more early choices votes (first, second, etc.) to go to the 
> legislators whom the voters 
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