[EM] Hare Voting and a new plan for its use:

[LAYTON Craig]

Donald Davidson wrote (in part):

>    We take ten current Single-Seat districts and combined them into one
>Greater District, which is inturn divided into five sub-districts.

I don't see the justification for this.  Optimal electorate size is seven
candidates, and this ensures enough proportionality to do away with all this
complexity.  There is some argument that voters need one (or in your case
two) local representatives, and one alone.  Although an electorate with
seven members will be larger, the representatives will represent more than a
bare majority of the electorate, and thus are better for constituents than a
single member.  A staunch 25% democrat minority in a seat always won by
republicans will never get any representation whatsoever in a small
district.

>    All the votes of all five sub-districts are added together to yield the
>first count of the ballots for the Greater District. The party votes are
>divided evenly between all candidates of the same party.
>    The election method will be Hare Voting.
>    When party votes are transferred, they are transferred evenly to the
>remaining members of the same party. In the event there are no candidates
>of the party remaining in contention, then the vote goes to the next
>choice, whatever that may be, candidate or another party.

I'm not sure if there are serious problems here or not.  At any rate, the
Hare-Clarke system is much better.  Changing it to a proxy system (courtesy
Demorep) is better still (no quota transfers, variable voting power, other
elements exactly the same).  The myth that you need very large electorates
or districts covering a whole state or counrty to ensure proportionality is
just that.

Craig Layton