Borda Count

[LAYTON Craig]

>Parliament is composed of 90 people. 88 of them are "normal reps" elected
>under PR over the whole territory of the country. The other two are reps of
>Italian and Hungarian minority. They are elected by our citisens, who are
>originaly Italians or Hungarians. What is interesting here is, that there
>are only 2000 Italians in Slovenia (2,000,000 citizens) and therefore their
>representative is representing much less population than other, normal reps
>are. It is somehow a violation of "equal voting right principle" (also
>called one man-one vote). In addition, members of these minorities vote
>twice - for normal representative and for this, minority representative.
And
>these two reps have all the powers the other reps have (in some countries
>minority reps can vote only on minority issues).

That's quite fascinating.  I agree, a minority of two thousand out of two
million citizens don't seem to deserve their own representative, but there
might be other situations where a minority representative is important in
encouraging equality of political representation, particularly where there
is a legacy of opression.

If you don't mind me asking another question; Do the Italian or Hungarian
reps tend to be linked to any of the major parties, or are they mostly
independents?  

In my view, the fairness of having minority representatives partly depends
on whether they act as representatives, or whether they just become another
member of a political party.  For this reason, I see the Australian and US
senates as basically undemocratic institutions, because they tend to
represent their parties rather than their states (less so for the US, as
Senators are not so bound to a party line as they are in Australia).