[EM] 03/31/02 - Re: More on Gerrymandering Prevention:

[Donald Davison]

03/31/02 - Re: More on Gerrymandering Prevention:

Greetings list,

   Years ago I read about a study of gerrymandering and multi-seat districts.
The conclusion is that seven is the cut-off number of seats for the ability
of any faction to gerrymander a district.  So, eight or ten would be a good
minimum number of seats for districts.

   But, if the public wants a closer member-link, I suggest my system of
Districts Within Districts.
   As an example, we could take the current single-seat districts and pair
them up to form two seat sub-districts and then take five or more of these
sub-districts to form a Greater District.  Some elections would only need a
few Greater Districts while very large elections would use many Greater
Districts.
   The voter is allowed to rank candidates and/or parties in any mix.
   The only party candidates a voter can rank are the candidates running in
his local sub-district, but he can rank any party that has at least one
candidate running somewhere in the Greater District.
   An independent candidate is treated the same as a political party, that
is, a voter can rank any independent candidate running anywhere in the
Greater District.  It is as if the independent candidate is a small
political party which has only one candidate running.
   The votes of all the sub-districts are added together to yield the first
count of the ballots for the Greater District.
   Preference Voting/STV will be the method of tallying the ballots and the
quota is based on the seats and total votes of the Greater District.

   Districts Within Districts will give us the gerrymandering prevention
ability of eight or more seats and the closer member-link of two-seat
sub-districts.


Regards,
   Donald Davison, host of New Democracy at http://www.mich.com/~donald

   +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
   |                        Q U O T A T I O N                          |
   |  "Democracy is a beautiful thing,                                 |
   |        except that part about letting just any old yokel vote."   |
   |                           - Age 10 -                              |
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    APV   Approval Voting
    ATV   Alternative Vote  aka  IRV Instant Runoff Voting  aka  IRVing
    FPTP  First Past The Post  aka  Plurality
    NOTA  None of the Above  aka  RON Re-Open Nominations
    STV   Single Transferable Vote  aka  Preference Voting  aka  Choice Voting
          aka  Hare Clarke  aka  Hare Preferential Voting

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