[EM] More on Gerrymander prevention

[Jurij Toplak]

Thanks for explanation :) No, Slovenia did not apply my method in the law
yet. I just applied it to our territory in my thesis. However, if the
Constitutional Court sais that I am right, we will see what will happen.
What I expect is that they will say that the present district plan is
malapportioned and the parliament will form a commission to develop a new
plan. Since I am he only person researching malapportionment and
gerrymandering issues in Slovenia (remember, we are a small country)
probably I will be one of the members of this commission and then I will try
to force through my method.

Presently Slovenia is divided into 8 11-member districts. The deviation is
about 6% from the average district. That means that the largest district is
about 12% larger than the smallest district. Since districts are 11-member
the deviation 10% means that a deviation of one whole representative. In US
the permitted deviation at state-level and at local-level is about 10%.
However, your districts are singlemember. 10% in a singlemember district
means 10% of a representative while in an 11-member district 10% means one
whole representative. Therefore I think our redistricting scheme is
malapportioned.

Jure
ps. If my English was fluent you would not misunderstand me, right? And if
my English was fluent I would not misanderstand Josh either :)))

----- Original Message -----
From: Alex Small <asmall at physics.ucsb.edu>
To: <election-methods-list at eskimo.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2002 8:41 PM
Subject: re: [EM] More on Gerrymander prevention


> Jurij-
>
> "Tantalizingly" means "very interestingly, in a manner that makes one want
> to know more."  (my definition, not a dictionary).
>
> You wrote in a previous message that you had applied your study of
> redistricting to your country.  I thought (and I assume Josh did too) that
> you were suggesting that you had in fact actually persuaded the government
> to implement your proposed redistricting method.  To hear that somebody on
> the list had actually reformed an entire country's redistricting laws
would
> be very exciting.  Because you didn't actually say that, but it sounded
> like that might be the case, it was very "tantalizing", we wanted to know
> more.
>
> The ambiguity had nothing to do with your English, of course (I've never
> noticed any language errors in your posts, I assume you are very fluent).
> The ambiguity was solely from lack of detail.
>
> The fact that you contributed to a case before your country's
> Constitutional Court is very interesting, and inspiring to those of us who
> want to see election reforms in our own countries.  Even though the truth
> is not quite as grand as one might have guessed from the original message,
> it's still very impressive.
>
> Alex
>