[EM] Request comments on MMP?

[Alex Small]

Neal Finne said:
> I gave all the Green votes to the Dems and split the
> Libertarian votes evenly between Reps and Dems. This resulted the Dems
> winning the aggregate vote with 53.8%.

I've heard that the Libertarians tend to pull votes from the GOP rather
than the Dems on a 2:1 basis.  This is supposedly according to scientific
polls, not informal polls on websites or whatever.  Now, that is supposed
to be nation-wide, so I have no idea if that is true in Washington state. 
I'm certainly one of the exceptions (a Libertarian who prefers the Dems to
teh GOP), but I also live in California so I'm completely irrelevant to
the situation up there.

Since you have such a narrow majority for the Dems, I'm curious how it
would change if you split the Libertarian votes 2:1 in favor of the GOP. 
Since there are 9 seats, and even with a 1/(n+1) quota the LP didn't have
enough votes to get a seat, they must have had less than 10%.

Say they had 9.9% (optimistic, I know, but "worst case scenarios" can help
establish limits on an answer).  You split them 50-50, so before adding LP
votes the Dems would have had 48.85% and the GOP would have had 41.05%. 
With 2:1 splitting in favor of the GOP, the Dems would get 3.3% added on,
and they're above the 50% quota when using 1/(n+1) and 9 seats.  So they
get 5 seats.  The GOP would be above the 40% quota (having 47.65%) and get
4 seats.  Same difference.

I don't know how things are done with a 1/n quota.  Both parties would be
above the 44.44% quota for 4 seats.  Who gets the remaining seat?  The
quota for 5 seats is 55.55%.  The Dems would be a lot closer to the quota
than the GOP, so I'm guessing they'd still get 5.  A simple majority is a
simple majority.  Hmm, the absence of any problem involving the final seat
seems a powerful argument in favor of a 1/(n+1) quota instead of 1/n.



Alex