[EM] Request comments on MMP?

[John B. Hodges]

>Donald Davidson writes:
>John: "...but after imagining the House of Representatives chosen by STV-PR in
>>districts of 3, 5, or 7 seats..."
>
>Donald:  Why do you have an odd number of seats for your small districts?
>Why not have an even number of seats?
>
>There is no reason for small districts to have an odd number of seats.  A
>majority is not needed in any small district of many districts.  A majority
>only comes into play when all the district results are added together.  On
>the other hand, an even number of seat would give us better proportionality
>for political parties and gender because most districts would be divided
>closer to fifty-fifty for parties and gender.

(JBH) I went with odd numbers because Ireland amended their procedure 
to specify odd numbers, I presume they had a reason. I suppose it was 
to avoid ties between two major parties. If you had a lot of 
four-seat districts and two leading parties you could get a two-party 
legislature permanently deadlocked.

>Donald: 
>Before you toss out the baby with the bath water, let's give MMP credit
>where credit is due.  Top-Up MMP is the only district system in use in
>which the proportionality of each small district is linked to the
>proportionality of the entire jurisdiction.  It is quite simple for us to
>create other district election methods that also have this feature of
>linking proportionality.  We are not restricted to single-seat districts
>and party lists, we can use two or more seat districts and Preference
>Voting/STV.
>
>Simply put, an election area would be divided into small sub-districts.
>Ten or more sub-districts would be combined into a Greater District.  The
>entire electorate could be one Greater District.  Candidates would need to
>live and run in a sub-district, but the math of the election would be
>calculated per the Greater District.  The math could be the math of some
>multi-seat election method like Open Party List or Preference Voting/STV.
>This will yield the member-link of a small district and the party
>proportionality of a twenty or more seat district.
>
>Regards, Donald Davison

(JBH) You've got to give me more details before I can imagine this. 
We have eighteen three-seat districts holding STV elections for a 
total of forty-nine seats, and then fill another fifty-one seats by 
some "additional member" calculation? Use a double-ballot such as in 
MMP in Germany? (forget the U.S. Senate, assume I'm talking about a 
state legislature.) Or are you saying the winners of the 
sub-districts would be determined by the math of the greater 
district? I'm interested in your idea, but not clear what you are 
saying.

-- 
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John B. Hodges, jbhodges@  @usit.net
Do Justice, Love Mercy, and Be Irreverent.