[EM] STV district magnitude

Mon Jul 21 13:42:03 PDT 2003

Alex,

we do not have a language barrier problem (at least,
not this time). It is more an overcharging operators
problem. Single-membered has always been a synonym for
single-winner when talking about multiple seats elections.
In the special case of SPPA, it is not. Your understanding is correct, with slight modifications:
"every district will elect NEAR one person, but the winners will be chosen to assure an overall national balance.  i.e.  If a party got a certain percent of the vote, it would get roughly the same proportion of the seats, but each seat would GENERALLY be assigned to a different virtual constituency based on the votes cast by that constituency."
Each seat would not necessarily be assigned to a different virtual constituency... Based on the votes cast by that constituency, it would have mainly (typically 90% of the cases) one representative, but some district could get none, some district could get more than one representative, and some others would get one representative but it would not be the candidate that got the most support. That lack of representation for winning voters would be well compensated by a better representation of loosing voters overall. Not all winners would be elected. It is the difference between a representative exercise and a horse race...

I consider this as an asset, because voters can say that all
candidates they are presented with are bad. Then they vote none to get any other best second elsewhere because they think all their candidates are worst than the middle politician running in other districts. No other personalized
electoral system allows to put back in questions the list of candidates when voters clearly want it. SPPA does. 
If people want to send to the parliament the second position
about homosexual weddings (either for or against) instead of the best position about the king's protocol, why not, it is their choice. And maybe they would elect all candidates that
decided to argue about king's protocol and none from the district where debates fired about homosexual weddings,
who knows... Making candidates compete within the same party, it allows the voters to select debates priorities by electing candidates who argue about their main concerns, and rejecting less interesting subjects.

Of course, once the elected persons identified, you can assign them to different chunk of the population to give personalized service, unlinkable with future electoral interests...

Personally, I would prefer like you a huge unique district with STV than the actual FPTP districts but I can understand
too that crowded list can affray voters.
Sorry, I am not an Irish expert, I cannot help...

Stephane

> 
> De: "Alex Small" <asmall at physics.ucsb.edu>
> Date: 2003/07/21 lun. PM 03:13:07 GMT-04:00
> À: <election-methods-electorama.com at electorama.com>
> Subject: Re: Re: [EM] STV district magnitude
> 
> > For your next remark, I said single-membered districts, not
> > single-winner districts.
> 
> The single-membered vs. single-winner distinction confuses me.  Either we
> have some sort of language barrier here, or you mean that every district
> will elect one person, but the winners will be chosen to assure an overall
> national balance.  i.e.  If a party got a certain percent of the vote, it
> would get roughly the same proportion of the seats, but each seat would be
> assigned to a different virtual constituency based on the votes cast by
> that constituency.
> 
> I have to admit that I was confused by the first description of SPPA, and
> since then I haven't had a chance to look into it more.
> 
> > I thinks it's normal... It seems hard to remove
> > something as solid (tengible in french) as constituencies. But please
> > note that what I suggest just goes further in the direction showed by
> > multi-member districts of STV and pure PR models... It is not really a
> > revolution, just the next step in accepting our neighbours are, now in
> > 2003, anyone on this 12000 kms diameter planet. An alaskian maybe that
> > far of a floridian, they can be both concerned by whales fishing laws (I
> > just hope you get the point).
> 
> Well, given that geographical districts chosen by PR would be a HUGE
> improvement over the current situation in the US, I think that will be
> higher on my list of election reform priorities than a system of virtual
> districts.
> 
> Doesn't Ireland have something akin to virtual districts for part of its
> parliament, based on which university people studied at?
> 
> 
> 
> Alex
> 
> 
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