[EM] Re: bicameral design poll

[Stephane Rouillon]

Sincerely,

I believe any geographic linkage is source of clientelism (favourism)
between elected officials and their electorate.

I keep thinking that one of the chamber should use non-geographical districts.

For an example using 40 seats you could use the day and month of birth.

Seat number                Elector of MA(Massachussett) born between
1                               January 1st - January 10th
2                               January 11th - January 19th
3                               January 20th - January 29th
4                               January 30th - February 6th
5                               February 7th - February 16th
6                               February 17th - February 24th
etc...

So for this chamber, no gerrymanderring, no dealing for votes, no seat
reserved for
candidates friends of the party chief, no huge discrepancies in the number of
electors
per district... Comments?

Stéphane Rouillon

Rob LeGrand a écrit :

> Jeffrey O'Neill wrote:
> > In MA, the smaller house is 40 and the larger house is 160.  I think it
> > would be desirable to create districts solely for the smaller house and
> > then use the same districts as 4-member districts for the larger house.
> > This would create an interesting geographical linkage between the two
> > houses.
>
> I agree with using single-member districts for the smaller house and
> multimember districts for the larger house, but I think such a
> geographical linkage would be best avoided.  I'd want the two sets of
> districts to differ and overlap as much as possible to differentiate the
> electorates for the two houses.  In my opinion, that's the major reason
> to have a bicameral legislature in the first place.  It would also
> dilute the effect of a single instance of gerrymandering somewhat.
>
> I think a district size of five to seven members would be best for a
> proportional representation scheme.
>
> =====
> Rob LeGrand, psephologist
> rob at approvalvoting.org
> Citizens for Approval Voting
> http://www.approvalvoting.org/
>
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