[EM] Goodbye Gerrymandering.

[Stephane Rouillon]

M. Siffert, you are totally right.
This is why such a partitioning can only be applied to proportional
systems (real PR systems, not semi-proportionals nor quota defined systems).
The idea is to obtain equivalent samples of the electorate in order to rank
different pairs of debate-position. This is how SPPA works.

Stéphane Rouillon.

Curt Siffert a écrit :

> I wonder about the agenda of this kind of partitioning scheme, though.
>
> It seems to be that before partitioning scholars suggest partitioning
> strategies, they must agree on their objective.
>
> Here in the US, a commonly held belief is that a fair district
> partioning must reflect the makeup of the region's voters.  In other
> words, if a state is split 55-45, then the districts must be formed in
> such a way so that the representatives are split about 55-45 as well.
>
> But, if the 55-45 were instead evenly distributed amongst all
> districts, you'd get all districts with a 55-45 majority, or, unanimous
> representation from the 55 group.  This would be less representative
> than the most extreme gerrymanders.
>
> I would bet that date-based partitioning would be extremely susceptible
> to that problem.
>
> Curt
>
> On May 13, 2005, at 11:25 AM, <stephane.rouillon at sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
> > The Institut des Statistiques du Quebec provided me with the
> > repartition of people according to their date of birth.
> >
> > Using this information to build non-geographical districts based on
> > date of birth, month and some modulo of the year provided the
> > following results:
> > for 125 seats (as in the current Assemblee Nationale), one can
> > obtained 125 consecutive districts with a +/- 10% variation.
> > Consecutive means that persons are regrouped using successive
> > birthdays (like january 1st, 2nd and 3rd). Using non-consecutive
> > birthdays to minimize the variations, one can obtain districts with
> > the same population size within a +/- 0.1% margin.
> > Of course in both case a special treatment for people born a february
> > 29th puts them with christmas born persons which are less common.
> >
> > Birth dates are only one example of how to build non-geography based
> > districts, "astrological" districts in this case.
> >
> > Stéphane Rouillon.
> >
> >
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