[EM] Apportionment (biased?) let me add some more confusion to the mix :)

[raphfrk at netscape.net]

> From: juho4880 at yahoo.co.uk
 >
 > One more tool that can be useful in some situations is the
 > hierarchical structure of the states/parties. To guarantee that
 > certain set of states/parties will not be underrepresented they could
 > form a team/alliance. When seats are allocated to that team they
 > could lose (in typical allocation methods) only one seat to rounding
 > errors instead on many of them losing a seat. Geographic alliances
 > would maybe be more natural than e.g. an alliance of small states.
 
 What about sorting the States based on population and then splitting
 them into 2 groups such that the total population in each group is as
 equal as possible.
 
 The fractional seat is then split between the 2 groups based on (Webster?)
 ... or maybe Webster should be used directly?
 
 This is then applied to each group recursively.
 
 If any State ends up with zero seats, it is removed from the process
 and given a seat directly. The process is then re-run, until it
 completes with all remaining States getting at least 1 seat.
 
 This pretty much is forced to be unbiased between small and large States
 size. However, perhaps it would be biased in other ways.
 
 An additional rule could then be that States are allowed to form groups
 'manually', and manual groups cannot be split in two by the algorithm
 (until the group being processed is the manual group itself).
 
 >
 > I already mentioned the different voting power. A simple method in
 > that direction would be to elect one representative from every state
 > and give her voting power in relation to the number of people she
 > represents. Or maybe large states would be given n seats with 1/n of
 > the voting power of the state etc. Maybe the building where these
 > representatives will work has a fixed number of physical seats =>
 > fill those seats and allocate voting power according to that.
 
 The logistics of this would make the legislature less efficient. One
 possible rule would be that all Representatives must have voting
 strengths between 0.9 and 1.1 and a detailed count only happens if
 the vote is close (or if there is a motion demanding it).
 
  
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