[EM] Competitive Districting Rule

[James Gilmour]

> Brian Olson Sent: Saturday, July 08, 2006 8:53 AM
> I still think I want a bicameral legislature with one 
> districted body and one PR/proxy/asset body.

If you want a bicameral legislature, why would you want one chamber elected so that it is unrepresentative of those who
voted for its members?  You can have both districts and PR for the same chamber.  Of course, you cannot have
single-member districts and PR, but STV-PR offers a good compromise of effective local representation (in modestly sized
multi-member districts) and overall PR.

I would strongly support Brian's view that districting (of any kind) should have nothing whatsoever to do with party
representation.  If your voting system doesn't give acceptable PR of parties, and you want that (an objective I would
support), then change the voting system to one that will.  Don't mess with the district boundaries in the hope of making
the elections more "competitive"  -  do the job properly.  And to do that you have begin by recognising that no matter
what wonderful single-winner voting system you may devise or use, you will never get PR of parties or of voters (except
by chance) until you have got rid of the single-member districts.

For the State legislature you could easily build your multi-member districts around the geographical features
(especially mountain ranges and uncrossable rivers) and the recognised social and economic communities (travel to work,
travel to shop, travel to entertainment).  The experience of the independent Boundary Commissions here in Scotland has
indicated that this will be done more effectively by human beings with access to a good database and GIS than by any
computer algorithms.

James Gilmour