[EM] Competitive Districting Rule

[Juho]

James Gilmour wrote:

> You can have both districts and PR for the same chamber.

Yes! I like the viewpoint that both needs, ideological PR and regional PR, may be sought after in the elections. In this process there may be rounding errors. There is typically a tradeoff between these two needs (and possible other needs too like simplicity).

> Of course, you cannot have single-member districts and PR, ... ...

I think there are methods that allow even this. It is possible for example to first count nation wide the votes of each party and decide the number of seats each party will get based on the number of votes they got. In the second phase one would pick the winners from the single member districts so that the overall ("already agreed") distribution of seats to parties will be respected. Now we get the rounding errors. In some single member districts where party/candidate A won with a narrow margin we would have to violate the local plurality opinion and pick some other candidate as the winner instead. The algoriths todo this are simple. Voters maybe wouldn't like if some candidate with only 10% support would be elected to represent their district. But this is tradeoff. We got really good ideological PR and very local regional PR (one member districts) but at some regions we had to satisfy with poor local political match. The calculation methods should simply reflect what values the society values the most.

BR, Juho Laatu

_____ Original message _____
Subject:	Re: [EM] Competitive Districting Rule
Author:	"James Gilmour" <jgilmour at globalnet.co.uk>
Date:		08th July 2006 7:26:27 

> 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

----
election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info


		
___________________________________________________________ 
The all-new Yahoo! Mail goes wherever you go - free your email address from your Internet provider. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html