[EM] Competitive Districting Rule

[raphfrk at netscape.net]

Juho <juho4880 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > I don't think an electorate like ours would tolerate
> > your proposed re-allocation of some of the
> > single-district winners to achieve party
> > party balance.
>
> Few remaining comments on this topic:
>
> As said, I think it makes sense to look at these matters from the 
point of
> view
> of unavoidable rounding errors. In the method I presented (which is 
not one o
> my favourite methods) we achieved extreme locality (single member 
districts)
> and
> very good PR (party based).

I wonder if a non-party system could be achieved.  For example, each 
candidate
could be required to rank all (or at least alot of) the other 
candidates.
Eliminated candidates would then tranfer their vote to other parties.

Hmm, I have a recollection of making a suggestion like that before 
(maybe to
this list)

Btw, if someone gets more than 50% in a district are they gaurenteed a 
seat ?

I guess that an independent who gets 51% of a district isn't really 
entitled
to a seat.

> One can implement PR nationally (like in the method that I described) 
or
> independently within each district. National levwl PR calculations are
> typically
> needed if one wants to achieve maximum PR. I.e. to cover also to the 
smallest
> parties/groupings that will get only about 1/n of the votes (where n 
is the
> number of representatives to be elected). PR may thus be with or 
without
> cut-off. STV based methods don't normally use the concept of 
parties/grouping
> and therefore counting the votes of e.g. all animal protection 
oriented
> candidates together (nation wide) to achieve one seat is not 
possible. (and a
> a
> result a cut-off (which is one type of a rounding error) (or maybe 
intentiona
> in some cases) is introduced at some level)

Also, under your system, some constituency somewhere would have to end 
up
being represented by a party a party that got hardly any votes.

It suffers from the spoiler problem.  A 2nd candidate from a party that
is likely to win could reduce the plurality for that party in the
constituency and force it to be one of the constituencies that are 
switched.
It would have no effect on the national vote as they would both be 
counted
as part of the party.


Btw, what are people's views on rescaling of votes for a constituency 
before
working out the totals to be used for the PR calculation.

For example if the turnout was 50% in a district each vote would could 
for 2
when doing the national vote and if turnout was 40%, each vote would 
count for
2.5 in the national vote.  This means that if people don't vote their
district still has the same effect on the national vote.  Also, it
reduces the benefit of ballot stuffing.

One party could get 60% in half the constituencies and 40% in
the others, then its average would be 50%.  However, if the 
constituencies
were had different turnouts, they could end up with less than 50%.

In effect, going to full PR reduces the power of constituencies with low
turnout.  Although, another way of looking at it is the PR increases 
the incentive to
vote.