[EM] Electoral college competition rule

[raphfrk at netscape.net]

  I may have posted this a while ago, but not sure.



On the EC, what about this rule:



The most popular party shall be assigned a "win margin" which shall be 

equal to its total vote cast for the party less the total vote of the

?next largest rival.



Before the count, the party that was assigned a win margin in the 

previous election shall be assigned seats such that it receives

a proportion of the seats to allocated equal to its win margin as

a fraction of the total votes cast in the previous election rounded

down.



Each seat shall cost the party votes equal to the total votes cast in

the election divided by the number of seats to be allocated.  The 

party's vote total shall be reduced by this ammount for each seat

it was assigned.  All of the remaining seats shall be allocated to 

the party that has the most votes after this modification.  Also, the

max number of seats that a party can be assigned shall be equal to what

it can "afford".



This uses the previous election as an estimate of the popularity

of the parties.



An example:



10 seats



Election 1: (no winning margins as first to use system)

A: 70%

B: 30%



A gets a winning margin of 40%



A gets all 10 seats





Election 2:



A: 72%

B: 28%



A gets a new winning margin of 42% (for next election)

A gets 4 seats due to winning margin (40% of 10).  This 

costs party A 40% of the total votes.



A: 32%

B: 28%



A gets remaining 6 seats (all 10 again)



Election 3



A: 69%

B: 31%



A gets 4 seats due to winning margin from previous

(42% of 10 rounded down) and is "charged" 40%.



A: 29%

B: 31%



B gets the remaining 6 seats.





The effect is that alot of the seats are competitive.  If there

is a 50/50 chance of winning the second step, then the expected

number of seats each party gets is approx equal to its 

proportion of the support in the State.



In the above example, there would be a 50/50 chance of



A:10

B:0



and



A: 4

B: 6



It doesn't get all of the State's seats in play, but 6 of

them are.  



If the State had a 50/50 A and B popularity, then no seats

would be allocated in the first step.



It does suffer from the problem that it is in party A's

interests to declare itself as A and A'.



    Raphfrk
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