[EM] stratified renormalisation for elections

[raphfrk at netscape.net]

 It is often possible effect who actually votes elections by selecting when the voting occurs. For example, the general election in Ireland is being held on Thursday.
 
 However, university exams are being held at the moment. This means that students are much less likely to vote. Also, even the fact that the elections are on Thursday is likely to suppress that demographic as students tend no to re-register when they move to go to university. They stay registered in their home constituency. 
 
 The elections are sometimes held on Saturday so that students have the option of going home for the weekend to vote (some would go home for the weekend anyway).
 
 Similar tricks can be used for lots of demographics.
 
 One solution would be to do stratified renormalisation. This is where you split the population up into sub-groups. If a sub-group is over-represented by the number of voters, the vote of each member of that group would be reduced in weight. Similarly, if the demographic is under-represented, it would have its votes increased in weight.
 
 This would mean that differential turn-out would be corrected. If a demographic is 20% of the population, it will count for 20% of the votes.
 
 This is already done for regions. A region/district gets seats on the basis of population not on the basis of number of votes.
 
 The initial split could be based on population. The voters could be split into 4 equal groups starting at 18 and going upwards. Votes from each group would be coloured slightly differently, if one group is over/under-represented, then renormalisation could be applied.
 
 Obviously, the characteristics for the groups would have to be clearly defined.
  Raphfrk
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 "what if anyone could modify the laws"
 
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