[EM] stratified renormalisation for elections

raphfrk at netscape.net raphfrk at netscape.net
Wed May 23 08:02:14 PDT 2007


 > Howard Swerdfeger electorama.com wrote
> This is an interesting idea, one I never thought of before. > but there are many many issues you need to address before you could even
> think of implementing something like this
>
> The obvious problem is how you define the groups
> Some of these groups may be obvious
>
> Age, sex, race, income, current net worth, marital status, education
> level, Many sub groups for each common disability
 
Right, they would have to be well defined.? I think age would be the
best one to start with.? Gender is another (though in some cases not
quite so well defined).
 
Race is even less well defined.? There could be a rule that a person
cannot change their selection once they have made it.? However, there
is still the problem of having clear definitions in the first place.? In
fact, I am not sure if race should be used for equality reasons.? (though
the same applies to gender).? If the rule is age based, then everyone goes
through each stage.
 
An issue with age is managing people being transferred from one group to
another. I think a better solution would be to break the population up
based on year they were born.? The groups might be x-1950, 1951-1975,
1976-2000 and 2001-x (though that group would be unrepresented at the 
moment as it has no 18+ members).
 
This would mean that each person would remain in the same group for their
entire life.? Also, the census could be used to work out the proportions as
the question could ask year of birth and it wouldn't need to be computed on
a year by year basis.? Also, I wouldn't give credit to the lowest aged group
on the basis of non adults in their group.
 
>
> But some groups that I would think would be important to have would be
> hard to prove that you are a member of that demographic. Two that spring
> to mind are religion and sexual orientation.
> Both of these demographics are self identified (ie. can be faked), but
> both could affect voting patterns.
 
One option there would be to allow the group itself control membership.
You can join a group if the majority agree and can leave at will.? I am
not sure exactly if it would be effective.? Group members would want new
members to be non-voters.? Hmm, as Abd said, it would start to approach
delagable proxy.
 
I guess I was thinking of some small corrections where there are differential
turnout.
 
> Worse some demographic category that you missed may effect voter turn out.
> Example :
> Bed ridden 80+ year olds with dementia, are much less likely to vote
> then an 80 year old in good health. and it is likely that there voting
> patters would be different.
> as the bed ridden one might favour more money to permanent long term
> care, and the other more money to medicare, and homecare.
 
Allowing people form there own group would help here.? Also, this seems
to be a well defined situation, so could be used by the group allocation
system.



 


Raphfrk
--------------------
Interesting site
"what if anyone could modify the laws"

www.wikocracy.com

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