[EM] [Election-Methods] [english 94%] PR favoring racialminorities

[James Gilmour]

Yes, these are very practical political issues that practical reformers have to take into account when proposing any change in the
voting system.

When opponents of reform here in Scotland complained about the "enormous" wards that would be created by electing 3 or 4 councillors
together by STV-PR (in place of 1,222 single-member FPTP wards), I took delight in telling them that the whole of California (area =
160,000 square miles = 414,000 sq km, population = 36.6 M) was represented in the US Senate by only TWO Senators.  For comparison,
Scotland =  30,414 sq miles = 78,772 sq km, with a population of 5.1 M.

So "representation" is all relative.

James



> On Aug 17, 2008, at 11:34 AM, James Gilmour wrote:
> 
> > The evidence from countries which presently have single-member
> > districts but are considering reform of the voting system, is that
> > electors want a balance between proportional representation of the  
> > main political groups AND guaranteed local representation.  It is
> > difficult enough to convince them that with STV-PR they really can  
> > get both with modestly sized multi-member districts.  It would be
> > impossible to persuade them of the benefits of PR reform if all the  
> > members were to be elected at large (UK House of Commons = 646
> > MPs, Scottish Parliament = 129 MSPs).  STV-PR was once viewed in  
> > this utopian way in the UK (in the 1880s), but now it is promoted
> > by practical reformers who are more attuned to the concerns of real  
> > electors.


> Jonathan Lundell > Sent: Sunday, August 17, 2008 8:03 PM
> 
> A related problem here in California is the small size of our state  
> legislature, relative to the state's population. The California state  
> assembly (our lower house) has only 80 seats. Compare that to the UK's  
> 646; California has a population 60% of the UK's. California has 5-6X  
> the population of Scotland, but less than 2/3 the seats.
> 
> As a consequence, California's single-member Assembly districts are  
> already quite large, so that it's prohibitively expensive for most  
> candidates to mount a viable campaign. Five-member districts would be  
> to my way of thinking an absolute minimum (more would be better), but  
> without increasing the assembly size, such a scheme would lead to  
> enormous districts.
> 
> (For non-US readers, state-house district sizes vary widely (wildly)  
> from state to state. California has nearly 500K residents per seat;  
> Maine has ~8500.)
> 
> Some PR reforms have proposed a modest increase in the size of the  
> Assembly (eg from 80 to 120), but, while desirable in itself, this  
> would to the difficulty of implementing PR at all, given that any  
> change gets resisted.

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