[EM] Delegate cascade and proportional representation

[Raph Frank]

On 8/21/08, Michael Allan <mike at zelea.com> wrote:
>  Your notation is:
>
>   c(W)
>
>     c is a candidate (meaning one who receives votes)
>
>     W is the voting weight (?)

Number of votes assigned to that candidate.

>
>   W = R + 1
>
>     R is the count of votes received

Right, the candidate would add their own vote
to the votes received.

>
>  The algorithm to populate an assembly of size N is simply:
>
>   1.  Rank all c(W) in order of decreasing W
>
>   2.  Choose the top N.

No that isn't what I was suggesting (unless there is a
miscommunication)

It was

1) Use d'Hondt to split seats between all root candidates

2) Each candidate, who receives seats, takes one.

3) Algorithm is applied recursively, with each candidate assigning
any spare seats to his clients proportionally.

This doesn't handle loops well/at all.  It basically requires a tree
structure.

The problem I would have with your idea is that it
encourages long voter chains (at least near the top).

In a city with 1 million people a party with 500,050
votes could win all the seats in a 100 seat legislature.

They would just have all their candidates form a chain.

P1(499,951) votes for P2
P2(499,952) votes for P3
....
P99(500,049) votes for P100
P100(500,050) abstains/becomes a root node

The highest score that any member of the other party
could receive is 499,950.  This means that with
only slightly above 50% of the vote, the first party
wins all the seats, so it isn't a PR method.