[EM] PR favoring racial minorities

[Raph Frank]

On 8/22/08, Kristofer Munsterhjelm <km-elmet at broadpark.no> wrote:
>  What I had in mind was something like this: Say there's a single-winner
> election where the plurality winner has 35% support. Then those voters
> effectively got 0.5 (+1) worth of the vote with only 0.35 mass. The total
> voting power of the entire electorate should not be altered.

Well, they actually got 1 constituency's worth of voting power at
parliament for 35% of the vote in the constituency.  This is just
fundamentally unfair and the problem cannot really be eliminated
while also allowing independents to run.

If there are no independents, then the problem pretty much goes
away.

>  Thus
>
>  pA (unscaled) = 0.35/0.5 = 0.7
>  pB (unscaled) = 1.3
>
>  For the sake of the example, consider the case of 1000 votes. Then the
> scaling factor is x, so that 0.7 * x * 350 + 1.3 * x * 650 = 1000. x is then
> about 0.918, so the voters for the winner now have voting power 0.6426 and
> all the other voters have voting power 1.1934.

This would mean that if a candidate had 55% support, his voters would
have their voting power boosted (though, I guess in that case, there would
be no change).  It still has the problem that the constituency gets a non-party
candidate and also its voters get to vote for a party.

I think fairer might be to just exclude the voters who voted for the
independent from consideration at the party level (if the independent
is elected for the constituency.)
They have already obtained 1 full seats worth of representation for
1/3 of a seat's worth
of votes, there is no point in also giving them more representation by
including them
in the party allocation.  Voters who voted for other independents or
party members
would still be included.

Another option is to have a reasonable number of top up seats.  If 1/3 of
the seats were top-up seats, then 2/3 of a constituency would be enough
to be entitled to a seat.  This would mean that independents would be
able to archive a quota in 1 constituency.  They would have to obtain 2/3
of the votes to be eligible for election.

Alternatively, independents might be allowed to register as mini-parties.
They could be allowed to appear on the party ballots in 2-3 nearby
constituencies.  As long as their 'party' receives 1 seat's worth of votes,
then they are entitled to be elected in their constituency.