[EM] PR favoring racial minorities

[Juho]

On Aug 26, 2008, at 0:46 , Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:

>> In order to guarantee proportionality (of any imaginable grouping)  
>> at national level we may need to allow the voters to rank all  
>> candidates nation wide (as you noted). The next question then is  
>> if we allow the voters of one district to have a say on which  
>> candidates will be elected in the other districts. If we allow  
>> that then we could simply arrange a national level STV election  
>> with some further tricks. The trick could be e.g. to refuse to  
>> nominate any candidates from some district after the agreed number  
>> of candidates has been elected from that district. (This was just  
>> one quickly drafted option.)
>
> Another trick related to one that I've referred to before is this:  
> give each voter an additional fractional vote where the candidates  
> are ranked in order of distance from the voter. "Continuous"  
> districting, if you want. The fraction depends on how much you want  
> locality to matter. You'd also have to link the two votes' weight  
> somehow, otherwise it just becomes minisum distance, which isn't  
> what we want.

There are two approaches to locality. One may either allow it or  
force it. The philosophy behind forcing is that voters would  
otherwise easily vote for some central figures that on average live  
in central locations. That would cause a bias that favours those  
central regions. (It is however also possible to allow voters to vote  
for anyone but still force the results to be geographically  
proportional.)

Methods that measure the distance between voters and candidates in  
detail could lead to some interesting consequences like strategic  
house buying. :-)

Juho





		
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