[Election-Methods] Determining representativeness of multiwinner methods

[Juho]

One reason why districts have been kept is that if there were no  
districts then voters would have some tendency to vote for the  
capital area candidates that have typically better access to TV etc.  
There are typically also more popular figures in general at the  
capital region. The risk is thus that the distribution (without  
districts) would not be a random distribution but would favour the  
central regions.

Juho



On Jun 24, 2008, at 6:18 , Howard wrote:

> >One more observation. Nowadays many methods actually try to meet two
> >kind of proportionality requirements, political/ideological
> >proportionality (typically based on the party structure) and regional
> >proportionality (typically implemented by mandating all to vote at
> >their own home district for the local candidates there). These
> >scenarios may be out of the scope of the proposed metric because of
> >the mandated nature of the regional representation, but regional
> >proportionality is one interesting and maybe also measurable
> >criterion for proportionality.
>
> I feel that the need to look for and design a system around  
> geographic proportionality is a waist of time (except as a sales  
> pitch).
> I believe that geographic proportionality would naturally come out  
> of a truly proportional system (if it was important to the voters)  
> where the proportionality of all issues important to the voters are  
> taken into account.
> As an example, if a large number of voter care about the number of  
> pot holes on bank street it is likely that many of these voters  
> live or work near bank street. and thus would elect at least some  
> politicians that live near bank street.
>
> Geographic location is a hold over from the days when communication  
> was limited to a local area is largely irrelevant today.
> ----
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