[Election-Methods] Determining representativeness of multiwinner methods

[Juho]

On Jun 24, 2008, at 15:44 , Terry Bouricius wrote:

> That brings me to an interesting issue, which may be off-topic for  
> this
> list..."sortition"...the selection of a legislative body by means of
> modern sampling methods that assure a fully representative body.  
> There is
> an interesting history of the tension between sortition on one hand  
> and
> election on the other (Athenian democracy used both), where  
> sortition was
> seen as the more democratic method, with election being the lesser
> (because candidates with more money or fame had such an advantage over
> average citizens). It is the old question of whether representative
> democracy should be seen as "self-governance," or "consent of the
> governed."
>
> Sorry if this is too off-topic.

Very on-topic.

Another reason why sampling could be considered better is that in  
elections people that want to become elected and are ready to fight  
their way through and spend few years doing so are more likely to  
become candidates and finally representatives. That has both positive  
and negative impacts, but in any case this means one kind of bias in  
the representation.

One intermediate approach is to combine the two approaches and first  
nominate a pool of candidates that people want to represent them and  
then elect among these by lottery (or maybe even the other way  
around, first pick random candidates and then arrange an election  
(maybe this method would be less good)). This method has the benefit  
that the representatives are likely to be reasonably competent too,  
and if the nomination process is reasonably open, then also people  
that are competent and willing but that would not fight their way  
through could be elected (nomination by few neighbours might be enough).

Juho





		
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