[EM] Using gerrymandering to achive PR

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

Raph Frank wrote:
> 1) Every odd year, an 'election' is held but voters vote for parties
> 
> 2) based 1), seats are distributed using d'Hondt between the parties

If you're going to have D'Hondt, or PR in general, why bother with the 
districting? Just use open list or a party-neutral proportional 
representation method like STV.

It's not impossible to introduce STV; it has been used in many places in 
the US, like New York's experiment with PR from 1937 to 1945. What seems 
to be more difficult is to keep PR in the face of compounding opposition 
from the established parties (though in the aforementioned New York 
case, they got a lot of help from the Cold War situation along with the 
election of Communists; they could then link communism and PR).

> Also, if a party cannot be gerrymandered any seats, maybe it should be
> eliminated, to allow its supporters votes to be useful.
> 
> Another question, would it be illegal to restrict candidates so that
> they must come from the designated party?  This would allow each party
> to run 2 candidates in their district, thus improving choice.

I suppose that if you want to steer democracy, you could redistrict so 
that a certain fraction (changing for each election) have narrow 
margins. The question would be one of stability on one hand and 
responsive changes on the other (analogous to feedback damping), but 
again, who's to say where the optimum is? That is, if one should steer 
democracy in the first place.