[EM] Using gerrymandering to achive PR

[Raph Frank]

On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 10:27 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm
<km-elmet at broadpark.no> wrote:
> 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 is currently illegal for a State to use PR to elect its House
seats.  The Senate seats would be even harder.

I was wondering if it would be a way to get PR without needing
Congress to change the law.

> 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.

Actually, thinking about it, 2 people from the same party would be
pretty reasonable.

All districts would be competitive.  However, if you are trying to
balance districts, then you can't do it for all of them.  A few have
to be safe for the largest party.

2 members from the same party would allow the voters remove an
incumbent without having to vote against their own party.