[EM] Redistricting, now with racial demographics

[Raph Frank]

On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 4:20 AM, Aaron Armitage<eutychus_slept at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I would think that presetting the desired boundaries would avoid that.

Pre-set boundaries have the disadvantage that the lead to imbalances
in the voter to seat ratios.

A 5 seat district could have a population of anywhere between 4.5 and
5.5 of the national average (roughly).  This gives a potential
imbalance of +/- 10%.

Ofc, if the districts are very large, then this is less of an issue.
Also, the elimination of gerrymandering might be worth the slight
imbalance.

The imbalance is worst when the districts are small.  One option is to
have a process for combining smaller districts.

For example, any district which has less than 5 seats is combined with
a neighbour.  Once that is done, any district with more than 12 seats
is split in 2 so that each part has at least 5 seats.

Ofc, that would like not be acceptable in the US, assuming by
district, you mean State.

> [if both used PR-STV] I see no reason for having two houses, in that case.

It probably depends on how you do it.

In the US, you could in principle elect the 2 Senators using PR-STV
and the N Representatives using PR-STV.

This would mean that there is still an imbalance between the 2 Houses,
due to the population imbalance between the States.

Another option is longer terms.

For example, you could expand the terms for the Senate.  If you
elected 5 Senators by PR-STV, every 2 years, for a 20 year term, then
that would give you a 50 member Senate.

The House could also be elected by PR-STV, but as a single block.

The effect would be that the Senate is more stable (as it is the
average viewpoint over a 20 year period), while the House would be a
snap-shot.  Also, at any time at most 10% of the Senate would be
seeking re-election, so it would be less subject to short terrm
election planning.  Ofc, with 20 year terms, many Senators would
probably just seek 1 term.

This may lead to the Senate being considered "old and wise" or maybe
just massively corrupt due to the lack of having to stand for
re-election.

In Ireland, the Seanad doesn't have veto powers over legislation.  It
only has the ability to delay legislation for 180 days.  It isn't
actually very powerful anyway, as the Government has the right to
appoint 11 members (out of 60), so they always have a majority in the
Seanad (though at the moment, their majority is zero, so they rely on
the Chairman's casting vote).

I would also add a rule that Senators and Representatives can't become
members of the other House for at least 5 years after they have left
their original house.  This is to try to encourage different types of
people to stand for each House.