[EM] Explaining PR

[Brian Olson]

Catching up from a couple weeks ago, I just wanted to add my short- 
short version of explaining Proportional Representation that usually  
gets a good response from people:

"A 20% group should get 20% of the seats."

It's pretty easy for people to be agreeable to that. I think in  
general it might be easier for people to be agreeable to goals of  
election reform, and relatively few actually care to analyze the  
mechanics of how it works. If they are interested in the mechanics,  
they usually just want to understand it enough to feel they wouldn't  
be cheated by a mysterious system. Explaining it to the point of, "oh  
yeah, that sounds reasonable" is often enough.
Depending on the audience, it might even be better to say that a 10%  
group should get 10% of the seats. Many US Green Party people would  
love that.

Another 'goal' statement I like to use:

"I want to vote for candidates, not parties."

I think a fair number of people have heard vague ideas about how in  
some places you vote for a party and the party fills in seats with  
people depending on how many they get allocated. I don't trust party  
machines even when it's "my" party, so I want to vote directly for  
candidates. STV allows this, and I like that (never mind its warts,  
we'll figure out better ways that also allow candidate voting).

Anyway, those are my pithy two bits for the PR debate for now.