[EM] Smith, FPP fails Minimal Defense and Clone-Winner

[Raph Frank]

On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 10:12 PM, Juho <juho4880 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> I didn't quite understand your question. The method could also be
> non-party-list-based (like STV).

It depended on what you meant by 1/N of the votes.  I was just
wondering if you were doing national level rebalancing, like MMP or
FMV.

>> If both parties were roughtly 1/2 each, then most districts would end
>> up electing one from each party.
>
> Actually we have a continuum from single member constituencies to full
> proportionality. Use of 2 seat constituencies provides a really rough
> system, but still one step smoother than single seat constituencies.

I think that 2 seats might be worse that single seaters, if the
parties' support is similar throughout the country.

The election would be decided by the districts that have a 2/3
majority for one or other party.

I had a look at the 2008 House election results, and there are a
reasonable number of districts where one candidate got more than 2/3,
so maybe it isn't as big an issue as I thought.  OTOH, maybe it was
that in those districts, the minority knew that they had no chance, so
didn't bother turning out.  Maybe the minority in that district would
be able to manage 1/3 of the votes.

I think an odd number of seats have the advantage that a majority of
the voters in a district can assign a majority of the seats.