[EM] a question about apportionment (was: basic fairness question)

[Evan Dower]

What are the reasons behind the square roots and cube roots? Can you
point me toward some research papers or something please?

Also, in tiered representation, I would expect the representatives at
one tier to elect the representatives at the next (from among
themselves), but the United States elects people to most "tiers" based
on popular votes for the region represented by that representative. To
be more concrete, for tiered representation, I would expect (in your
example) federal legislators to be elected by state legislators (not
by the general public). Similarly, I would expect (again from your
example) "Flat/Young-Earth Geocentric Creationists" to be the only
ones allowed to vote on which of them should elected to the city
council. This certainly doesn't match what you mean by tiered
representation. Perhaps you could reference the definition you're
using?

On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 16:55, ⸘Ŭalabio‽ <Walabio at macosx.com> wrote:
>        “Robert Bristow-Johnson” <Rbj at Audioimagination.Com>:
>
>>       On Apr 15, 2011, at 8:59 PM, ??alabio? wrote:
>
>>>      ?Owen Dalby? <Owen.Dalby at Gmail.Com>:
>
>>>>     I apologize if I am asking a dumb question, but would appreciate any honest and practical advice from this list. I am conducting an election among a group of colleagues who are all graduates of a fellowship program. 45 people will vote on perhaps 30 candidates for roughly 15 seats.
>
>>>      If these people are not paid, thus it costs group nothing for their services, just let everyone wanting to have a seat.  If money is an issue, one should think about the ideal size of the legislature:
>
>>>      If the legislature has 1 tier, then the size of it should be the squareroot of the electorate.  The squreroot of 45 is:
>
>>>      7
>
>>       how well does this work for a large population?  if that rule applied to the U.S., we would have about 17,500 in the House of Representatives in Congress.  might be a little unwieldy.
>
>        Yes, it would if the USA would have one tier.  Let us read a little bit more of what I wrote:
>
>        “If multiple tiers exist, each should be the cuberoot of the electorate at each level with the total numbers of legislators being greater than the squareroot of the electorate.”
>        ——
>        “⸘Ŭalabio‽”
>
>        The USA does have multiple tiers:
>
>        *       Local SchoolBoards  ——  Full Of Flat/Young-Earth Geocentric Creationists
>        *       CityCouncils
>        *       CountyCouncils
>        *       StateLegislatures
>        *       The Federal Legislature (The United States Senate & The United States House Of Representatives)
>
>        The total number of elected officials in the USA is about half a million  elected seats which is greater than the squareroot of 300 million.
>
>        The cuberoot of 300 million is:
>
>        669
>
>        The United States House Of Representatives should have about 700 Representatives.  It is too bad that the United States House Of Representatives froze its number of member almost e century ago.  If I could reform the United States Of America, this is what I would do:
>
>        Expand the House Of Representatives to 1024.  Use the SplitLineAlgorithm
>
>        http://rangevoting.org/GerryExamples.html
>
>        for redistricting the country.  Redistrict without regard for state-boundaries (all politics are local).  Have Representatives elected by ScoreVoting.
>
>        For representing the states, we have the Senate.  Increase the number of senators to a score (20) per state.  Let each state vote for its senators using Asset-Voting so that its Senators truly represent the state.
>
>        Create a new House Of Proportional Representation with 1.000 (one thousand) members elected by AssetVoting.
>
>        The President would be directly elected using ScoreVoting.
>
>        A simple majority in each house would be necessary to pass legislation. By simple majority, I mean half of the number of seats for the chamber.
>
>        No filibustering is allowed, but if the equal to or greater than the square-root of the office is missing then a quorum does not exist.
>
>        Let us suppose that a crazy President vetoes everything.  A  two thirds majority of each of the houses of Congress can overturn the veto.
>
>        This is an example of using a mix of Asset/Score-Voting for running a country.
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