[EM] a question about apportionment

Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_elmet at lavabit.com
Sun Apr 17 00:47:56 PDT 2011


⸘Ŭalabio‽ wrote:

> 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.

Why? 1024 is much greater than 700. Even if we assume a perfect turnout, 
the cube root of 2x 300 million is 843, not 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.

Why not just dissolve the problem by using a multimember method? 
Furthermore, using range/score for electing representatives makes the 
outcome less proportional/representative, as I've mentioned elsewhere; 
it would make the house of representatives more like the Senate, except 
population-weighted.

> 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.

This seems quite unwieldy. You have three houses, each of at least a 
thousand members. One is population-weighted and majoritarian, one is 
state-weighted and proportional (if Asset is proportional), and the 
third is population-weighted and proportional (again, if Asset is). What 
advantage does that have over two houses?

> 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.

The square root of 1000 is just about 32. This seems to indicate that 32 
out of 1000 (3.2%) could just leave and keep the body without quorum, 
which in turn seems fragile.



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