[EM] a question about apportionment

⸘Ŭalabio‽ Walabio at MacOSX.Com
Sun Apr 17 17:19:34 PDT 2011


	2011-04-17T07:47:56Z, “Kristofer Munsterhjelm” <Km_Elmet at Lavabit.Com>:

> 	⸘Ŭalabio‽ wrote:

>> 	The cuberoot of 300 million is:

>> 	669

>> 	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.

	Because I would use the SplitLineAlgorrithm.  The next power of 2 over 700 is 1024.  ¿Do you want to see how the United States of America would look without Gerrymandering:

	http://rangevoting.org/USsplitLine.png

	The SplitLineAlgorithm did that.

>> 	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.

	The ideas of districts is that the politicians are accountable to the people in their districts.  If a proposed dam would flood a district, the Representative would try to stop it.  With proportional representation, none in the legislature may try to save the district.

	With district-based systems, groups which are not at least a plurality somewhere receive no representation.  It is good to have a house of proportional representation and a separate house of district-absed representation.

>> 	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?

	It is aan house for everything:

	*	1 house for districts
	*	1 house for states
	*	1 house for proportionality.

>> 	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.

	My reasoning is that we do not to make it too easy to obstruct:

	The republicans broke the nation.  In the last congress, the democrats tried to fix the country, but the republicans filibustered all attempts at doing so.  The stupid electorate noticed that the country is still broken, voted back in the republicans, who are intent on trying to break the country some more.  I do not want to have something as easily abused as a filibuster.

	In Wisconsin, the republicans decided to destroy the unions.  The democrats saw that this was wrong and left the state, thus preventing a quorum.

	I do not want some crank holding up the legislature, but if something the majority wants to do truly hurts a minority, I want a difficult (so it would not be abused) way to obstruct that.

	In my system, for preventing a quorum, legislators could leave the building, but lawenforcement would find them and drag them back for making a quorum.  In order to truly prevent a quorum, legislators would have to leave the country.  In other words, legislators would have to be very motivated to do so. I cannot imagine 10 (the squareroot of 100 senators) leaving the country about 200 times in 2009 and 2010.

	Legislators would only go the extra thousands of miles for preventing a quorum by leaving the country for the most dire of circumstances  ——  not the frivolous reasons republican senators used for filibustering in 2009 and 2010.


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