[EM] PR solutions (was: Gerrymandering solutions).

[Michael Ossipoff]

Juho & Jameson:

Jameson:

You describe a complicated new PR system. But why, when there are already
good PR systems?

Juho:

Actually, I can see the justification of d'Hondt in party list PR, and of
the Droop quota in STV: To someone who doesn't think PR is necessary anyway,
what's so bad about slightly favoring more popular parties? And don't
d'Hondt and Droop guarantee that a party or coalition with a majority of the
votes will have a majority of the seats? I seem to remember something like
that.

So I'd now say that I don't have a preference in the matter of Sainte-Lague
vs d'Hondt, or Hare quota vs Droop quota. The appeal of Sainte-Lague and
Hare is that if you really want proportionality, then, in pursuit of that
goal, you might as well _really_ give small parties their fair share, with
unbiased Sainte-Lague, or Hare STV; and in fact you might as well have
Sainte-Lague's optimal proportionality. But d'Hondt and Droop make sense as
compromise PR, a compromise between PR and majoritarianism.

In fact, I've known people who strongly, fiercely advocated
Largest-Remainder against Sainte-Lague, because, in spite of
Largest-Remainder's poorer proportional accuracy, they claimed that it is
simpler, easier to advocate, more likely to be accepted. Ok, maybe they're
even right.  Of course the fact that Sainte-Lague and d'Hondt are in use in
a number of countries tells us that they are not prohibitively complicated.

But what I don't understand, Juho, is why you say that Largest-Remainder's
paradoxes are desirable. Saying that the paradoxes are acceptable,
forgivable, for STV, or even for Largest Remainder (when one is advocating
it for alleged simplicity) is one thing. Saying that the paradoxes are
desirable is quite another thing. 

I once criticized Largest-Remainder on the grounds of "small party
surprise": If Largest-Remainder's random fluctuations give a seat to a party
that's far smaller than the size that would qualify for a Sainte-Lague seat,
maybe well under half of a Hare quota, there could be major criticism of the
PR system. 

Mike Ossipoff









> -----Original Message-----
> From: election-methods-bounces at lists.electorama.com [mailto:election-
> methods-bounces at lists.electorama.com] On Behalf Of Juho Laatu
> Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2012 3:21 PM
> To: EM list
> Subject: Re: [EM] PR solutions (was: Gerrymandering solutions).
> 
> On 7.6.2012, at 21.44, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
> 
> > Likewise, for a list system, where Sainte-Lague is available, there's
> > no reason to allow the paradoxes by using Largest Remainder.
> 
> Ok, that's one viewpoint. I think that often the paradoxican properties of
> Largest Remainder are actually what we want and not what we want to avoid.
> 
> > Maybe what you'd said was that Finland doesn't use a topping-up
> > system, where the parties seat totals from districts are augmented to
> > bring each party's total seats up to what a national PR count says they
should
> have.
> 
> That's true. In Finland the district results are not "topped up". (The
recent reform
> proposal (that is now dead or dormant) would have counted the proportions
at
> national level and then "forced" the districts to elect their
representatives so
> that the total sums would follow the national proportions.)
> 
> Juho
> 
> 
> 
> 
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