[EM] IIAC. Juho: Census re-districting instead of PR for allocating seats to districts.

[Michael Ossipoff]

On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 5:37 PM, Juho Laatu <juho4880 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> On 14.6.2012, at 23.45, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
>
>> If the district's population is off by one person,
>> that's nothing compared to the amount by which even the best PR system
>> will put it off, when allocating seats to fixed districts.
>
> Could you give me an example (or a formula or some other exact definition on what goes wrong). Do you compare adjustable districts to fixed districts or single-member districts to multi-member districts?

I was comparing adjustable districts to fixed districts. It's obvious
that, with adjustable districts, re-drawn after each census, so that
each district contains a (nearly exactly) equal number of people, and
has an equal number of seats (one in this country, though it could be
any number that's the same in each district), the district
representation per person will be equal in each district, as nearly as
desired.

It's equally obvious that fixed districts, to which PR allocates
seats, can't approach that equality. The smaller the districts are,
the more unequal their PR district representation per person will be.

No one claims that PR gives exactly the same district representation
per person, in each district.  ...Or exactly the same party
representation per person to each party. That's common knowledge. One
seeks, therefore, the PR method that most closely approaches that
goal. That's what Sainte-Lague is for. But, for exactly equal district
represent ion per person, you'd need census-based re-districting,
preferably by an automated un-gerrymanderable method.


> Isn't it so that also if we combine some of the single-member districts into one multi-member district, we tend to get at least as good representation density, if we compare e.g. the sum of deviation from the ideal representation density over all people?


It's so, and it's also entirely irrelevant. As I said, we aren't
terribly worried if one congressional district has 699,000 people, and
another congressional district has 699,001 people.

If you're bothered by that much difference in district representation
per person, then don't you find it a little odd that you are ok with
allocating seats to fixed districts by Largest-Remainder instead
Sainte-Lague. Where is your passion for precision now?

With Largest-Remainder, we're talking about some much bigger
differences in district representation per person, especially among
small districts.

Mike Ossipoff