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

[Michael Ossipoff]

Juhos:

Ok, you're right in a way: LR _does_ have something right it does:  LR puts
the allocation as close as possible to the ideal fractional allocation. It
does that when it preferentially gives seats to parties or districts with
largest remainders.

Who's to say that that isn't what you should want. And, if that's what you
want, then it's more important than the paradoxes, and it justifies the
paradoxes and makes them excusable.

So why isn't it my favorite? When LR puts the allocation as close as
possible to the ideal fractional allocation, it's making the allocation as
right as possible. But Sainte-Lague looks at something else: Sainte-Lague
instead looks at it from the point of view of the individual voters or
district-residents.Each person has a right to say that s/he deserves the
same party representation or district representation as anyone else. The
same seats per person.

So, Sainte-Lague minimizes differences among different people's s/p (seats
per person). Sainte-Lague differs from Largest-Remainder by looking at it
from the rights point of view of the individual voters or district
residents.

But there are two ways that we could measure how the different people's s/p
differs. You could minimize the differences--subtractive differences,  by
which districts' or parties' s/p differ; or you could compare the _factors_
by which the districts' or parties' s/p differ. Sainte-Lague does the
former, and Hall's method (currently in use for HR apportionment here) does
the latter.

As I was saying, subtractive difference is more like what matters in
Congressional voting.That's why I prefer Sainte-Lague/Webster to Hall. I
presume tha that's why B&L prefer Webster too, but you'd have to look at
their book to be sure.

You said:

LR thus focuses more on the number of voters whose rights are violated
while SL focuses on the proportion (proportion changes in a small group
means less people/voters than in a large group).

[endquote]

I don't think that fairness is a about need to move voters around, from one
district or party or another. I've never heard of anyone's notion of
fairness to be about that.

I don't see how LR counts how many voter (or district members') rights are
violated. SL looks at _individual_ persons' rights to equal representation.
LR instead look at how overall right the allocation looks--how close it is
to the ideal fractional allocation.

I'm not saying that LR's standard is wrong. I'm merely saying that I'm more
interested in the individual persons' rights.

Mike Ossipoff
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