[EM] (21) APR: Steve's 20th dialogue with Richard Fobes

Tue Nov 3 09:16:20 PST 2015

Re: (21) APR: Steve's 20th dialogue
with Richard Fobes

> From:
election-methods-request at lists.electorama.com

> Subject: Election-Methods Digest, Vol 134, Issue 1

> To: election-methods at lists.electorama.com

> Date: Sat, 1 Aug 2015 12:02:14 -0700

> 

>> 1. Re: (20) APR: Steve's 20th dialogue with Richard Fobes

> (Richard Fobes)

> ----------------------------------------------------------------------

> 

> Message: 1

> Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2015 17:07:34 -0700

> From: Richard Fobes <ElectionMethods at VoteFair.org>

> To: "election-methods at lists.electorama.com"

> <election-methods at lists.electorama.com>

> Cc: steve bosworth <stevebosworth at hotmail.com>

> Subject: Re: [EM] (20) APR: Steve's 20th dialogue with Richard Fobes

> Message-ID: <55BC0DC6.50903 at VoteFair.org>

> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1254; format=flowed

Hi
Richard,

In
this 21st dialogue, let's  return to the question of whether APR or
VoteFair provides the fairer system for electing multi-winners, e.g. the 80
members of California’s legislative assembly. 
In this post, I wish to focus only on one element of your reply to our
20th dialogue, namely, the question of whether or not your ‘VoteFair
representation ranking’ needlessly wastes votes:

> On 7/16/2015 4:15 PM, steve bosworth wrote:

> >S:  .... I see this as 'full'
both because [APR], unlike VoteFair, allows

> > for no votes to be wasted, and gives each citizen's vote to a named
rep

> > who she has directly or indirectly favored. In this sense only, APR

> > offers '100% percent proportionality'. As far as I understand it,
your

> > 'VoteFair ranking' will still waste some vote and cannot guarantee
that

> > each vote that counts will be added to the weighted vote of the rep each

> > citizen has directly or indirectly favored. Please correct me if I am

> > mistaken about this.

> 

> R: Apparently you don't yet understand VoteFair Ranking. If a voter does 

> not support the winner of the first seat within a district, then that 

> voter's influence [may] shifts to help choose the winner of the second
seat 

> within that district. If that voter also does not like the winner of 

> the second seat, then that voter's first-party preference shifts to 

> determine the number of winning candidates from that political party.

S:  I have read these chapters again and now more
exactly understand both of these elements. 
 I agree that they provide great
improvements on the existing system. 
Yes, these elements reduce the scope for gerrymandering and for
safe-seats produced by chance.  They also
make accurate representation more likely, especially since you also add the
election of 2 ‘statewide seats’ (without using statewide districts).  

However,
unlike APR, each of your larger electoral districts from which 2 ‘districtwide’
seats are elected do not entirely eliminate the possibility of relatively safe-
seats being produced by gerrymandering or by chance.  I understand (by using ‘cross-district popularity
ranking’ (page 5/20 of Chap. 20) that VoteFair representation elects the 2
statewide seats by discovering the most popular candidates for the largest
party underrepresent by the district elections alone. 

Yes,
the choice of these candidates has been decided by their voters in their respective
district, but they have not been chosen by the ‘same-party supporters’ in the
other districts.  In contrast, APR would elect
all the 10 seats as ‘statewide’ members and would allow every ‘same-party
supporter’ directly to help determine which candidates would be elected to
represent each supporter.  Each supporter
could identify the one elected candidate among the 10 or more reps he had most
favored and helped to elect.  This would
make it more likely that there would be a closer match between the views of
each citizen and his representative than your proposal provides. 

Also,
in contrast, each APR elected candidate would have a ‘weighted vote’ exactly
equal to the number of voters who had helped her to be elected—no citizen’s vote
being at all wasted.  This contrasts with
your page 18/24 in your Chapter 15: 
‘This leaves the 10 Democratic voters appropriately unrepresented ….’ A
similar flaw is repeated later on page 10/20 of Chap. 20 when the ‘10 voters
for ‘White party’ receive no representation. Here, you again admit that this
application of ‘VoteFair representation’ has not ‘proportionately’ produced the
‘ideal match’ between ‘voters with their party preferences’, i.e. a ‘match’
that would have been exact if APR had been used.   At both
of these points, your meaning of ‘fair’ seems to conflict with the more usual
meaning you appropriately seem to give to it in other contexts (and which I
also endorse), namely, each person must be treated equally and represented as
accurately as possible.  If so, surely it
is not ‘fair’ for anyone to be ‘unrepresented’ if there is a practical system
available (like APR) that would allow every citizen’s vote to continue
qualitatively to count in the assembly through the one representative directly
or indirectly most favored by each voter.

In
this context and in the light of this clarification, do you accept that APR is
‘fairer’ than VoteFair?

Steve

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/attachments/20151103/04cabd6f/attachment.htm>