[EM] A question about proportionality and... something else.

[Etjon Basha]

Sorry to hear Kristofer, I hope it's all resolved as best it can.

I'd say a qualified yes to both: at the extreme where random ballot is used
in the assembly (as opposed to electing the assembly itself), it very much
would matter how proportional the body is. Most would be quite happy for a
very majoritarian assembly in such conditions, I'd think, to avoid the risk
of being subjected to the vote of the 5% 5% of the time.

At the other extreme of some complicated iteration of quadratic
negotiations or what have you, so some procedure that somehow irons out all
issues to produce an ultimately unanimous vote, proportionality would also
matter less.

In practice neither of these two extremes apply, and so the proportionality
of the assembly matters to most, but in principle it needs not.

These are all ways to achieve utility, the intermediate steps are open to
improvement.

Regards,

On Mon, 27 Oct 2025, 10:39 pm Kristofer Munsterhjelm via Election-Methods, <
election-methods at lists.electorama.com> wrote:

> I'm having to deal with some serious personal matters, so I have to take
> a break from the EM list again. I don't know for how long.
>
> But before or as I do that, here are two question about proportionality:
> I've been trying to pin down proportionality, as in what's desirable
> about PR that's not fulfilled by an assembly full of extremists
> (candidates near the tails) nor by one full of centrists.
>
> Do you think that the notion of proportionality depends on how the
> assembly makes its own decisions?
>
> E.g. suppose that an assembly was elected that used Heitzig's consensus
> method, or some imagined strategy-proof method where pretty much
> everybody, not just a majority, would be incentivized to agree to pass
> something, but that wouldn't be vulnerable to delaying tactics. Would
> the notion of a "proportional" distribution of candidates change? That
> is: does proportionality depend on assembly procedure?
>
> Second: Suppose an assembly was altered in this way, and suppose that PR
> is considered beneficial (compared to the all-centrist/all-extreme
> alternatives) for assemblies using a majority rule procedure. Would the
> "best" election method for that assembly change as a consequence of its
> procedure being different? If so, how?
>
> -km
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>
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