<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">2011/10/25 Andy Jennings <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:elections@jenningsstory.com">elections@jenningsstory.com</a>></span><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div class="im">On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 11:56 AM, Jameson Quinn <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jameson.quinn@gmail.com" target="_blank">jameson.quinn@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div>2011/10/25 Andy Jennings <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:elections@jenningsstory.com" target="_blank">elections@jenningsstory.com</a>></span><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div>Hi Jameson,</div><div><br></div><div>I looked over it. I didn't see any technical problems immediately, but I'm going to try to re-read it a few more times and keep thinking it over. My emotional response, though, is that it's probably beyond the complexity limit for actual implementation anytime soon. The idea that "candidates from your district are in a bigger font and candidates outside your co-districts aren't listed at all but you can write them in" is a clever trick, but I don't know if people will go for it.</div>
</blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>(Note: I've renamed "co-district" as "super-district")</div><div><br></div><div>The super-district idea and ballot design are not fundamental. For simplicity, it would work fine if only the candidates from your local district were available, as long as you could write-in candidates from other districts.</div>
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<div><br></div><div>Clarification on terminology: When you say "Fair Representation", is that the same thing as "Fair Majority Voting"?</div></blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>Yes. Oops. I'd already fixed this error on the page.</div>
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<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div>- I know "Fair Majority Voting" from here: <a href="http://mathaware.org/mam/08/EliminateGerrymandering.pdf" target="_blank">http://mathaware.org/mam/08/EliminateGerrymandering.pdf</a></div>
<div>- I know Balinski has a more complicated system that allows multiple winners per district. I forget what it's called, biproportional apportionment, maybe?</div></blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>Don't know that one. Can you find a link?</div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>Here are some references:</div><div><div><br></div><div>Michel Balinski, “Apportionment : uni- and bi-dimensional,” in B. Simeone et F. Pukelsheim (Eds.), Mathematics </div><div>
and Democracy. Recent Advances in Voting Systems and Collective Choice, Springer, Berlin and Heidelberg, 2006, </div>
<div>43-53.</div><div>(Paywalled: <a href="http://www.springerlink.com/content/g21l8t2t12p4n14l/" target="_blank">http://www.springerlink.com/content/g21l8t2t12p4n14l/</a>)</div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>
At a quick read, this is basically just a prettier formalism for FMV. Yes, it is good math; no, it is not a politically- or legally-significant change. </div><div><br></div><div>Oh, wait... it also allows multi-member districts. But not post-hoc overlapping districts as in PAL.</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div class="gmail_quote"><div><div><br></div><div>Michel Balinski and Friedrich Pukelsheim, “Die Mathematik der doppelten Gerechtigkeit,” Spektrum der </div>
<div>Wissenschaft, April 2007, 76-80.</div><div>(In German: <a href="http://www.math.uni-augsburg.de/stochastik/pukelsheim/2007a.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.math.uni-augsburg.de/stochastik/pukelsheim/2007a.pdf</a>)</div>
</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I can't read German. </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div class="gmail_quote"><div><div><br></div>
<div>Michel Balinski and Friedrich Pukelsheim, “Matrices and politics,” in E. P. Liski, J. Isotalo, S. Puntanen and G. P.</div><div>H. Styan (Eds.), Festschrift for Tarmo Pukkila, Department of Mathematics, Statistics and Philosophy, University of </div>
<div>Tampere, Finland, 2006, 233-242.</div></div><div>(<a href="http://www.math.uni-augsburg.de/stochastik/pukelsheim/2006d.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.math.uni-augsburg.de/stochastik/pukelsheim/2006d.pdf</a>)</div></div>
</blockquote><div><br></div><div>This appears to use the prettier formalism to discuss a multi-member-district FMV-like system in Zurich.</div><div><br></div><div>See also: S. Maier, P. Zachariassen, and M. Zachariasen, “Divisor-based biproportional apportionment in electoral systems: A real-life benchmark study,” <i>Management Science</i> 56, no. 2 (2010): 373–387.</div>
<div><br></div><div>This looks at algorithm performance and result quality (over several measures) in the general problem of multi-member districts and global proportionality, for various sources of real-world and simulated (including deliberately pathological) data.</div>
<div><br></div><div>All of the above have the same problem I see with FMV: in the single-member-district case, they could elect a minority candidate over the majority candidate for that district. PAL resolves this problem by making vote transfers explicit and, from the voter's point of view, optional and thus intentional. Thus PAL elects winners as if it were a "single-member biproportional" system, but it provides a much clearer rationale for the "discordant" district-level results: the loser may have gotten more direct votes, but the winner got a higher direct+transferred total; and all winners reached the same overall quota.</div>
<div><br></div><div>This is the main idea of PAL.</div><div><br></div><div>JQ</div></div>