>> From: Joe Weinstein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> Subject: Re: [EM] Automatic redistricting
>> Tony Simmons writes: >> 'Perhaps the trick is to let the voters create their own >> districts.' [Rather than geography- or party- defined >> partitioning of the electorate] 'it might be better to >> think of "consituencies"'. >> 'The obvious way to allow voters to define their own >> constituencies is with something like STV, which allows >> voters to group themselves through the act of voting >> itself.' >> I think Tony's idea is good but the last quoted sentence >> misleadingly summarizes the proposal for implementing the >> idea. Yep, I wrote that pretty quick, and it's far from clear, though it seems it was clear enough. Actually, I wasn't summarizing the proposal at all there, but leading up to it, presenting STV and similar schemes as a way to define constituencies. My proposal really doesn't involve districts in the usual sense at all. Each candidate would appear on a (potentially) different collection of ballots. Alice would run against Bob in some precincts and not others. I think modifying this method to be a way of ordering candidates on ballots in a large, fixed multi-member district would nullify some of the advantages, though it might be an incremental improvement on existing PR schemes. Actually, it wouldn't be a difference in the voting method, but a difference in the way the ballot papers are printed. One of my motivations for overlapping constituencies was to eliminate the need for candidates to campaign in huge districts, with concommitant requirement for a huge war chest in order to be competitive. Someone brought this up earlier; sorry. I don't recall who; it made an impression on me. I'm not pleased with the trend in the size of campaign budgets. Choosing Congresscreatures-at-large to represent all of California would eliminate most potential candidates who couldn't advertise to at least ten or fifteen million people. Think of how actual voters choose candidates, or anything else for that matter. Everything is dominated by advertising. In a perfect world, where citizens devote even an hour a day to keeping up with what's going on in the world, demand a press that presents solid information presented in a thoroughly professional manner, and take time to apply serious critical thinking to elections, we might even be able to use PR to choose candidates at large for the entire country. But it's an ideal. Thus, my plan was to deliberately limit the alternatives as a concession to reality. And there are some other interesting properties. For example, each candidate would face more opponents, and each opponent would only be an opponent in the area of overlap, rendering negative campaigning less tempting. And of course gerrymandering would suffer, since the process of drawing lines would be automatic. In general, the idea was to provide some of the benefits of PR without the usual price. One aspect of Joe's proposal that is very intriguing is the idea of using computers to arrange candidates on a variety of continua. There were some discussions along those lines about a year ago, specifically about placing candidates in an "issue space". We might include among the "issues" such things as party and location. However, it really isn't necessary for any of this to be done on the ballot, or even by the Powers That Be. Before the election, a voter's software could provide the information and organize into informative displays for voters as an aid to voting. There's computer assisted design, computer assisted aircraft piloting, computer assisted medical practice ... why not computer assisted voting? Software could use information about candidates' positions on two or three variables of interest to a particular voter, and display them in a 2D or 3D space, relative to an arrow saying "You are here." Repeated displays with different choices of variables might provide a revealing perspective. Such a scheme might help a voter rationally choose thirty candidates from among a hundred. Of course, there are problems, as always. How would we know which sources of candidate data to trust? The scheme emphasizes measurable quantities at the expense of character, judgement and other intangibles that constitute "leadership". And it could encourage even more abdication of responsibility for cultivating genuine understanding of politics, though there is little remaining room for such abdication. Some thoughts. >> In fact, the potential 'constituencies' are actually >> defined not by the individual voters but by the individual >> CANDIDATES (i.e., by where THEY happen to live). Also, >> use of STV rather than some other method has nothing to do >> with the essence of the proposal. Any desired method for >> choosing multiple winners - my favorite would be PAV - >> could be used. >> Further, one could dispense with the proposed geographic >> criteria for shortening each voter's ballot. In my >> opinion these criteria are needlessly restrictive and >> overly elaborate. Why not instead use a single long >> ballot? - but one that lists all candidates by place of >> residence in a recognizable geographic order (e.g., by >> counties or by other recognized small zones, possibly even >> derived from a recent prior geography-based districting >> scheme). Then each voter could, to the extent desired, >> factor in candidates' geographic proximity. In >> particular, a voter who really wants a short proximity- >> based ballot (comprising just the nearby-residing >> candidates) could readily find the part(s) of the full >> ballot that really interest him. >> For that matter, as balloting gets computerized, a >> presented ballot could come with an indexing of the >> candidates in terms of place of residence, political >> party, and maybe also each of several other attributes of >> interest. >> Joe Weinstein >> Long Beach CA USA