2012/2/5 David L Wetzell <wetze...@gmail.com> > I wanted to add that if STV (3-5 seats) with Droop Quota were used > consistently across the US that there'd be 50 states forming the > super-districts and so if there were biases due to gerrymandering some of > them would cancel out... > > Also, even though this system is not terribly 3rd party friendly, it > should improve upon our current system some and it doesn't take a lot of > 3rd party reps to make a difference in the House of Reps. > > Moreover, if the bicameral state legislatures were selected by both LR > Hare 3-seats and a single-winner rule (insert your favorite here), then > it'd make it so that what helped with gerrymandering in one branch would > hurt in the other branch. And there'd be much lower barriers for 3rd > parties who'd keep the major parties from gerrymandering the "super > districts" used for the House of Reps. >
Agreed with all of the above. > > In fact, it might be a good thing to let the pretty darn proportionally > elected state house of reps elect our US senators again!!! Statewide > campaigns are expensive and often driven by the manipulative mainstream > media. And if the state reps got to elect our US senators every 2 years > then it would elevate even further the import of state reps elections which > would direct people's attention more so to those elections where their > votes are more likely to make a difference... > Agreed, but no chance this will happen. Jameson > > dlw > > On Sat, Feb 4, 2012 at 9:48 PM, Bryan Mills <bmi...@alumni.cmu.edu> wrote: > >> On Sat, Feb 4, 2012 at 3:21 PM, Jameson Quinn <jameson.qu...@gmail.com>wrote: >> >>> 2012/2/4 Bryan Mills <bmi...@alumni.cmu.edu> >>> >>>> > From: Bryan Mills <bmi...@alumni.cmu.edu> >>>>> > To: David L Wetzell <wetze...@gmail.com> >>>>> > > If there are 3-5 seats STV then the number of candidates won't >>>>> > proliferate >>>>> > > too much and there'd be 5-7 places to vote. This would keep things >>>>> > > reasonable. >>>>> > >>>>> > To get reasonable proportionality with only 3-5 seats per district >>>>> > you'd probably need to go to an MMP system, with all its added >>>>> > complexity. Otherwise Droop proportionality doesn't buy you much >>>>> over >>>>> > FPTP; with 5 seats the Droop quota measures to a precision of ~17%, >>>>> > and the remaining 17% in each district is still susceptible to >>>>> > gerrymandering. >>>>> > >>>>> >>>>> Not much? >>>>> The goal here is not perfectionism wrt proportionality. >>>>> The goal is to increase proportionality and to increase the number of >>>>> competitive seats >>>>> and to reduce the cut-throat competitive nature of US political rivalry >>>>> between its two biggest parties >>>>> so they can't dominate the other and have more incentives thereby to >>>>> work >>>>> together on the many issues that need work. >>>>> >>>> >>>> I'm doubtful that 3-5 candidate districts actually would "increase the >>>> number of competitive seats". Each major party ends up with 1-2 safe >>>> seats, and at that level of granularity gerrymandering and geographical >>>> polarization are still significant enough to render the last seat >>>> non-competitive in most districts. (It would increase proportionality >>>> somewhat - by transforming some of the safe-by-gerrymandering seats into >>>> safe-by-Droop-proportionality seats - but you seem to be arguing that >>>> proportionality isn't as important as competition.) >>>> >>>> Suppose we have two parties with a 50/50 split and 5 seats per >>>> district, with one party more popular in urban areas and one more popular >>>> in rural areas. And suppose that the district lines are drawn such that >>>> 4/5 of districts are slightly more rural than average and 1/5 of districts >>>> are more urban than average, so that the 5th seat in each district becomes >>>> relatively safe as well. (We can do this fairly easily using geographical >>>> boundaries by centering 1/5 of the districts around cities.) >>>> >>>> Scale that up to 400 legislators (80 districts). What do we end up >>>> with? >>>> 320 "natural" safe seats guaranteed by Droop proportionality (160 for >>>> each party) >>>> 80 gerrymandered-safe seats for the rural party >>>> 20 gerrymandered-safe seats for the urban party >>>> >>> >>> First, your numbers add up to 420. I think you meant 64/16 for the safe >>> seats, which is only a 56/44 advantage, not 60/40. >>> >> >> Oops! I had started calculating with 500, then switches to 400 and >> forgot to update some of the numbers. You're right, I should have had the >> gerrymandered seats at 64/16, and that does give a 56:44 advantage rather >> than 60:40. (Of course, if you throw in some third-parties the whole >> analysis changes too; the 50/50 example is meant to be representative of an >> idealized two-party world.) >> >> Note that the "safe" seats would still swing if there were a swing in >>> national mood of around something less than 8%, not something less than 25% >>> as in single-member districts. And the more highly-gerrymandered the map >>> is, the tighter that margin, and so the greater the chances of it >>> backfiring against the gerrymandering party. Gerrymandering is a fine art, >>> but 8% doesn't leave a whole lot of room to play with. Considering safety >>> margins and misfires, I doubt that the gerrymandering party could get >>> anything close to the 6% representation advantage your (corrected) numbers >>> suggest. So, while 2-3% unfairness is still a problem, I think it's a big >>> step up from where we are. >>> >> >> Hmm, interesting. So maybe that's not as much of a concern as I thought; >> I'll have to give it some more consideration. I don't think it solves the >> problem of multiple axes of policy preference, though, and 16% is a lot of >> voters to leave unrepresented in the multiparty case. >> >> >> Now, despite a 50/50 natural split, the rural party has a 60% >>>> supermajority. And, of course, if you draw the district lines differently >>>> you can do the same thing for the urban party. >>>> >>>> So there's still relatively little hope that a system with such small >>>> districts would produce a party-proportional legislature. As you point out >>>> elsewhere, it might still be possible to get an ideologically-proportional >>>> legislature if you can get the parties themselves to shift ideologies. >>>> >>>> >>>> > If you assume two major parties with ~40% of the electorate each, that >>>>> > means that the 5th seat in each district is noisy -- but it's not >>>>> > random noise, it's systematically biased by the parties' voting >>>>> > strategies and the choice of district boundaries. Larger districts >>>>> > allow finer-grained Droop quotas and thereby reduce that noise. >>>>> >>>>> dlw: Smaller districts engender less opposition from those in power. >>>>> They keep the constituent-legislator relationship more so. >>>>> >>>> >>>> Absolutely agreed that smaller districts engender less opposition from >>>> those in power. That's because smaller districts don't fix the biases that >>>> keep them in power. >>>> >>>> They do maintain the constituent-legislator relationship, *for the >>>> subset of voters who voted in favor of the legislator*. For the remaining >>>> Droop quota of un- or under-represented constituents the nonexistence of >>>> the constituent-legislator relationship is also maintained. >>>> >>> >>> Here's my chance to plug PAL >>> representation<http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/PAL_representation>, >>> which does PR but uses existing-sized districts and preserves a specific >>> constituent-legislator relationship for all but (up to) one Droop quota of >>> voters. >>> >> >> Hmm.. Interesting, but it seems too complicated to me. It's got all >> the complication of delegation, approval, and STV - with a bit less voter >> burden on the approval side since only the candidates have to pick approval >> thresholds - plus the variable quota and elimination procedure, which >> doesn't have a strong intuitive interpretation to me. Maybe if you can >> find a way to simplify the counting algorithm - or a way to explain it with >> a more intuitive connection - but otherwise I think it would be too >> difficult to get adopted. >> >> >> > >> But if we assume that partial rankings are effective, there's >>>>> still the >>>>> > >> strategy/computation tradeoff to deal with: allowing truncated >>>>> ballots >>>>> > >> still doesn't help with favorite-betrayal, and STV variants less >>>>> > >> susceptible to favorite-betrayal are also less susceptible to >>>>> efficient >>>>> > >> counting. >>>>> > >> >>>>> > > >>>>> > > dlw: Truncated ballots may not end favorite betrayal, but it'll >>>>> help with >>>>> > > it. >>>>> > >>>>> > I don't see how; please elaborate. >>>>> > >>>>> >>>>> This is essentially the same arg that IRV does not end the fact that >>>>> some >>>>> will still on occasion be pressured to betray their favorite. >>>>> But it'll be of less consequence when it happens. It won't be 3rd >>>>> party >>>>> dissenters, it'll be the supporters of a major party that does >>>>> not position itself near the true political center who get pressured to >>>>> betray their favorite and that in turn will pressure the major party >>>>> to adapt or die. >>>>> >>>> >>>> Are you saying that favorite-betrayal isn't a problem when those forced >>>> to do it belong to a major party? I hope I'm just misunderstanding your >>>> point, but it sounds to me like you're describing a system like FPTP but >>>> with major-party spoilers substituted for minor-party spoilers. >>>> >>>> >>>> > >> With an implicit "first-preference" approval, it has the same >>>>> problem as >>>>> > >> traditional STV (i.e. IRV), namely of unduly rewarding >>>>> > favorite-betrayal. >>>>> > >> With an implicit "all-ranked" approval, the overall system would >>>>> likely >>>>> > >> violate later-no-harm with much higher frequency; by expressing a >>>>> > >> preference between two dispreferred candidates one might >>>>> unintentionally >>>>> > >> put the higher of the two in contention. >>>>> > >> >>>>> > > >>>>> > > dlw: I'd say empirically we'd see just how high of a frequency LNH >>>>> would >>>>> > be >>>>> > > violated. Jameson Quinn had a hard time coming up with a >>>>> pathological >>>>> > > example for IRV3/AV3 and I imagine it'd be similar for the above. >>>>> The >>>>> > 1st >>>>> > > stage would reduce the number of candidates to N+2 and it seems >>>>> likely >>>>> > that >>>>> > > the N+2nd and N+3rd candidates in terms of "all-ranked" approval >>>>> are less >>>>> > > likely to be among the N winners. >>>>> > >>>>> > Hmm, ok. I'm operating on the assumption that voters will vote >>>>> > strategically if doing so is easy, and will vote approximately >>>>> > honestly if strategic voting is difficult. >>>>> > >>>>> >>>>> okay. >>>>> >>>>> > >>>>> > We're taking the top S+k winners and running some ideal STV method on >>>>> > them; let's try to find an "easy" strategy. Here's my idea: >>>>> > 1) Gather a set of related parties to form a majority-coalition. >>>>> > 2) Have the coalition propose exactly S+k candidates. >>>>> > >>>>> >>>>> good luck coordinating that.. >>>>> >>>>> 3) Ask coalition voters to vote for all of the coalition candidates in >>>>> > any order they choose. >>>>> > >>>>> > Since a majority of candidates approve of every coalition candidate >>>>> > and disapprove of every competing candidate, the coalition candidates >>>>> > win the approval vote. >>>>> > By adding the "approval" phase to the STV election, I'm able to turn >>>>> a >>>>> > simple majority into a 100% supermajority. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> > Is there a flaw in my strategy? (I don't think there is, but I may >>>>> be >>>>> > missing something.) If not, we'll either need to abandon a fixed >>>>> > limit on the number of candidates or we'll need something more >>>>> > sophisticated than a simple approval-vote to filter them. >>>>> > >>>>> >>>>> dlw: It's not realistic. >>>>> >>>>> You'd need to have serious intra-party discipline to keep the no. of >>>>> candidates down to S+2 >>>>> and to get a majority of voters all to vote for all of that S+2 >>>>> candidates. >>>>> That is a serious coordination problem. >>>>> >>>>> But if it did happen then it'd "work" in terms of making the leading >>>>> coalition of parties cast a broad net that strongly met the needs of >>>>> most >>>>> people. This would be much better than a bunch of non-competitive >>>>> single-winner elections. In that case, we're in DINO land. >>>>> >>>> >>>> By "strongly met the needs of most people" you appear to mean "met the >>>> needs of a bare majority of people marginally better than the >>>> alternatives". My concern is that in this scenario 25% of the electorate >>>> would benefit substantially, 25% would benefit marginally, and the >>>> remaining 50% would be arbitrarily worse off. That's essentially the same >>>> worst-case behavior as the current majority-of-majorities setup, but with a >>>> simpler strategy required to implement it. >>>> >>>> That being the case, I think we'd be better off with small-district STV >>>> than with large-district STV with this sort of approval-based filtering. >>>> >>>> >>>> > >> It may well be that these issues are all less severe than in the >>>>> > >> deterministic alternatives to STV, but I still think they're >>>>> enough to >>>>> > >> merit consideration of nondeterministic alternatives. >>>>> > >> >>>>> > > >>>>> > > In terms of the US's political culture, nondeterministic >>>>> alternatives are >>>>> > > not going to happen anytime in the near future and we need >>>>> electoral >>>>> > reform >>>>> > > ASAP!!!! >>>>> > >>>>> > Sadly, I think both nondeterminism and STV share the "not going to >>>>> > happen in the near future given political culture in the US" >>>>> > classification, given that US law requires single-winner FPTP >>>>> >>>>> > elections for federal representation and the major parties (who >>>>> > control the legislature and benefit greatly from FPTP) have no >>>>> > incentive to change that law. >>>>> >>>>> dlw: STV need not end 2-party domination. Reforms that do not end >>>>> 2-party >>>>> domination are more fit in the US and should be the only ones pushed. >>>>> And, as I've shown, it's implementation can be simplified. >>>>> Thus, it can become a political jujitsu issue, whereby it is more >>>>> rational >>>>> for those in power to accommodate than to resist the proposed change. >>>>> >>>> >>>> The belief that the 2-party system can accurately reflect voter >>>> consensus relies heavily on the assumption that voters' differences of >>>> opinions correlate sufficiently well with a single dimension of >>>> variability, so that tending toward the center along a single axis produces >>>> centrist results on all issues. I do not accept that assumption: in my >>>> experience, Americans disagree along at least two axes that do not >>>> correlate perfectly (fiscal policy and social policy). >>>> >>>> >>>> > So as far as I can tell the only option for meaningful reform is a >>>>> > constitutional amendment, and that means reforming 75% of the states >>>>> > as a first step. This is not a short-term process. >>>> >>>> >>>>> I think one could argue that the current law requiring single-winner >>>>> elections is discriminatory twds minorities, and adopted under bad >>>>> circumstances, and thereby unconstitutional. This would not require a >>>>> constitutional amendment. >>>>> >>>> >>>> I think you're perhaps overly optimistic about the willingness of >>>> courts to overturn election law. But we'll see - I'd be thrilled to be >>>> proven wrong about this one. >>>> >>>> ---- >>>> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list >>>> info >>>> >>>> >>> >> >
---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
