Re: [EM] Gerrymandering solutions.
As far as the US goes, the Supreme Court (law of the land) has officially declared that gerrymandering is just fine. The only "solution" to gerrymandering is for voters to elect representatives who won't draw the districts to benefit themselves. Aint happening in Texas or anyplace else it matters. We all know there are good and fair ways to draw districts, but the US Supreme Court has said those are not criteria they care about. -Original Message- From: election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com [mailto:election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com] On Behalf Of Michael Ossipoff Sent: Wednesday, June 06, 2012 8:22 PM To: 'Ted Stern'; election-methods@lists.electorama.com Subject: Re: [EM] Gerrymandering solutions. Ted: You said: > Michael, you are stepping naively into an area that has been very well studied. I > include a couple of points below you may want to consider. Of course, it's necessary to check out your points before answering about the purported naivete of my suggestions. But I would recommend that, as a general rule, it's better to just tell us your arguments, and report any errors that you find, before drawing conclusions or expressing characterizations. Best to save those for after their alleged justifications. > > On 04 Jun 2012 22:18:06 -0700, Michael Ossipoff wrote: > > > 2. Whatever can be accomplished by PR can be accomplished by an > > at-large single winner election, because every single winner method > > can output a ranking of candidates instead of just one winner: Elect > > the winner. Then delete the winner from the ballots and count them > > again. That will elect the rank 2 winner. Then eliminate the rank 2 > > winner too, and count the ballots again. Each time, delete every > > previous winner before counting to determine the next winner. So you > > can elect N winners at large in a state, or nationally, for a body > > such as Congress (or its separate houses, if you want to keep them) or > > a state legislature. Of course, with Approval, it only requires one > > count, and you elect the N candidates with the most approvals. > > Can you prove that the ranking from a single-winner election is proportional? No. Nor did I say that it was. Notice that I didn't call it "PR" or "Proportional Representation". When I said "Whatever can be accomplished by PR can be accomplished by an at-large single-winner election", I was comparing the suggested multi-winner use of a single-winner method to PR--speaking of it as something _other than_ PR. That shouldn't be taken as saying that it is PR. Yes, it wasn't the best choice of wording. No, it didn't imply that multi-winner use of a single-winner method is PR. I spoke of it as something other than PR. All I meant was that a single winner method, used as I described, can elect a national Congress, at large, without districts. > > > At the very least, you should remove ballots, in some fractional way, when a > ballot has achieved some portion of its preference. Single Transferable Vote > (STV) is one way, of course Of course. You're talking about PR. I wasn't talking about PR. I was talking about the use of a single-winner method, without the goal of proportionality. I have nothing against PR--except that I don't like the idea of unpopular parties being seated in Congress :-) But PR would be fine anyway. It works fine in Europe. There would be nothing wrong with borrowing from Europe. As I said before, if there were a referendum tomorrow about whether to adopt European or Australian PR, I'd vote "Yes" on it without hesitation. One advantage of party list PR is that it allows the use of the most proportional PR formula: Sainte-Lague. Sainte-Lague isn't the only PR formula that is unbiased with respect to party-size, but it's the only unbiased formula that doesn't share the avoidable errors of STV and Largest Remainder. Also, I like emphasis on party platforms instead of personalities and hairdo, etc. But I recognize that many would like to vote for individuals, even in a PR election. Of course that can be done in open list systems, such as those in Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland. The best of both worlds: Optimal proportionality and opportunity to support individual candidates. I'd thought that Finland had open list, but Juho says that they don't. , but there is also Reweighted Range Voting, and a > Bucklin variant proposed by Jameson Quinn as AT-TV a year ago. My simplified > version of JQ's method is Graded Approval Transferable Vote (GATV) and can be > found here: Forget those. The familiar already-used methods are fine. The last thing you'd want to do would be to invent and propose something entirely new. If all you want is PR, then stick with existing familiar PR systems. But I'll say again that, for the U.S., PR would be a whole entirely new and different system, a new concept of government. Forget it. A better single-winner method is nothing more than a better way of doing what we already do.
Re: [EM] Gerrymandering solutions.
Ted: You said: > Michael, you are stepping naively into an area that has been very well studied. I > include a couple of points below you may want to consider. Of course, it's necessary to check out your points before answering about the purported naivete of my suggestions. But I would recommend that, as a general rule, it's better to just tell us your arguments, and report any errors that you find, before drawing conclusions or expressing characterizations. Best to save those for after their alleged justifications. > > On 04 Jun 2012 22:18:06 -0700, Michael Ossipoff wrote: > > > 2. Whatever can be accomplished by PR can be accomplished by an > > at-large single winner election, because every single winner method > > can output a ranking of candidates instead of just one winner: Elect > > the winner. Then delete the winner from the ballots and count them > > again. That will elect the rank 2 winner. Then eliminate the rank 2 > > winner too, and count the ballots again. Each time, delete every > > previous winner before counting to determine the next winner. So you > > can elect N winners at large in a state, or nationally, for a body > > such as Congress (or its separate houses, if you want to keep them) or > > a state legislature. Of course, with Approval, it only requires one > > count, and you elect the N candidates with the most approvals. > > Can you prove that the ranking from a single-winner election is proportional? No. Nor did I say that it was. Notice that I didn't call it "PR" or "Proportional Representation". When I said "Whatever can be accomplished by PR can be accomplished by an at-large single-winner election", I was comparing the suggested multi-winner use of a single-winner method to PR--speaking of it as something _other than_ PR. That shouldn't be taken as saying that it is PR. Yes, it wasn't the best choice of wording. No, it didn't imply that multi-winner use of a single-winner method is PR. I spoke of it as something other than PR. All I meant was that a single winner method, used as I described, can elect a national Congress, at large, without districts. > > > At the very least, you should remove ballots, in some fractional way, when a > ballot has achieved some portion of its preference. Single Transferable Vote > (STV) is one way, of course Of course. You're talking about PR. I wasn't talking about PR. I was talking about the use of a single-winner method, without the goal of proportionality. I have nothing against PR--except that I don't like the idea of unpopular parties being seated in Congress :-) But PR would be fine anyway. It works fine in Europe. There would be nothing wrong with borrowing from Europe. As I said before, if there were a referendum tomorrow about whether to adopt European or Australian PR, I'd vote "Yes" on it without hesitation. One advantage of party list PR is that it allows the use of the most proportional PR formula: Sainte-Lague. Sainte-Lague isn't the only PR formula that is unbiased with respect to party-size, but it's the only unbiased formula that doesn't share the avoidable errors of STV and Largest Remainder. Also, I like emphasis on party platforms instead of personalities and hairdo, etc. But I recognize that many would like to vote for individuals, even in a PR election. Of course that can be done in open list systems, such as those in Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland. The best of both worlds: Optimal proportionality and opportunity to support individual candidates. I'd thought that Finland had open list, but Juho says that they don't. , but there is also Reweighted Range Voting, and a > Bucklin variant proposed by Jameson Quinn as AT-TV a year ago. My simplified > version of JQ's method is Graded Approval Transferable Vote (GATV) and can be > found here: Forget those. The familiar already-used methods are fine. The last thing you'd want to do would be to invent and propose something entirely new. If all you want is PR, then stick with existing familiar PR systems. But I'll say again that, for the U.S., PR would be a whole entirely new and different system, a new concept of government. Forget it. A better single-winner method is nothing more than a better way of doing what we already do. And Approval is nothing other than Plurality with its ridiculous forced-falsification rule repealed. Ask for less change. Get something. And no, I don't recommend including at-large Congressional elections as part of an Approval proposal :-) I propose nothing other than replacing Plurality with Approval. No other change in the electoral system. Further refinements and enhancements could be proposed later. > Brian Olson has one automated method, with examples from the 2010 census, > located here: > > http://bdistricting.com/2010/ > > There is also the shortest splitline algorithm, discussed here: > > http://rangevoting.org/GerryExamples.html > http://rangevoting.org/GerryExec.html > http://www.youtube
