Some opponents of multimember districts say that electing multiple winners weakens the connection between the representatives and their constituents, because the representative doesn't represent the district in total any longer. However, some PR methods (like Monroe) return, as side information, an assignment of voters to candidates, producing, in effect, an "ideological district" per winner. Could this provide a link between voters and their representatives? While the given district no longer has a single representative, any voter would know (assuming it's doable without breaking the anonymity of the vote) who they helped elect, and thus what candidate the method chose to represent them. Or would this just reinforce polarization? If each representative is "chosen" by a group of voters, then that representative may not see any need to appeal to the opinions of the voters outside the group. -km

I generally don't like the idea of these kinds of ideological districts simply because the correspondence they assign is fake; the voters that get assigned to you aren't the ones you have to focus on pleasing if you want to keep office, and chances are the voters you get assigned are effectively interchangeable with the voters your copartisan colleague down the hall got assigned. I'd rather stick to local geographic districts for accountability. On Fri, Aug 16, 2024 at 8:19 AM Kristofer Munsterhjelm < km-elmet@munsterhjelm.no> wrote: > Some opponents of multimember districts say that electing multiple > winners weakens the connection between the representatives and their > constituents, because the representative doesn't represent the district > in total any longer. > > However, some PR methods (like Monroe) return, as side information, an > assignment of voters to candidates, producing, in effect, an > "ideological district" per winner. > > Could this provide a link between voters and their representatives? > While the given district no longer has a single representative, any > voter would know (assuming it's doable without breaking the anonymity of > the vote) who they helped elect, and thus what candidate the method > chose to represent them. > > Or would this just reinforce polarization? If each representative is > "chosen" by a group of voters, then that representative may not see any > need to appeal to the opinions of the voters outside the group. > > -km > ---- > Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list > info >