Wpływ funkcji wyborów na kryteria oceny sprawiedliwości podziału mandatów
INFLUENCE OF FUNCTIONS OF ELECTIONS ON THE CRITERIA OF APPORTIONMENT FAIRNESS

Summary/Abstract: The notion of fair representation should be derived from the functions of elections. Apportionment of seats according to the populations of constituencies or party votes is strongly connected with three of these functions: reflecting the views of voters, legitimating the government and establishing of a stable majority. The first two are also important for recognition of an apportionment method as fair. Well-known criteria of fairness (e.g. based on disproportionality indexes or on the analysis of voting paradoxes) seem to reflect these functions not enough precisely. Some properties of apportionments preserving majorities, i.e. having the property that a group of parties obtaining majority of voices (or a group of constituencies inhabited by majority of voters) also obtains majority of seats, are discussed. This criterion of fairness may be derived directly from the functions of elections. It is used to determine the permissible departure of the population from the norm in the case of one-seat constituencies. It is shown that if we adopt the criterion of preserving majorities, then the permissible departure should be inversely proportional to the number of constituencies.

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