Electoral inequity

Abstract

Ideally, a representative democracy awards a genuine vote to each adult. We study this issue in competitive democracies with an election model combining district apportionment and proportional representation. Four classic seat allocation rules, including d’Hondt, are reframed as Dutch auctions, allowing important properties to be easily derived. The pros and cons of these methods are stated in terms of economic inequality; Sainte Laguë’s is shown to best carry the genuine vote ideal, both for elections and for apportionment. We next expound the interplay between these two components in generating an inequitable treatment of voters and develop the scale-free index of inequity best fitted to their concern. We apply it to 40 countries for the apportionment of electoral districts. Lastly, we compute the same inequity index for recent parliamentary elections in 80 countries, finding that the majority system mistreats electors, thus putting a ‘price’ on government stability.