Flag etiquette
Here are the instructions that came with an American flag I own. It is 100% cotton and was new-in-bag when I got it. The packaging suggests it was manufactured in the early-to-mid-1960s.
Read more…Lecture slides on kinds of ranked-choice voting
Someone recently asked me about the potential effects of a new kind of RCV. Here are my old lecture slides on the topic. The key table is below. A fifth variant incorporates numbered-post elections, which are explained here.
Read more…Descriptive racial representation and anti-gerrymandering at once
This post follows up on my earlier advice to consider minority-party representation (MPR) as an anti-gerrymandering measure. Its basics are described here and reproduced at the bottom of the post.
This week’s news has been about the potential for new Republican district maps to reduce the number of Black members of the U.S. House of Representatives. MPR can be designed to address that problem too.
Read more…Teaching comparative electoral systems with a U.S. example
Would you like a more engaging way to teach students about electoral systems? The answer might be “yes” if you’ve been doing it with lecture slides. Compensation seats? Here’s a table of results from New Zealand. D’Hondt versus Sainte-Laguë divisors? Here’s the Belgian Parliament with either.
What if the lesson used an example students cared about? What if it were interactive?
Read more…How to fix a short paper
If you are a college student, this post is for you.
Is your paper longer than the word limit? Is your thesis statement just a list of points you plan to cover in the body paragraphs (i.e., “listy”)? Do you have a gut sense that the paper’s structure might be “off”?
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