Abstract

How to elect the representatives in legislative bodies is a question that every modern democracy has to answer. This design task has to consider various elements so as to fulfill the citizens' expectations and contribute to maintaining a healthy democracy. In this work, we present five proposals of electoral methods based on proportional representation that extend the notion of proportionality to several dimensions: For instance, simultaneous proportionality in political, geographical, and gender representation. We also consider including two additional desirable properties for electoral methods: A minimum threshold to obtain political representation, and the incorporation of plurality voting, guaranteeing the election of the highest voted candidate in each district. We use the Chilean Constitutional Convention election (May 15-16, 2021) results as a testing ground, and compare the apportionment obtained under each method according to four criteria: Proportionality, representativeness, robustness, and voting power. We conclude that it is feasible to design and implement an electoral method satisfying all mentioned properties. Our findings may be useful in assessing electoral designs in other contexts as well.