Fixing the Florida Legislature, pt5

            Continued from Part 4.  This entry is the most direct sequel to its previous part, so please try to remember Part 4 for context, otherwise this will just be a lot of meaningless math... Still kind of is meaningless math.

            After looking at some basic information, like how many seats should exist on this hypothetical parliament, and how many people are in Florida (roughly) I needed to pick a map.

 

This is the map I went with.

            I came to the conclusion that this is the map that should be used for parliament administration in Florida, mostly because it already exists which means I did not have to draw a map myself.  Instead piggy backing on the hard work of others who put a great deal of thought into their decisions in order to provide proper medical care.  I am going to use it to continue lecturing on politics.

Step 4: How many people are in each Zone?

            As you can see there are 8 zones each having a different number of counties, each with its own range of population, if you want to look at each counties population HERE YOU GO.

Rounded to the nearest thousand.  (Keep in mind, I am not a census taker, these are all from wikipedia because... I am not being paid to do this.)

-> North West has 12 counties with a total populations of 1,007,000.

-> North Central has 18 counties (which seems excessive but they are rather tiny) with a total population of 1,383,000.

-> North East has 6 counties with a total population of 1,434,000.

-> East Central 8 counties with a total population of 3,405,000 (Orange county alone has more people than the entire North West zone).

-> West Central 10 counties with a total population of 4,304,000 (Hillsborough county has more people than the entire North West zone).

-> South East 5 counties (seems trim but Palm Beach has as much area as the five smallest counties in North Central combined) counties with a total population of 1,941,000.

-> South West 5 counties with a total population of 1,172,000.

-> South 3 counties with a total population of 4,409,000 (Miami Dade and Broward are both very populated, crushing numbers of people by the standards of Florida.)

            Overall this yields about 19,055,000 people (again my original number was 19,060,000and I admitted it was a bit rough, as are these, we'll stick with the 19,055,000 for the last little part below, for a slight increase in accuracy).

Step 5: How many seats does each Zone get?

            This is easy, you take the population of the Zone, you divide it by the population of the state, and you multiply it by 200 (the hypothetical number of seats).  To be completely clear there is some rounding involved in this system, some of these ended up with .3 or .54, in which case I just rounded off to the nearest whole number, this is about getting as good a system as reasonably possible, not quibbling over margins looking for an unattainable perfect system.

Region                       Seats

-> North West:            11

-> North Central:        15

-> North East:             15

-> East Central:           36

-> West Central:          45

-> South East:             20

-> South West:            12

-> South:                     46­­__

Total                            200

            How will these seats breakdown in an election?  And what is one issue that might cause trouble if this system were adopted?  I will continue with Part 6.

            If you have a criticism of what I have written, please comment.  If you like what I wrote, please share this on your various social networks and +1 it on Google+.  I would like more people to be aware of the failings of not only Florida, but State Governments all over the US, and this is as best attempt I can muster to illustrate the problems while still having enough humor that people can stomach reading the whole thing.  Thank you.