Vici 'oriano Ramirez Gonzalez

The Mexican electoral laws of 1989 and 1994 are used as a case study to illustrate a point: the logical and mathematical properties defined in law have significant practical consequences. The 1989 law is an extreme case of logical inconsistency and ignorance of the properties of rules of apportionment, and as such provides a rich menu of the properties rules for apportioning seats should satisfy. The 1994 law, at face value more reasonable, is an illustration of how innocuous looking rules can yield real political advantage. Both laws can engender anomalous and contradictory results; and both reveal an inattention to elementary concepts of equity which cannot go unnoticed in view of Mexico's current turmoils. An electoral law defines the transformation of numbers (populations and votes) into numbers (political representation to political power), and so defines a mathematical function. The political and legal men who devise such functions are perhaps wise to the wiles of men, and sometimes even to the subtleties of arithmetic rules, but the professional advice of those competent in the ways of functions would bring benefits in accuracy, rigor and clarity, if not equity, to the formulation of electoral law. Copyright © 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.