  We study some aspects of a Monte Carlo method invented by Maggs and Rossetto
for simulating systems of charged particles. It has the feature that the
discretized electric field is updated locally when charges move. Results of
simulations of the two dimensional one-component plasma are presented. Highly
accurate results can be obtained very efficiently using this lattice method
over a large temperature range. The method differs from global methods in
having additional degrees of freedom which leads to the question of how a
faster method can result. We argue that efficient sampling depends on charge
mobility and find that the mobility is close to maximum for a low rate of
independent plaquette updates for intermediate temperatures. We present a
simple model to account for this behavior. We also report on the role of
uniform electric field sampling using this method.
