[EM] 12/22/02 - Markus Schulze Wrote and Wrote again:

[James Gilmour]

Markus wrote
> In my opinion, a party should have the possibility to suggest a ranking
> of its candidates.

No problem with that.

> But the voter should have to agree explicitly to this
> ranking.

This should be TOTALLY under the control of the voter.

> The vote of a voter, who votes for this party but who doesn't
> explicitly use the suggested ranking, should be split among the candidates
> of this party. This would reduce drastically the power of the party
> apparatchiks.

I am doubtful about the parties agreeing to a system in which such "party votes"
are divided equally among all the candidates on a list.

The real issue here is one of political philosophy.  I am opposed to party PR of
any kind.  Political parties are an essential part of the political system, but
the objective in electing a parliament or a council should NOT be to secure PR of
the political parties, but to secure PR of the voters.  These two are NOT the
same.  I appreciate that most countries in continental Europe have party PR
systems of one kind or another, but their political culture for the last century
has developed in a quite different way from that in the UK.  I suspect the
political culture in the USA and Canada is much closer to that of the UK than that
of our continental cousins.   Party PR falls far short of what is achievable.  We
have the technology, and it is tried and tested, over many years.


> James wrote (24 Dec 2002):
> > I would not make any provision for ranking parties.  The voters should
> > rank the candidates, from "1" to as many or as few as they wish.  The
> > "ranking" of the parties should be an outcome, not an objective..
> >
> > All I would add to this is that "party boxes" are completely and
> > utterly unnecessary, no matter how large the district.  They are
> > a recent perversion and have no place in STV-PR.
>
> Actually, the main reason why I promote party boxes is that in Germany
> STV without party boxes would certainly be declared unconstitutional
> because of Article 21 Section 1 Sentence 1. ("The political parties
> participate in the political decision making of the people.")
>
> Because of Article 21, in those parts of Germany where open list PR
> is being used, the ballots already have party boxes.

I cannot see any incompatibility between your Article 21 Section 1 Sentence 1 and
STV-PR.  It is accepted that the overwhelming majority of candidates will be
nominated by the political parties.  To the extent that the voters wish it, party
PR will be achieved with STV-PR.


> By the way: In Munich, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, and Nuernberg, there
> are usually 500-700 candidates on the ballot. In the last Stuttgart
> City Council elections, there were 938 candidates on the ballot.

I don't see the need for 938 candidates on any ballot.  I presume that was for a
"single-district" city-wide election of the Council.  Except for the PR obsessives
who want PR to one in the maximum (as in Israel), most electors would prefer a
sensible trade-off between PR and locality.  Even within the largest city there
are "natural communities" that could be used as the basis for multi-member
districts (to use the US terminology).  I've already posted lots of details on
flexible implementations of STV-PR, but I note that it has attracted no comment
whatsoever.

James




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