[EM] 01/27/02 - Re: PR/STV Hybrid for multi-winner?

[Adam Tarr]

>Proportional Representation (PR) is not an election method in itself, it is
>a category of methods that give better proportionality than
>Plurality-at-Large.
>
>What you are talking about above is called `Closed Party List'.

Thanks for the clarification.

>You also wrote:  "In order for a party to be an option for the ballot, it
>must provide a list of candidates equal to the number of seats available."
>
>Donald:  You are being too harsh.  Parties should be free to field as many
>candidates as they care to put on the ballot.  No party would expect to
>elect all the seats.

True enough.  It also occurs to me that a party could want to list *more* 
candidates than the number of seats available, if they were worried about 
voters burying candidates from their list that they don't like.

>Donald:  Yes, it has been proposed before to allow people to vote for
>candidates and/or parties in any mix.

Although I didn't see any specific mention of this in the following list, I 
assume that this would be one of the "design features" you mention for 
STV.  I hope it is not one of the ones you consider "undemocratic, 
unproportional, even corrupt."  Is there a place I can look at some of 
these options?  The CVD seems more interested in single-winner elections 
and never even discusses fractional STV on their website, which is ironic 
since single-winner elections are by far the worst time to use STV.

>      Open-Party-List is a party list created by the voters - constructed
>from the candidates of the party that are running in the election - in
>order of high votes first as produced by the voters in the election. Having
>the list decided by the voters makes the party list more democratic than if
>the list is made up by the party.

I'm not sure I followed this description so let me make sure.Say there are 
5 seats and 100 voters.  There are three candidates from the Republicrat 
party, A, B, and C.  23 people vote for B,  12 people vote for A, and 5 
people vote for C.  Since the party as a whole received 40 votes, they get 
two seats.  Since A and B were the two highest vote-getters within the 
party, they are elected to those two seats. Is that correct?

Thanks for the response, it was a good read.

-Adam