[EM] PR in student government

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

As it happens, I've never paid attention to the details of how PR-STV 
works. So, in a sense, my mind is free of distraction on the point, 
and what I come up with *may* represent an intuitive approach of some 
value. If my intuition is sound, it may also match what has come to 
be seen as a more mature PR method. Or not. In any case, there may be 
some pedagogical value to be extracted from these considerations.

First of all, when I first heard of "Single Transferable Vote," I 
misunderstood it. I misunderstood it in a way that actually suggests 
what I'd call an Advanced Election Method. Such methods are ones that 
introduce serious reforms.... such as making direct democracy 
practical on a large scale.

What I (mis)understood was that votes went to candidates at the 
voter's choice, and that any excess votes going to a candidate could 
be transfered *by the candidate.* Likewise, any votes short of a 
quota could be transferred or combined with other such vote groups, 
in order to create winners. This, of course, is a simple form of 
Asset Voting. My misunderstanding -- which seemed so attractive to me 
-- predates my contact with Warren Smith who formalized Asset.

But as soon as I knew that STV had a ranked ballot, well, there goes 
that idea! (As far as being something that was actually being used anywhere.)

Okay, so what then? Well, the obvious idea is that when a winner has 
been created, additional ballots being counted look at second place 
choices. This, however, has the obvious objection that winners can 
then depend upon counting sequence. And one reasonable solution, to a 
degree, is to count the ballots in random sequence, which, overall, 
would *usually* -- except when it is close -- choose fair winners. 
But this suffers from the problem of not being reproducible (it's 
possible to make it reproducible, but .... at the cost of additional 
complications).

So what to do? Well, the next obvious idea is to fractionally 
distribute the votes, so that the collection of voters who voted for 
A in first place, all of them, if there are excess votes for A, have 
fractional votes remaining to be cast for their second place choices. 
The result is that each person has cast a sum of votes equal to one.

So if a quota is 100 votes, and A gets 150 votes, each ballot for A 
becomes, now, 1/3 of a vote, 2/3 of each ballot having been used to 
elect A. So the second choices on those ballots get 1/3 of a vote 
each. And then this is applied recursively, when second choices are 
elected, etc.

Seems fairly simple to me? Does it match actual usage?

In this scenario, it might be tempting to round off the numbers. I 
see no reason at all to do this (at least not to round them to the 
nearest whole vote. Maybe to 1/1000 vote or some other fraction of a 
vote.) At this point it's only numbers.... and the skill involving in 
adding, subtracting, and dividing isn't all that great!

The procedure also allows all the ballots to be counted first. So 
it's reproducible for audit. Essentially what one wants is a list of 
the ballot types, with the number of votes for each type. Easiest, 
I'd think, if the list is categorized by first place vote, then 
second, etc. Turning this list of votes into a list of winners could 
easily be done by hand, unless the number of candidates gets large.

The ballots could also be counted sequentially, as needed. I dislike 
this, because I think every vote should be counted, even if 
supposedly "moot." If I went to the trouble to cast it, it shouldn't 
be tossed in the trash!

If I was a candidate for office, and it turns out that many people 
voted for me, but not at a high enough preference for me to be 
elected, I'd hate not to know this! The result might actually be 
encouraging. Or not, depending on what is in those buried votes....