[EM] Student government - what voting system to recommend?

[Tim Hull]

I know closed and open party list systems are different in that voters can
influence what party candidates are elected.  However, I'm shying away from
that because it ties every vote to a party and makes it count towards other
party candidates - even if some candidates in the same party may have vast
differences (as they tend to in our system at times).   Also, when I talk of
IRV, I'm only talking of the single-winner variant.  I didn't even know
there WAS a multi-winner IRV as distinct from STV.  I'm assuming this is
just STV without the transfers of surplus votes - am I right?

Just to clarify the situation, there is somewhere in the neighborhood of 47
representatives on the Assembly.  They are currently elected
in two elections (half in each of them) - the President is elected in the
Winter term one.  The representatives are divided into constituencies based
on school/college.  The largest such division has 19 representatives,
followed by 7 for the next largest, followed by a 6-seat one, a 3-seat one,
and several 1 and 2 seat ones.  I am currently not proposing to change this
- I would merely use a PR system under the current setup in each
constituency. I MAY propose eliminating the "midterm" election, though - it
tends to attract low turnout as-is, and electing all seats at once would
increase proportionality.

Anyway, as you can see the multi-winner case is the largest concern - and it
really seems like STV is the runaway winner there.  As far as STV rules, I'm
currently thinking standard fractional-transfer STV with voters allowed as
many rankings as there are open seats allowed.  That would limit rankings,
but would keep the ballot the same as it is currently (as it is, you rank as
many as there is open seats, and Borda is used). Single-winner is tougher,
but I think I'd use IRV or Plurality there to avoid confusion concerning
different single-winner and multi-winner election systems.

Any more thoughts?

P.S. Here is why I don't like Condorcet - it allows weak or eccentric
centrists to win.
Consider the following example:  a Republican, a Democrat, and a pro
wrestler are running for U.S. president

Votes are as follows

48% - Democrat/Pro Wrestler/Republican
5% - Pro Wrestler/Democrat/Republican
47% - Republican/Pro Wrestler/Democrat

The pro wrestler beats the Democrat, 52-48, and the Republican 53-47, and
thus wins. Under IRV, the Democrat would have won.  The only system other
than IRV that I know of that doesn't suffer this issue is Range/Approval...


On 4/22/07, Juho <juho4880 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> On Apr 22, 2007, at 6:44 , Tim Hull wrote:
>
> > Anyway, as this does require a 2/3 vote of the Assembly, I face
> > quite a battle.
>
> Good luck! Maybe your positive efforts will be rewarded.
>
> > Also, they are skeptical of any system that reduces student control
> > over the result (such as party list
>
> Please make a clear difference between open and closed list based
> methods. They are quite different with respect to student power.
> (There are also enhancements to open lists.)
>
> > Given the fact that I'm going to face an uphill battle - and will
> > need to cite examples that show that my new system has benefits -
> > what would be the best
> > approach?
>
> There are of course tens of approaches here. I just note two that
> could be used in proving the benefits. If the students are
> "conservative", use some real life examples of well known, well
> working and tested methods. If the students are "radical", add some
> flavour of "latest innovations, maybe still untested, but good" so
> they will get interested.
>
> > I like the idea of reweighted range voting, but it hasn't been
> > implemented anywhere of significance.
>
> Compare also with Proportional Approval Voting (see Wikipedia). These
> methods are interesting but not problem free.
>
> > For single-winner, despite its flaws it seems like instant-runoff
> > voting is the best bet, as it is the same as STV with one winner
> > and is one again a widely used system.
>
> IRV is not all bad, but note that STV with multiple winners avoids
> some of the problems of the single winner version. IRV may be liked
> by large parties (that you seem to have in your set-up) since it to
> some extent favours them.
>
> > Range voting once again seems like a good idea, but also has the
> > major drawback (at least as far as supporting arguments) of not
> > being used in a real election of any significance.
>
> Compare to Approval voting. In a competitive environment Range may
> become Approval in practice (if all give only min and max votes to
> the candidates).
>
> > I don't even want to THINK about Condorcet, due to the fact that a
> > random unknown candidate can easily win in a race with two
> > polarized candidates.
>
> Not even think? This sounds like you have received a heavy dose of
> anti-Condorcet influence somewhere :-). Condorcet has its well known
> and studied problems but despite of these it is considered by
> numerous experts to be the best family of single winner methods (in
> competitive environments). In almost all set-ups Condorcet is likely
> to be quite problem free.
>
> Juho
>
>
>
>
>
>
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