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

[Juho]

On Apr 22, 2007, at 13:42 , Tim Hull wrote:

> I know closed and open party list systems are different in that  
> voters can influence what party candidates are elected.

Ok, this part clear.

>   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).

Note that the possible enhancements to the basic open list method may  
include making the structure more fine grained.

For example the green wing of a conservative party could stick  
together. Votes to them would be counted also for conservatives. If  
the voter doesn't like conservatives, maybe some other parties have  
green wings too, or maybe the green party has a wing that the vote  
likes.

(And further, if all the greenish people (from all parties as well as  
candidates that are not members of any parties) would like to join  
together, it is possible to support that (complexity of the  
calculation process however grows).)

I can understand that some people want to cut out all the references  
to parties and other groupings, but one should note that clear  
indication of links to some ideological groupings are also a positive  
thing (informal and/or as formal part that influences the selection  
process) (because of the resulting clarity and simplicity of voting  
when compared to just having a long list of candidates).

I also understood that you had strong groupings already in place.  
They may or may not fear a method that is free of parties.

> 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 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.

Small numbers (elections split in two and small divisions) make the  
system less proportional. You may consider this to be a problem (or  
alternatively not). One could have a method that takes also the seats  
in the other half into account when allocating seats in the following  
elections (this would probably mean a party based method).

Also full PR with small schools/colleges is possible but you'd need  
to do the unavoidable rounding errors somewhere else (e.g. not elect  
the "most liked" candidates in each school/college to get this  
proportionality).

These tricks may not be very critical if PR need not be 99% exact.

> I MAY propose eliminating the "midterm" election, though - it tends  
> to attract low turnout as-is

I think high level of involvement (and feeling of involvement) is an  
important property of a democratic system.

> 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.

Good, if you can push the old STV back in. (I accept open lists too,  
but that is partially a matter of taste. :-)

One of the negative properties of STV is that it requires long votes.  
Limiting the length of them has implications (as already discussed on  
this list).

> 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.

These would work at least somehow :-). You might consider also "top  
two runoff" (=two rounds of plurality, top two participating at the  
second round) instead of Plurality (at least a bit better, except  
that more complex). And don't forget Approval.

I'd however still pick Condorcet over any of these in most set-ups,  
including the one you described. The simplest versions of Condorcet  
are also not that difficult to explain (=> e.g. "elect the candidate  
that needs least additional votes to beat all others pairwise").

> 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...

If most of the voters hate the Pro Wrestler they definitely should  
not vote "My Party/Pro Wrestler/The Other Major Party". In Condorcet  
the voter should vote in line with his/her sincere preference order  
(with exceptions that are in practically all normal cases (in large  
public elections at least) marginal and theoretical).

If the Democrat and Republican voters think that the Pro Wrestler  
would be a good compromise candidate that would be better than  
electing the representative of the competing major party, then maybe  
the method should elect the Pro Wrestler. Condorcet is known to elect  
also compromise candidates (that do not have large first rankings  
support) when such candidates exist (unlike e.g. IRV).

I still repeat my comment that Condorcet should probably be among the  
candidates to consider. It allows voters to give quite a lot of  
information (ranking) and is still almost never vulnerable to attacks.

Juho



		
___________________________________________________________ 
All New Yahoo! Mail – Tired of Vi at gr@! come-ons? Let our SpamGuard protect you. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html