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

[Juho]

On Apr 25, 2007, at 0:40 , Tim Hull wrote:

> The partyless method is seen as a plus - our current parties as  
> somewhat diverse in their composition, and people generally don't  
> like the "vote counts for candidate and party" when you can have  
> wildly diverging ideologies on the same ticket.  It also encourages  
> party discipline and "voting in bloc" at the Assembly level,  
> something no one likes the idea of...
>
> As far as Condorcet for single-winner, it's yet another complex  
> explanation and has the issue of failing "later-no-harm", which I  
> feel would cause massive amounts of strategic and bullet voting, no  
> matter how low the real risk of LNH failure.

That's called "uneducated and mistaken voters" ;-). The cases where  
there would be some real reason to vote that way are extremely rare.  
Note that also IRV is not free of strategic voting related problems.  
I don't think Condorcet performs poorly here. (Negative propaganda  
can be made though on any method.)

>   It also can elect centrists with very weak support along the  
> lines of my "pro wrestler" example (assuming that he'd get a 2 or 1  
> our of 10 in Range).

Note that a Condorcet winner, even if coming from a small party, is a  
candidate that majority of voters would prefer in comparison to any  
other candidate. I'd say that is strong support, although the number  
of first place rankings in the ballots may not be as high as with  
some other candidates.

Juho

>   Also, dominance by two major parties would be a significant  
> improvement over the status quo - as of now we have dominance by  
> *1* major party.
>
>
>
> On 4/24/07, Juho <juho4880 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> On Apr 24, 2007, at 6:26 , Tim Hull wrote:
>
> > In this case, the only *tested* method which is fully candidate
> > based (i.e. no party lists, open or closed)  - and does not use
> > anything other than votes cast for candidates to determine winners
> > - is STV.
>
> (There are also other interesting methods like http://
> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_approval_voting and http://
> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPO-STV. STV is however more established and
> closer to real life, so I don't recommend any more complex or
> experimental systems to be promoted in your case.)
>
> (I have also written about MultiGroup that is a method that could,
> despite of seeing candidates as members of various groupings, be
> fully based on individual candidate decisions on what kind of
> groupings/ideologies the want to promote and benefit of ( i.e. not
> "party lists" but "candidate lists of groups he/she likes"). This one
> is also experimental, so not for you.)
>
> >   In the case of voting, it seems like a good idea for the method
> > of voting to be consistent for everyone.  Hence, it only seems
> > logical to use IRV.  Doing anything else would only make the
> > explanation of how voting works twice as long, and make said effort
> > more likely to fail.
>
> (You didn't say if you want the method to be consisted to the voters
> or also to the ones who will decide what method will be taken into
> use. If it is enough to provide a consistent voting experience to the
> votes, any ranked ballot based method would do. But I guess you refer
> also to the latter case.)
>
> > Until these is a good, *proven* single-winner/multi-winner
> > combination that works well, I don't see this type of situation
> > changing.
>
> (Does the "combination" mean combination of multi-seat and single-
> seat "districts" (within a multi-winner election) or combination of
> "government" and "chairman" elections? I guess the latter is the
> case. Also other combinations would work technically, but maybe would
> be more difficult to explain to the decision makers (= not work  
> well).)
>
> >   In my push to implement a better voting system than our truncated
> > Borda/FPTP combo, I see IRV and STV as the best chance to actually
> > make a change.  I don't see myself trying to push two separate and
> > complicated systems (one alone is hard enough), or trying to sell a
> > system that has not been widely used anywhere.
>
> Ok, you know best what is possible and what not. Note however that
> with IRV you'll choose a direction where the major parties will be
> favoured (centrist compromise candidates from smaller parties
> probably won't be elected). Maybe that is ok in the environment in
> question.
>
> > In short - I would say that the lack of any good, tested multi-
> > winner system with a better-than-IRV single-winner version is part
> > of why IRV is so popular...
>
> (I guess this you mean that this is the reason "why IRV is so
> popular" to you in your current case (not in general).)
>
> My summary of the STV-IRV combination is that
> - IRV favours big parties (Condorcet would not, and also it would be
> ranked ballot based)
> - explaining STV and IRV to the decision makers at one go is a bonus
> - you have decided to use a partyless method, which is ok, but I'm
> still wondering if the existing major groupings will agree with this
> - STV-IRV would surely be a significant improvement to your current
> voting practices
>
> Juho
>
>
>
>
>
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