STV for party candidate lists?

[Herman Beun]

Mike Ositoff <ntk at netcom.com> schreef:

> When your party's voters vote their pre-election rankings of 
> your party's candidates, and you don't know how many seats that
> party will win, then why conduct a count for _each_ possible number
> of seats that your party might win.

I have thought about this. It seems a bit cumbersome and less elegant
in a mathematical sense, but it is possible of course. Also, from my
simulations I get the impression that STV is indeed monotonous, i.e.
that the candidates elected in a N seat election, would also (all of
them) be elected in a N+1 seat election.

> I don't know how big your party is, but if it might just win one
> seat, then I'd do a count by Condoret(EM) or Schulze to choose
> who gets the seat if the party just wins one seat.

Currently 14 of the 150 seats in parliament. Was 24, was 12. But I
agree that Condorcet (what does EM mean?) would be a better choice
than STV for election of candidate number 1. I don't know the Schulze
system.

> But, it's just occurred to me that your election rules might
> require just having an ordered _list_, rather than a set of
> camdidates for each possible value of N, and that you won't
> be able, therefore, to give the seats as I've described.

Correct.

> You might say it's crude to use 1st place vote totals. 
> Ok, then, use Condorcet(EM) or Schulze instead, amnng the
> N winners, in the N-winner STV count, to choose which of
> its N winnes gets the Nth seat.

That is something to consider, yes.
 
> Obviously, if the N-1 winners that you already have are among
> the current N winners, then you don't even have to do the 
> Condorcet(EM) or Schulze count.

Indeed. As I said, it looks like this is the case in the far majority
(if not all, but I don't have a mathematical proof for that) of the
cases.

> I hope that it doesn't seem like I'm just beating the drum for
> my favorite issue, single-winner methods.

It doesn't. Your suggestions are interesting.

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Herman Beun                                                    Arnhem
http://home.worldonline.nl/~chbeun/                        Gelderland
CHBeun at worldonline.nl                                       Nederland
                                                                   EU
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