Donald Davison's Standards

[New Democracy]

Greetings to the list,

     Yes, by all means let us each present our standards to be used to
evaluate all single seat election methods. But, we should also vote on the
steps of a single seat election. It may seem elementary, but we must set
the foundation.

    Step 1: The first part of a single seat election is the count of the
First Choices(CFC).

    Step 2: In the event the CFC produces a candidate with more votes than
one half of the total votes, that candidiate is said to have a majority and
is the winner.
    Notes on Step 2: It must be established that we are going to accept the
majority winner as the winner of the race if there is a majority on the
first count of the ballots. If not - why not? Examples of some CFC:

     5001 XY,   5000 Y     Who is the winner of this race?
     3001 AB, 2000 BC, 1000 CB  Who is the winner of this race?
     Do we accept, without question, candidates X and A as the winners of
these races.

    Step 4: In the event there is no candidate with a majority from CFC, we
go to the second part of the election in which we select a method that will
give us what the count of the first choices failed to give us - a majority
winner.

     My list of standards to evaluate all the methods that could be used in
the second part of a single seat election.

Standard No. 1: Majority is to be a number greater than one half of the
voters when the votes equal the number of voters. In the event the votes
are more or less than the number of voters, then the majority is to be a
number greater than one half of the votes at the time the claim is made
that we have a majority.

Standard No. 2: There can only be one candidate with a majority.

Standard No. 3: When we have a majority on the first count of the ballots
the majority winner must be confirmed everytime by the method in question.

Notes on the Standards:

No. 1: It is possible for there to be more or less votes when a claim of a
majority is made. One example is the Top Two Run-Off method. The votes in
the run-off may be more or less than the orginal votes in the general
election. The majority should be based on the votes in the run-off
election.
    Another example would be the effect caused by exhausted votes. The
majority should be based on the sum of the final votes of the remaining
candidates - excluding the exhausted votes - at the time a claim is made
that we have a majority.

No. 2: The defination of majority is: "A number greater than one half of
the total". Mathematically this rules out the possibility of having two or
more majorities. Therefore only one candidate should have a majority. If
two or more have a majority that should mean that something is wrong with
the method being studied.

No. 3: If a method is to be valid it must always produce a majority winner.
If a method does not always confirm the majority winner, then we cannot
trust it to produce the correct winner in the times in which we do not have
a majority winner on the first count of the ballots.

Regards,
Donald Davison


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