Civil Rights Director Opposes NYC's anti-STV agenda

[Bart Ingles]

I may be wrong, but from this article it sounds like they dropped STV in
favor of Limited Voting, where voters are allowed to vote for up to four
candidates in a nine-seat election.

If complexity was really the reason for dropping STV, then Proportional
Approval (PA) would have been an excellent choice as a replacement. 
>From a voter's point of view, PA is even simpler than Limited Voting --
vote for any number of candidates, period.  PA doesn't have the strategy
problems that tend to defeat Limited Voting's attempt at
proportionality.  Finally, although the tally process for PA is not as
simple as for Limited Voting, it is much simpler than for STV.  Whatever
tally process is already in place for STV could probably be adapted
quite readily for use with PA.

Proportional Approval, in a nutshell:

1.  Voters vote for any number of candidates, as in Approval.  To start
the tally process, Current_Ballots is equal to the number of voters, and
Current_Seats is equal to the number of seats open (in this case, 9).
2.  Calculate the current quota (can use either Hare or Droop).  For
example, using Hare, Current_Quota = Current_Ballots / Current_Seats.
3.  Select an Approval winner, using votes on the currently active
ballots.
4.  Reduce the number of ballots _containing_the_latest_Approval_winner_
by an amount equal to Current_Quota.  You can use either Random
Selection, or you can reduce the value of all affected ballots, as with
STV's Fractional Transfer.  If the winner had less than a quota, simply
drop all ballots containing a vote for the winner.
5.  Current_Seats is now reduced by one, and Current_Ballots is now
reduced to reflect dropped ballots in the last step.  While there are
more seats to fill, go back to step 2.

Note that the quota recalculation in Step 2 could also be used with STV,
and would allow that system to handle truncation.

Bart



Lytton, Dennis wrote:
> 
> Has New York City school boards dropped STV already?  The article is
> ambiguous.
> 
> Dennis
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > [snip]
> >      The report also criticized Mr. Lee for opposing a New York City
> > plan to simplify its complex election system for school board members.
> > The new system eliminated a convoluted process in which voters were
> > asked to rank candidates on a scale of one to nine to a system where
> > voters simply vote for four candidates. The top vote-getters would win
> > a seat on the board.
> >      Mr. Lee's office contended the change would dilute the power of
> > minority voters.