[EM] Two Suggested Systems of STV/Open Party List

[Donald E Davison]

Greetings,                              11/23/99

     I have been engaged in debating Droop for the last month.
     I do not know how much anyone else learned from this debate, but I
feel that I learned the most. I now have a much better understanding of
Droop and STV.
     So much of a better understanding that now I can present to you some
suggestions on how the District STV method can be improved to yield good
proportionality over all the districts.

     One suggested system would be to use the first choices of all the
ballots, in the entire election, as party popular votes to be used in a
Open Party List method. It would work like this:
     Two member districts using STV. The quota would be the same for every
district, calculated from total votes and total members. No members would
be elected by these district STV elections, but the position of each
candidate in their STV election would determine their position on their
party lists. How many quotas of votes a party has over all the districts
will determine how many members the party elects. Each one percent of total
votes a party has will elect one member per 100 members to be elected in
the entire election.

     My second suggested system has the added option of allowing the voter
to vote for candidates or to vote for a party. A voters will be able to
rank the candidates, by voting above the line, or vote for a party, by
voting below the line.
     The first choices of all the ballots in which the voters ranked the
candidates would be added to party ballots in order to give us the total
party vote for all the districts.
     Only the candidate ballots would be used in each district in a STV
election. The quota for these elections would be the same for all districts
- total candidate ballots divided by total members to be elected. These
district STV elections would not elect any members. The results would be
used to place candidates on their party lists. The members would be elected
via Open Party List.
     By allowing people to vote for party we will be separating the voters
who are informed about the candidates from the voters who are only informed
about their parties. This should result in better qualified candidates
being elected.

     I have said it before and I'll say it again, the best use of STV is to
use it to determine the order of candidates on the party lists for the Open
Party List election method. That is how STV is used in these two suggested
systems.

Regards, Donald

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   |                         Q U O T A T I O N                         |
   |  "Democracy is a beautiful thing,                                 |
   |       except that part about letting just any old yokel vote."    |
   |                            - Age 10                               |
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