Behind the Ballot Box - single winner methods

[LAYTON Craig]

Tony wrote:

>It looks like the books is very similar to his web site.  In
>case anyone is unfamiliar with it, it's at:
>
>    http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/polit/damy/prlib.htm
>
>He's primarily into PR, so it's understandable that his
>coverage will be a bit skewed.  He also seems to be more
>interested in practical than purely academic considerations.
>And he doesn't seem to give a lot of attention to
>mathematical considerations.  My impression, anyway.

This is from the website;

'There are three basic "families" of voting systems:  plurality/majority,
proportional representation, and semiproportional.   All the voting systems
within a particular family tend to produce the same kind of political
results and tend to resemble each other in terms of their general political
advantages and disadvantages.  The main political differences are therefore
between the families, not within them.'

I think this is more or less correct.  The results in a district approval
election will seem extremely close to the results of a district plurality
election when compared to the results of a PR election.  Political
scientists are more likely to discuss only methods that have had political
application, because political consequenses of election methods are not
clearly deducible from the proceedural rules / counting algorithms
themselves.  There is, I think, a school of thought in political science
that sees all relevant political analysis as comparitive, and disregards
everything else as speculation, although I'm pretty sure there are major
problems with this.