[EM] Hare-Davison quota

[Elisabeth Varin/Stephane Rouillon]

Mr. Davison,

first, thanks a lot for the explanations.

2 questions:

>  1) The new elimination rule makes it easier to tally the mix of
candidate
>and party votes, because now the party votes are carried separate from
the
>candidate votes.

I have been considering such kind of ballot (an open MMP list I think it
is called)
But I finally rejected it because I was against the following case:
Let us suppose a party that promises to get rid of a tax, in its
political program or plan
for example, but no politician for this party defends the idea because
they know
they would have to explain how to find the money somewhere else...
After the elections, candidates from this party get an average 24%
votes,
but the party gets 55% of the votes.
Most voters wanted the tax abolition but several knew the candidate they
were
offered would not do it...  But finally no other candidate from the
party would.
This behaviour is very realistic, we have seen this in Canada on a
smaller scale
when electors vote for a party and not for a candidate...

Using your rule, candidates from this party will stay longer than they
deserve.
I find the average of the votes gathered by all candidates of a party a
better
representation of the real support than the votes in favour of a party
- aka a vote in favour of ideas without knowing the
who and how of their application .
Don't you think so?
I think you can adapt your model in consequence.

>It should be rare, but it is possible for the average votes of a party
to
>be greater than the quota.  If this happens, enough surplus votes are
to be
>transferred from the sum of the party and party candidate votes such
that
>the average is reduced down to the quota.

The rest was crystal clear. Could you give an example to illustrate what
you
mean with this last paragraph?
Maybe I did not get the way you transfer both the votes in favour of a
candidate
and the votes in favour of parties (if those are transferred too)...
Do you rank parties too or do you just pick one?

Thanks,
Stéphane Rouillon.