[EM] Hello (Intro); PR, Condorcet and Approval, variants...

[Stephane Rouillon]

Venzke, I invite you to read:
http://www.fairvotecanada.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?topic=8&forum=1&4

It is a STV variant defined on a national instead of regional basis, and
that uses a mix of alternative vote and residual approbation to produce an
exactly
proportional result instead of vote transfers and quotas. Some other aspect
ensures that at worst, the governement will be a two-parties coalition. Read
and feel free to comment. (English version is the fourth post...)

Steph

Venzke Kevin a écrit :

> Hello.  I've been reading lots of messages on this
> list for a week or so, and I decided it would be good
> to join it.  I can ask questions even if my own ideas
> are not generally interesting.
>
> I've always been interested in organization of
> government (esp. comparative), but I've only recently
> become interested in single-member election methods.
> Up to that point, I most admired a system like
> Chile's: open-list PR for two seats per district.  (I
> valued balance.)  But I've become disenchanted with
> party lists and proportional representation generally.
>  I think parties would wield too much power, and there
> would be little reason to expect that passed
> legislation would be "improved" somehow with PR.  (In
> other words, even if you reduce wasted votes cast by
> voters, among legislators the number of wasted votes
> should end up about the same.)
>
> I'm now more taken with Approval and Condorcet after
> reading about them.  I want the elected candidate to
> have the broadest base of support identifiable.  I
> have an issue or two with both systems, though.
> Because of voter strategy, I worry that Approval would
> do little to "centralize" the elected candidates.
> With Condorcet I worry that many voters would rank
> candidates into three groups: the favored candidates
> highest, the poorly understood candidates second (we
> have such candidates even under plurality; wouldn't
> their number increase quite a bit under Condorcet?),
> and finally, the disliked candidates.  I worry that,
> as a consequence, an "unknown" candidate could
> accidentally win, particularly if many voters lazily
> place unknown candidates in the same positions.
>
> I'm also interested to read about exotic systems.
> (I've seen some of interest here which defy my
> comprehension, as I don't understand concepts such as
> "eigenvectors.")  I've devised some bad ones myself.
> One of my favorites puts the incumbent on a party list
> all by himself, and every challenger is "de facto" on
> a second, "challenger" list.  The voter votes for only
> one candidate.  The result is that the incumbent only
> wins with an outright majority; if the incumbent fails
> to get a majority, the "challenger" candidate with the
> most votes is the winner.  It would be an entertaining
> system if nothing else.  (You could complicate it
> further by permitting any candidate to run instead on
> the "incumbent list," with the qualification that such
> a candidate would need an outright majority within the
> list's votes to take it from the incumbent.  You could
> use the option to avoid splitting your party's votes.)
>
> I am putting finishing touches on a system which is an
> Approval variant aiming to select the Condorcet Winner
> more often.  I hope to write a document on it.  First
> I have to make sure I can defend the system's results
> philosophically, but I'm very close to that point.  I
> also want to write a quick program or two to see if
> idiotic results ever occur in random scenarios (that
> is, compared with Approval's results).  I hope it will
> be interesting.
>
> Stepjak
>
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