[EM] Another PR method based on ranked ballots

[Olli Salmi]

At 15:12 -0800 20.3.2003, Steve Eppley wrote:
>I like PR methods in principle, because like the best single-winner
>methods they don't suffer as much from spoiling.  But primitive PR
>methods tend to distort the public's perception of "popularity" by
>equating the number of seats won by a party with its popularity. 
>Typically, the party that wins the most seats forms controls the
>agenda and,

Doesn't it do so with single-winner elections? Even more so because 
the majority tends to be exaggerated.

>  in parliamentary systems, also controls the executive
>branch.

Doesn't this quite often happen with single-winner methods? Isn't the 
Republican party in control of the Congress and the presidency in the 
USA?

>For example, the Nazi party in 1933 won the most seats and
>went on to be granted a lot of power, but they won a minority of
>seats and were probably the least preferred party of a majority of
>the voters.

Sorry, I don't understand that. Here are the results of the elections 
in the Weimar republic.
http://www.gonschior.de/weimar/Deutschland/Uebersicht_RTW.html
Lots of abbreviations, the most relevant for this discussion is 
NSDAP, Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei 
(Hitler-Bewegung)

The Nazi party got 43.91% of the votes in 1933. The next party, The 
Social Democrats, got 18,25% and had been continuously going down. 
With First Past the Post the Nazis would quite likely have had a 
comfortable absolute majority.

>A party that wins fewer seats could be preferred by a majority over
>the party that wins the most seats, and in that sense is more
>popular, and should be distinguished as such by the voting system.

It is distinguished as such in PR. The minority parties are likely to 
get along better with each other than the less liked majority party 
and they can form a government together. I don't know what the 
situation was in Germany, the parties probably couldn't work together 
or didn't have enough time for that.

The claim that PR makes for unstable governments is repeated over and 
over again but that doesn't make it any truer. PR reflects the voters 
much more accurately than FPP and if there is instability in the 
society, it is reflected in the election result. This can be 
particularly noticeable in times of crisis.

If there are institutional reasons that made the Weimar Republic 
unstable, it was the use of the parliamentary system in a manner that 
had developed in a stable two-party system. The Chancellor had to 
resign if the Reichstag gave a vote of no confidence. This resulted 
in elections which didn't solve anything. In present day Germany this 
is prevented by the use of the constructive vote of no confidence, 
i.e. the Chancellor can be dismissed only if an absolute majority of 
the Bundestag supports another person.

Olli Salmi