[EM] Reply to Robertas' Request for Opinion:

[Donald Davison]

Hi Robertas,

Thank you for asking for our opinions.  We like to give our opinions, even
if we are not in unison.

To begin with, your current system is much better than what we have here in
America.  We have very few PR elections.

One step towards some improvement for you would be for you to allow
independents to run.  They can be regarded and treated the same as a small
party, if they get enough votes they win a seat, if not, they do not get a
seat.

The current policy of one municipality-one constituency is good and should
be kept if possible, regardless if you keep Party List or go to STV.  A
single constituency for one jurisdiction yields the best proportionality,
that is, a 25 seat election would have four percent units of
proportionality per seat while five districts of five seats would require
twenty percent units of proportionality.  Keep the single constituency.

Both party list and STV will give good proportionality, but in STV the
voter is allowed to cross party lines as he ranks candidates, including
independent candidates - this is good.

If you change to STV and the election is partisan, you should not use the
Hare quota.  The weakness of STV is that candidates can be elected with
less than the Hare quota.  This tends to not give a party its proportional
share of the seats.  You should use the Droop quota or my new elimination
rule which is: `The candidate to be eliminated shall be the lowest
candidate of the party with the lowest average votes per candidate' (The
Hare quota is used with my rule).

I favor my rule as being better than the Droop because my rule averages the
votes of each party exactly, plus there will be no excluded voters left
over, but the Droop has been in use for many years, so you should have easy
acceptance if you decide to use the Droop.

If an election is supposed to be a non-partisan election, then the Hare
quota should be used with STV.  The Hare will not average the votes of the
candidates of any party nor faction.  Hare quota will treat all the
candidates as if they were running as independents.  If the policy of the
election is not to help any party nor faction by not having the method
average the votes of the parties, then a legal law should also be included
which forbids anyone from doing anything to average votes at the ballot
box, such as, handing out `How to Vote Cards".


I know you wanted our opinions by last weekend, but I always seem to be
behind in my email.  Consider my letter to be a check so you can see if you
are on the right course - Ha Ha.


Donald,