[EM] STV can be hand counted...

[James Gilmour]

>  Steve Eppley > Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2004 4:06 AM

> Except that if the election will be counted by hand, then the 
> choice of variation of STV-PR is constrained: It must forbid 
> each voter from ranking candidates as equally preferred (except 
> at the bottom "truncated" part of her ordering).  Trying to 
> handle indifference in a hand-count would be impractical.

Agreed.

> (Similarly, the variation of STV-PR that "fractionally 
> transfers" each over-quota vote from winners would be 
> impractical if the election were hand-counted.)

It is not clear exactly which procedure you had in mind when you made this comment.  If you mean the
(simple) 'Gregory method', then the statement is not correct, because such fractional transfers have
made in all hand-counted public elections in Northern Ireland since 1973, and we propose to use the
same method here in Scotland when STV-PR is introduced for local government council elections in
2007.
 
> By the way, according to Gary Cox (professor of political 
> science at UC San Diego), Australia's system is more like closed 
> party list than STV PR, since most voters utilize the option of 
> picking a party rather than tediously ranking many candidates. 

Australia's Federal Senate implementation is a gross perversion of STV-PR.  It is very like a
variation of closed party list and so runs contrary to all the underlying principles of STV-PR.

> (Gary prefers closed party list because he says it reduces the 
> incentives for similar candidates to compete against each other 
> by promising pork to their constituency.  Whether or not I'd 
> agree with him that closed party list is better depends on 
> whether there are significant barriers against new parties being 
> able to compete successfully, if the elite in an old party go 
> corrupt.)

The difference between closed party list and STV-PR goes very much deeper than this.  It is a
tragedy to see a professor of political science presenting such a superficial analysis.  When they
do it here in the UK we know immediately that they have an anti-reform agenda (from FPTP) or a party
machine agenda.  ALL party list systems (closed, open, MMP, AMS) put the political parties at the
centre of the process and give them all (or nearly all) of the power.  STV-PR puts the voter at the
centre of the process and shifts the balance of power away from the parties in favour of the voters.
It also allows the voters to have a PR result based on something other political party if that is
what the voters want.  This isn't a difference of arithmetic  -  it is a fundamental difference of
political philosophy.  It is about the basic concepts of representative democracy.

James Gilmour