[EM] Re: another idea (proportionality and intra-party competition)

[Gervase Lam]

> Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2004 17:21:21 +0100 (CET)
> From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Kevin=20Venzke?=
> Subject: [EM] another idea (proportionality and intra-party competition)

> Open list.  Each voter votes for one list, and *any number* of
> candidates within that list.  So it's Approval within the party, and the
> party's median voter could theoretically elect all the candidates for
> the party.

You started with the idea of each party having a list of candidates.  The 
voters would use Approval to vote for a list and Approval within each list 
to vote for candidates.  The most approved candidate from the most 
approved list is the winner.

A few or several weeks back, I sort of thought of your idea as a way to do 
multi-seat elections.  Something that avoids Jefferson, Webster etc... 
quotas and therefore be much easier to count.  However, it is prone to 
factioning.

To try to get away from the factioning and more towards "proportionality," 
I thought of the opposite thing to what you mention:  Approve a list and 
only vote for one candidate in a list.

I think my reasoning was that candidates within each list are clones of 
each other.  Otherwise, why are they all in one party?  With hindsight, 
there are problems with this, as you sort of mentioned in your posts.

> An obvious defect is that this Approval-based open list won't preserve
> any proportionality *within* the party.

Adam Tarr posted recently about using Cumulative Voting in order to 
preserve some sort of "proportionality."  He suggested that each voter 
should be allowed to spread 4 points against any candidate in a 4 winner 
election.  May be this could be used instead of the Approval/Plurality 
voting?

Why not go the whole way and not have party lists at all?  Each voter is 
allowed to spread the votes among the candidates the voter chooses.

The only problem with this idea is that with a 500 seat house, this is a 
practical nightmare.  I don't like the idea of radically reducing the 500 
points per voter to something more manageable like 10 or 20.  It becomes 
too much like plurality as the number of votes is now just a tiny fraction 
of the number of seats.

Yes, I suppose some sort of rules involving districts could be involved.  
Personally, I would find it nice to be allowed to vote for any candidate I 
want.  I want the best.  Geography should not get in the way of this.

May be this should not concern me considering how "apolitical" I am.  Or 
may be I should just move...

Thanks,
Gervase.