[EM] comparative survey of multiwinner election methods

Warren Smith wds at math.temple.edu
Fri Oct 28 16:03:48 PDT 2005


I just finished a paper on this topic.  It is available at
  #91 (at the end) of  http://math.temple.edu/~wds/homepage/works.html
It incorporates quite a lot from EM-list members FW Simmons
and D Gamble, however they are not listed as coauthors since they declined,
or at least did not accept.  The paper comes to the conclusion
that my own "asset voting" (which is very much like a system FW Simmons also invented
under a different name) is the best system surveyed - however this conclusion
cannot be considered, as George Tenet would put it, a "slam dunk."
Considerably fewer multiwinner systems have been invented, because (thank heavens)
you EMers have been mainly devoting your efforts to producing single-winner methods
by the hundredweight.

It might be that you could now invent a hundredweight of multiwinner methods
and thus obsolete my survey.  However, the case that asset voting is the best
(if you ignore the fact that that case is somewhat weak) seems somewhat immune to
such future invention, because it is argued that asset voting has certain
property combinations inherently unmatchable by ANY "conventional" multiwinner method.

wds




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