[EM] Amnon Rubinstein's Proposal for Electoral Reform in Israel

[James Gilmour]

> Antonio Oneala> Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2006 10:04 PM
>     Besides that fact that practically every country that has 
> used STV has boiled down to a more or less two-party system?

Would you care to list the countries and states around the world that use STV-PR together with the numbers of parties
represented in their parliaments before they used STV-PR and now after many years of using STV-PR?

In the rest of your post you seem to have muddled the effects of IRV (STV in a single-seat election) and STV-PR
(multi-winner elections).  IRV as used to elected the Australian Federal House of Representatives has no relevance to
the operation of STV-PR.  Also note that the Australian version of STV-PR as used for the election of the Federal
Senate, with its "above the line" and "below the line" voting, is a gross perversion of STV-PR as it has reduced the
voting system to a de facto closed party list.

You claim that tactical voting is a particular feature of STV-PR, especially with regard to the transfer of surpluses.
Would you care to provide some evidence for that statement, with data from real public elections?

You also say (in comparing STV-PR with SNTV) "But this does not make STV perfect."  I don't know who you think made that
claim -  I most certainly didn't.  There is NO perfect voting system  -  they all have their defects, STV-PR included.
And the practical implementation of any voting system will always involve compromises.

James Gilmour