[EM] Election methods in student government...

[Tim Hull]

I have been reading up on election methods for some time, and discovered
this list through some of my searches for information.

Anyway, the student government at my college currently uses a voting system
which is quite stupid.  For single-winner elections,
they use simple plurality - spoiler effects and all.

For multi-winner elections - which constitute the majority of elections held
for student government (almost all seats except for the President/VP), an
extremely stupid version of the Borda count is used.  Under this system,
students can only vote for n candidates, where n is the number of open
seats.  They then rank them from 1 to n, and points are allocated in
decreasing order (1st place is 9 points in a 9-seat election, for
instance).   Parties are used in elections - though they aren't as
ideologically defined as parties in real elections.  However, due to the
system we effectively have a single-party dominant system - the party with
the widest appeal gets almost all of the seats.  This has historically gone
on and on, with dominant parties folding and re-emerging under slightly
different names and structures, but little competition ever happening.  Last
March was the most competitive election in a long time - with 4 parties and
the President winning with 40% of the popular vote.  However, the party that
came in second in the Presidential vote (with 36%) got a *quarter* as many
seats as the party that finished first - quite disproportionate indeed.

Anyway, I have been investigating alternate systems for single-winner
elections and (especially) multi-winner elections.  Party list is out - the
less rigidly-defined party structure makes it even less fair that it would
be in a national election.  I have also investigated STV (and IRV for
single-winner)  However, the lack of monotonicity is quite troubling - the
fact that you can help elect a candidate by ranking them LOWER seems almost
undemocratic.  This, coupled with the fact that the current system
*replaced* STV some 20-odd years ago, dampens my enthusiasm for that method
a bit.  I have also seen plenty of other election methods that look
interesting - Concordet methods especially.  However, these methods are
quite complex and don't have any good multi-winner variant (there is
CPO-STV, but it is extremely complex and is still non-monotonic).

Right now, I'm kind of at a loss as to what the best voting system would
be.  It's obvious that the current system isn't it, but many of the other
systems have significant flaws such as their lack of monotonicity.  I also
don't like the idea of using a system that is so complex that it can't be
reasonably explained to non-technical types - regular STV is about at the
maximum complexity I would want, and CPO-STV et al seem like too much (and
they suffer from later-no-harm in addition to non-monotonicity).  Even
standard STV is almost too complex - part of the reason it was originally
eliminated is due to its complexity!  Due to these reasons, ease of use,
understanding, and transparency is paramount.

So far, all I have came up with which seems to potentially be a good method
is a variant of sequential proportional approval voting.  Under the system,
single winner elections would be simple approval voting.  However, for
multi-winner elections each student would begin with a set number of
"points" equal to the number of seats to be elected.  Votes would be counted
as in normal SPAV, and each weighted according to the number of points each
student has remaining.  Every time a voter elects one of their choices, they
would "use up" one of their points.  This seems a little more understandable
than standard SPAV, and it hurts groups that share some preferences with the
majority less.

Does anyone have any suggestions?  What are the flaws with my proposed
system?  Is there something that would potentially be better while not
becoming too complex?

Tim Hull
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