[EM] Election methods in student government...

[Tim Hull]

The ideas you put forth are quite interesting, to say the least.  To tell
you the truth, I have been working on more ways to make student government
more accessible than using a system of proportional representation rather
than allowing the majority faction to grab all seats.  One of my ideas was
to in fact create an "associate representative" position where students who
show up at a certain number of meetings can speak but not vote.  From the
sounds of it, delegable proxy has much of the same idea behind it, except
the representatives decide who they want to designate as proxies and it can
be multilevel (proxy of a proxy, etc).  Also, they have the right to
vote...

Currently, proxy voting is expressly prohibited in the rules of our student
government.  However, it could be changed by a simple two-thirds vote -
which may be something I may look into as an alternative to the "associate
representative" plan I originally created.  Those ideas will face
opposition, though - many don't like the associate representative idea
because they are only representing themselves.  The proxy idea could
potentially be better in this regard, as the representative is the one with
control.  I don't know about multilevel proxy (in a student government it
sounds like overkill), but a flexible proxy system seems to be something
worth looking in to.

That said, I really don't like the process of asset voting - which seems
like a separate idea than proxies.  This is because it takes control away
from the voter in much the same way party lists do except that each
candidate is effectively a "party".  It sounds like an interesting system,
but one that would only be useful in special cases.  As far as voting
systems, I'm probably either going to look into proposing STV and IRV (yes,
I know IRV isn't great, but it satisfies the later-no-harm principle
important to students and is familiar) or some variant of range/approval (if
later-no-harm violation is less of a problem).

Overall, I'm just hoping I can do something to open up participation and
make the student government here more useful to students.  I actually was
appointed to a vacancy one year ago and have been working on issues of
participation and electoral reform for a long time.  I actually have lost
two multi-seat elections - one by a lot, and the last one by one spot (10th
with 9 winners) with 9 majority-party members finishing ahead of me.  I do
chair a committee, though (and get non-voting parliamentary rights because
of it - though a person tried to abolish that after i started to USE
them...).

Tim

P.S. Am I understanding correctly what you mean by "delegable proxy"?

On 12/21/06, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <abd at lomaxdesign.com> wrote:
>
> At 03:48 PM 12/20/2006, Tim Hull wrote:
> >Does anyone have any suggestions?  What are the flaws with my
> >proposed system?  Is there something that would potentially be
>
>
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