[EM] article on preferential voting

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 01:05 PM 12/30/2006, James Gilmour wrote:
> > Abd ul-Rahman Lomax> Sent: 30 December 2006 15:42
> >
> > Well, it is a bit irritating to me, and perhaps to some others, that
> > AV is used in the paper to refer to Alternative Vote; we routinely
> > use it for Approval Voting.
>
>Maybe, but I suspect US readers will find that the acromyn "AV" was used
>for "Alternative Vote" many decades before the term "Approval Voting"
>was first coined by Robert J. Weber in 1976 (Wikipedia).

I did not claim that it was wrong, it was irritating. It's irritating.

STV, by the way, could be implemented in a radically different way, 
where the transfer is under the control of the candidate receiving 
the vote. That would actually be a little closer to the implied 
meaning of "single transferable vote." When I first heard the name, 
that's what I thought it meant.

What I just described is Asset Voting.... far more flexible than STV 
or just about any other election method. It's pretty similar to 
Delegable Proxy used as an election method. It's a trick, though. 
Asset Voting is not an election method as methods are sometimes 
defined, that is, it does not, in itself, necessarily determine the 
winner. There is further process involved.

It is similar to the Electoral College method of election, with the 
College allowing variable voting power dependent on the vote that 
each elector received. Absolutely the most democratic idea 
floating.... able to elect a peer assembly with each member holding 
almost exactly the same number of votes (i.e, having been elected 
with the same number of votes). No wasted votes (or at least a 
trivial number of wasted votes, with someone specific being 
responsible, and thus accountable, for the waste). Aside from wasted 
votes, if the vote assignments are by voting precinct -- which then 
requires some variation in vote count per member, but slight -- 
voters know exactly whom their vote elected. And that member would 
quite likely be local to them, where a "party" has many members. A 
party with only a few members, but a quota, might have just one 
member representing all party voters in the entire state or 
jurisdiction. Those voters would be sacrificing locality of 
representation for accuracy of representation.

Asset Voting is worth far more attention than it gets.... it is a 
solution to most of the problems of proportional representation, it 
eliminates the "party list" as an official part of the method. Party 
lists may still exist and candidates may promise to follow them in 
how they distribute votes, but they are not required to do so, and 
voters can choose. With FAAV, voters can decide to award their vote 
to a single person or split it among a virtual committee, which might 
consist of a number of candidates from a single party....

Asset, single vote, no overvoting, is utterly trivial in ballot 
design and counting. It is merely a different way of using standard 
ballot information. FAAV, Fractional Asset Approval Voting, is a 
little more complicated to count, but, in the end, each precinct 
simply transmits vote totals for the precinct. My guess is that most 
voters would vote for one and thus counting would be quick. I'd 
divide the ballots into piles according to how many candidates the 
voter voted for. These voters voted for one. Easy. Count the votes. 
These voters voted for two. Easy, count the votes in that pile and 
divide them by two before adding them in with the single votes. Etc. 
Continue with each pile until all piles have been counted.