[EM] Competitive Districting Rule. "above-the-line" voting

[Anthony Duff]

--- James Gilmour <jgilmour at globalnet.co.uk> wrote:
> > Note that subdivision of parties and their alliances and 
> > whatever other groupings add tools to the voter to express 
> > what she wants. Also models where STV like ordering is not 
> > used but the vote to James automatically goes to the smallest 
> > group that James belongs to, then to the next bigger group 
> > etc. may work better than current more rough "vote party 
> > only" or "vote party member only" arrangements.
> 
> This all sounds very like the "above-the-line" voting that is used in the
> Australian Federal Senate elections.  It has
> perverted STV-PR very severely, so that that implementation is really nothing
> more than closed list party PR.

It does sound “like the "above-the-line" voting that is used in the Australian
Federal Senate elections” and the NSW upper house elections, and other Australian
elections, where it certainly *seems* to work well, and it is utilised by the vast
majority.

I know that James Gilmour is philosophically opposed to this party list option
operating within STV.  He may be right, but I have seen no evidence.  Perhaps I
haven’t known where to look.

Is the statement “It has perverted STV-PR very severely” based on philosophy,
impression or evidence?  It is my impression that there is no perversion. 
Independent candidates and micro-parties seem overrepresented in the ballot count.
 The absence of independent candidates and micro-parties in the results is not the
reality either, but even if it was, I would argue that it is more a result of the
small number of seats (six per STV district), than a result of systematic bias
towards parties.

How would someone measure the “perversion”?

Anthony




	

	
		
____________________________________________________ 
On Yahoo!7 
Messenger - Make free PC-to-PC calls to your friends overseas. 
http://au.messenger.yahoo.com