[EM] Competitive Districting Rule

[James Gilmour]

> Dan Bishop Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2006 4:35 AM
> > Juho Sent: Friday, July 14, 2006 10:22 PM
> ...
> >> 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.
> > 
> James Gilmour wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> The "perversion" is the rule that requires "below-the-line" votes to be 
> fully-ranked, thus discouraging the practice.  I would think that if it 
> were easy to vote for individual candidates, more people would do it.

This rule has been relaxed VERY slightly for Federal Senate elections, so that if there are ten or more candidates the vote is valid
("formal") if "there are numbers in at least 90% of the squares" ( AEC The Senate Voting System: Senate Theory Training, 7 June
2004).  I think that some States have relaxed the rule even further, but I may be wrong about that.

Even with the relaxation these rules make no sense.  How can any elector usefully mark a preference for any candidate for whom he or
she has no preference (except they are all below the ones he or she did mark)?  These "false" preferences mean nothing and cannot
possibly make any valid contribution to democratic representation.

I would say the same about compulsory voting.  Neither compulsory voting nor any requirement to mark all or some specified number of
preferences has any place in a voting system for a truly democratic society.  You may impose compulsory voting, and compulsory
marking of some minimum number of preferences, but it an illusion that you are collecting any additional valid information about the
real wishes of the electors.

James Gilmour