[EM] Mixed member proxy list

Fri Jun 30 04:33:18 PDT 2006

  From:  Anthony O'Neal <thasupasacfitinman at gmail.com>
> So, why not divide the country into a set of SMD's, and fill half of 
the seats
> in the legislature through these. Then use the voters desired proxy 
(which
> may be the candidate they voted for, or another candidate, or a 
non-candidate)
> to fill in the rest of the seats. A voter who voted for the winning 
candidate
> in an SMD contest has his vote consumed and that doesn't count 
towards a
> declared proxies list.

I think that it should be fractional loss.  If a candidate gets 90% of 
the
district, then each of his supporters should have their vote decreased
to 4/9 of their original strength.  OTOH, The vote for a candidate who
gets 50% + 1 vote should be completely consumed (or almost so).

There is also a slight issue with the fact that some district will have
a lower turnout.  Your vote is valued differently based on the 
difference
between the national and district turnout.

If your district has a turnout of 40%, but the national turnout was
60%, then a local vote is worth 1.5 times what a national vote is worth.
To balance the 2, there would need to be a re-scaling step before 
hand-off
to the national count.  National votes from each constituency would 
count
for (local turnout)/(national turnout) votes.

This also reduces the incentive for each district to "add" more votes 
so that
it can increase its voting strength.

> The main difference between this and the normal
> Mixed Member system is that there are many more options and two 
proxies may
> have the same candidate on both of their lists, so it encourages 
coalition
> building.

So how would you you work the ballot.  I would work it as something 
like:

Each local candidate submits their list before the election.  This would
probably be the party's list with some modifications by the candidate 
(he
may move some more local candidates higher on his list).  The list would
include all/most candidates in the national election.  The candidate 
would
have exclusive authority to decide his own list.

Each voter then submits a ranked ballot.  They also put an X beside the
candidate who submitted their favorite list.  This ballot is 
interpreted to
mean "I want my vote to support the local candidates as I ranked them 
and then
to support the candidates in order of the list with the X".

I would then use IRV to allocate the seats in each district.  The quota 
would
be set to 50%.  Once a ballot is exhausted (locally), it is passed to a 
list.

This means that some lists would be gaining votes even before a 
candidate
is elected.

For example, lets say there was 3 factions and 5 candidates:

Faction 1:
40%:  A>B>(A list)
20%:  B>A>(A list)

Faction 2:
20%:  C>D>E>(C list)
15%:  D>C>E>(D list)

Faction 3:
5%:  F>(F list)

The count would then proceed as follows:

Count 1:
A: 40
B: 20
C: 20
D: 15
E: 0
F: 5

Result:  E,F eliminated as E+F < D (so they can't win)

Count 2:
A: 40
B: 20
C: 20
D: 15
F list: 5 (so not passed to any local)

Result:  D eliminated as is lowest candidate

Count 3:
A: 40
B: 20
C: 35
F list: 5

Result:  B eliminates as is lowest candidate

Count 4:
A: 60
C: 35
F list: 5

Result: A elected as district representative as > 50%

District will declare results as:

A elected: 50
A list: 10
B list: n/a
C list: 20
D list: 15
E list: n/a
F list: 5

Under this system each district can count its own votes locally, without
needing information from other districts.

All the votes would be rescaled so that the total for each district was
constant for all districts before going to the national vote.

National lists would work using STV-PR with the lists as ballots and 
the
quota being half a district worth of votes.  This gives national and 
local
votes equal weight.  It does however, mean that voters in low turnout
districts have more voting power.  It also gives representation to 
N/(N+1)
of the voters, where N is the total number of seats nationwide.

One possible issue is that if lots of voters bullet vote directly for 1
candidate and then a list, there might not be any candidate elected 
directly
for the district.  I don't see that as much of an issue as it is what 
the
voters want.

I would also probably go with setting the quota to maybe 1/3 or 1/4 of a
district, so that the result is more locals elected and also multi-seat
districts.  1/3 would end up with 2 locals for every national 
representative.

Instead of using STV-PR, you could use proxy voting if that is what you
prefer ofc.  Instead of lists, voters would elect proxies.  Presumably,
you mean the proxies to elect the national candidates using asset 
voting ?