[EM] Student government - what voting system to recommend?

[Juho]

On Apr 22, 2007, at 6:44 , Tim Hull wrote:

> Anyway, as this does require a 2/3 vote of the Assembly, I face  
> quite a battle.

Good luck! Maybe your positive efforts will be rewarded.

> Also, they are skeptical of any system that reduces student control  
> over the result (such as party list

Please make a clear difference between open and closed list based  
methods. They are quite different with respect to student power.  
(There are also enhancements to open lists.)

> Given the fact that I'm going to face an uphill battle - and will  
> need to cite examples that show that my new system has benefits -  
> what would be the best
> approach?

There are of course tens of approaches here. I just note two that  
could be used in proving the benefits. If the students are  
"conservative", use some real life examples of well known, well  
working and tested methods. If the students are "radical", add some  
flavour of "latest innovations, maybe still untested, but good" so  
they will get interested.

> I like the idea of reweighted range voting, but it hasn't been  
> implemented anywhere of significance.

Compare also with Proportional Approval Voting (see Wikipedia). These  
methods are interesting but not problem free.

> For single-winner, despite its flaws it seems like instant-runoff  
> voting is the best bet, as it is the same as STV with one winner  
> and is one again a widely used system.

IRV is not all bad, but note that STV with multiple winners avoids  
some of the problems of the single winner version. IRV may be liked  
by large parties (that you seem to have in your set-up) since it to  
some extent favours them.

> Range voting once again seems like a good idea, but also has the  
> major drawback (at least as far as supporting arguments) of not  
> being used in a real election of any significance.

Compare to Approval voting. In a competitive environment Range may  
become Approval in practice (if all give only min and max votes to  
the candidates).

> I don't even want to THINK about Condorcet, due to the fact that a  
> random unknown candidate can easily win in a race with two  
> polarized candidates.

Not even think? This sounds like you have received a heavy dose of  
anti-Condorcet influence somewhere :-). Condorcet has its well known  
and studied problems but despite of these it is considered by  
numerous experts to be the best family of single winner methods (in  
competitive environments). In almost all set-ups Condorcet is likely  
to be quite problem free.

Juho



	
	
		
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