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

[Juho]

On Apr 24, 2007, at 6:26 , Tim Hull wrote:

> In this case, the only *tested* method which is fully candidate  
> based (i.e. no party lists, open or closed)  - and does not use  
> anything other than votes cast for candidates to determine winners   
> - is STV.

(There are also other interesting methods like http:// 
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_approval_voting and http:// 
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPO-STV. STV is however more established and  
closer to real life, so I don't recommend any more complex or  
experimental systems to be promoted in your case.)

(I have also written about MultiGroup that is a method that could,  
despite of seeing candidates as members of various groupings, be  
fully based on individual candidate decisions on what kind of  
groupings/ideologies the want to promote and benefit of (i.e. not  
"party lists" but "candidate lists of groups he/she likes"). This one  
is also experimental, so not for you.)

>   In the case of voting, it seems like a good idea for the method  
> of voting to be consistent for everyone.  Hence, it only seems  
> logical to use IRV.  Doing anything else would only make the  
> explanation of how voting works twice as long, and make said effort  
> more likely to fail.

(You didn't say if you want the method to be consisted to the voters  
or also to the ones who will decide what method will be taken into  
use. If it is enough to provide a consistent voting experience to the  
votes, any ranked ballot based method would do. But I guess you refer  
also to the latter case.)

> Until these is a good, *proven* single-winner/multi-winner  
> combination that works well, I don't see this type of situation  
> changing.

(Does the "combination" mean combination of multi-seat and single- 
seat "districts" (within a multi-winner election) or combination of   
"government" and "chairman" elections? I guess the latter is the  
case. Also other combinations would work technically, but maybe would  
be more difficult to explain to the decision makers (= not work well).)

>   In my push to implement a better voting system than our truncated  
> Borda/FPTP combo, I see IRV and STV as the best chance to actually  
> make a change.  I don't see myself trying to push two separate and  
> complicated systems (one alone is hard enough), or trying to sell a  
> system that has not been widely used anywhere.

Ok, you know best what is possible and what not. Note however that  
with IRV you'll choose a direction where the major parties will be  
favoured (centrist compromise candidates from smaller parties  
probably won't be elected). Maybe that is ok in the environment in  
question.

> In short - I would say that the lack of any good, tested multi- 
> winner system with a better-than-IRV single-winner version is part  
> of why IRV is so popular...

(I guess this you mean that this is the reason "why IRV is so  
popular" to you in your current case (not in general).)

My summary of the STV-IRV combination is that
- IRV favours big parties (Condorcet would not, and also it would be  
ranked ballot based)
- explaining STV and IRV to the decision makers at one go is a bonus
- you have decided to use a partyless method, which is ok, but I'm  
still wondering if the existing major groupings will agree with this
- STV-IRV would surely be a significant improvement to your current  
voting practices

Juho




		
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