[Election-Methods] leaving seats open

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 12:22 PM 10/9/2007, Jonathan Lundell wrote:

>As a side note on this discussion, the Green Party of California (as
>well as GPUS, which adopted similar rules) uses an STV variation that
>allows for leaving seats empty. We use BC-like STV with an additional
>rule that, to be deemed elected, a candidate must receive a full
>(Droop) quota of votes. The underlying idea is to require some
>threshold level of affirmative voter support while preserving PR.

I thought a full quota was the Hare Quota. That is, if there are V 
voters and N seats, the Hare quota is 1/N. The Droop quota is 
smaller, designed to ensure that N seats are filled.

Sounds really good. STV, with enough seats, is quite a good PR 
system, properly handled.

There is a better system than STV, for a completely different reason 
than raw accuracy, though it is about 100% accurate, which creates a 
more involved electorate, and that's Asset Voting, if one has secret 
ballot, or delegable proxy, if the whole process takes place in the 
open.... but that may not be a discussion for today. How DP is used 
to create an assembly, though, is not a terribly difficult thing to 
understand: you take delegable proxy, then add the common-law rule 
that any assembly can make its own rules. If everyone who wishes to 
be is technically a member of the assembly, but can vote by proxy, 
the assembly can then make rules regarding who has *floor rights.* 
This is a general solution to the problem of scale in democracy... 
but I'm not proposing it for public use at this time, rather for use 
by NGOs, which could include political parties.

What I've seen, though, is that when there is an existing power 
structure, it will resist can change that more broadly distributes 
power. Happens with people with the best of intentions..... So these 
structures first arise, I foresee, *outside* of issues of power, they 
are created with pure communications and intelligence purpose, they 
do not control, they only inform and advise. But that's huge!

(The power remains with the members who either participate or don't. 
But those who participate will have the advantage of coordinated 
power, should they accept the coordination.)

>Voters truncate their ballots by ranking only candidates they
>approve. The operational definition of "approve candidate X" in this
>case is "prefer electing X to leaving seat open".

This, of course, is exactly what I think Robert's Rules is 
recommending, and over which I'm taking a lot of flack in the Instant 
Runoff Voting article conflict.

>BTW, "dictator", like "sincere", is being used metaphorically in this
>discussion, at least by me.

Of course, they are technical terms. But, actually, this language is 
dangerous, because people with political agendas can and will use it 
to manipulate opinion. Particularly "sincere."

"Sincere" is Good. Tactical Bad. And even experts fall prey to the 
associations.

I think it better to avoid the strong emotional or judgemental 
implications of terms like this. Ossipoff's Favorite Betrayal 
Criterion was killed as a Wikipedia article because of the POV 
implications of the language, "betrayal" being a strong word. 
"Favorite Reversal Criterion" or "Preference Reversal Criterion" may 
be much less problematic. In any case, one of the tasks that could be 
taken on by EMIG is the standardization of language....

Just as a recommendation, of course!