[Election-Methods] leaving seats open

[Jonathan Lundell]

On Oct 9, 2007, at 8:12 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

> 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.

There are good reasons to prefer the Droop quota, but what I meant  
was "a full quota votes, where a quota in our case is Droop's".

>
> 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.)

I'm interested in Asset Voting, though I agree that introducing it to  
an established power structure is problematic.

Political parties (and I'm speaking of California; the rules vary of  
course elsewhere but raise similar issues) have a problem in defining  
"participation" for the purpose of internal processes. But that's  
also a matter for another day.

>
>> 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.

This also relates to various campaigns for "binding NOTA" in single- 
seat plurality elections. For historical reasons, GPCA rules do not  
impose the threshold requirement for single-seat (IRV) elections,  
which in the Droop case would mean an absolute-majority requirement.  
But single-seat elections are a minor factor in internal Green Party  
elections, and the issue tends not to arise.

WRT the GP's mandatory threshold, the choice of a minimum election  
threshold needn't be identical to the STV quota in use, and this  
might make sense especially if Meek/Warren is used as the counting  
method (where the lowered quota is equitably applied to all candidates).

Here's what I see as the problem with this approach. As I said  
earlier, it implicitly defines the voter's approval threshold as that  
below which he'd rather leave the seat empty. But in "standard" STV  
voting, an exhausted ballot is treated as an abstention, in which the  
voter is viewed as saying "I have no further preference, and I leave  
the decision to the remainder of the voting body": neutrality vs  
disapproval.

Both are legitimate. It could be technically cured by allowing equal  
ranking to express the abstention attitude, but that can be  
burdensome for the voter when there's a long list of candidates. I'm  
not a big fan of adding equal-ranking to STV; I'm not convinced that  
the extra complication is worth the gain in expressivity.

>
>> 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!

I think we're stuck with some of these metaphors, but who knows? I  
see that the FBC article is back, and has survived two deletion votes.