[EM] Incorporating slates into STV (was: PRfavoringracialminorities)

[Aaron Armitage]

I botched my attempt to chime in on STV elections by sending my reply to
Jonathan Lundell alone instead of the list at large. In spite of this he
was good enough to reply. below is my original comment and his reply, and
below that another comment from me.


--- On Mon, 8/18/08, Jonathan Lundell <jlundell at pobox.com> wrote:

> From: Jonathan Lundell <jlundell at pobox.com>
> Subject: Re: Incorporating slates into STV (was: PRfavoringracialminorities)
> To: eutychus_slept at yahoo.com
> Date: Monday, August 18, 2008, 10:18 AM
> On Aug 17, 2008, at 11:59 AM, Aaron Armitage wrote:
> 
> > But using 5-9 seat districts creates a very high
> effective  
> > threshold, making the overall result less proportional
> and  
> > increasing the number of votes which are thrown away
> rather than  
> > used in constituting the assembly. That's why
> incorporating slates  
> > can improve the system: it makes it more scalable, and
> there are  
> > certain advantages to higher district magnitudes.
> 
> For those of us stuck with FPTP elections, the prospect of
> throwing  
> away "only" 10% of the votes seems positively
> paradisiacal.
> 
> >
> >
> > But it has to be done right. I don't like methods
> that leave the  
> > votes among candidates and use slates or proxies
> outside of the  
> > candidate listing to determine part or all of that
> listing, because  
> > thy will tend to make the election less about
> appealing to the  
> > public and more about appealing to powerbrokers who
> will in many  
> > cases be able to make or break candidacies by their
> rankings.  
> > Ideological blocs of voters will be able to make
> themselves more  
> > important by investing all their votes into one slate
> or one proxy,  
> > and once one faction moves the others will follow in
> self-defense.  
> > In addition, if proxies are used precinct-level
> political operatives  
> > will persuade their voters (especially less-educated
> voters) to make  
> > them their proxies, strengthening urban political
> machines. Even if  
> > we stick to slates, the relationship between
> politicians and slate  
> > managers will tend to corruption. More importantly,
> government will  
> > be less of a res publica, public
> > business managed in common by the public.
> >
> > It would be better, I think, for slates to be ranked
> along with  
> > independent candidates. The counting rule is simply
> this: all  
> > independents who meet the quota are seated, and for
> every quota a  
> > slate carries, that number of its members are seated.
> The surpluses  
> > of independents and slates which have all their
> candidates seated  
> > are transferred, and the eliminations and transfers
> continue until  
> > the assembly is filled.
> >
> > Of course ideological blocs will still vote for their
> favorite  
> > slates, but those slates are voted upon rather than
> voting, meaning  
> > they are open to public accountability.
> 
> It's an interesting approach. I'd have to think a
> little more about  
> the implications of surplus transfers in that kind of
> scheme. It seems  
> to me that it effectively prohibits (or at least
> discourages for  
> strategic reasons) a voter from voting independently for a
> candidate  
> that appears on a slate.

I'm also stuck with plurality, and I agree entirely that plain-vanilla STV 
s a vast improvement

You're right that you couldn't vote for one member of a slate under my
basic proposal. The slate runs as a single candidacy.

If we wants slates that run as teams and are voted on, and also the
ability to single out a single candidate on a slate, the easiest way I can
think of would be to abandon the transferable vote altogether and use a
different mechanism. We would generate every possible assembly and compare
them one-on-one, Condorcet style. The comparison would ignore those
candidates who receive seats in both outcomes, and compare only the seats
filled by different people. We give each seat a "weight" of 1, and both
outcomes divide the weight of each seat evenly among the voters who prefer
that outcome's winner over the alternative. The potential assembly that
spreads its "weight" most evenly wins the comparison. It wouldn't be that
simple, of course: if there are fifty differences between two outcomes,
which ones are we actually comparing? But I just thought of this today.

By ranking a slate, you choose any member of that slate over anyone ranked
below it, thus making it more even spread and therefore more likely to
win, but you can still vote for any particular candidate. Unlike STV with
slates, there would probably be no independent candidates, because for the
candidate there is no strategic downside to running on a slate. In fact,
there's no reason there couldn't be overlapping slates.

In an American context, I don't picture STV with slates as being a semi-
party list system. They would work better if the slates are simply
candidates who choose to campaign as a team, and who are subject to ballot
access rules similar (or identical) to what independent candidates.
Probably they would state party affiliations in some way, though. With the
second system, the political parties probably would be slates you could
vote for, encompassing or overlapping with other, smaller slates and
individual candidates' campaigns.