[EM] [Election-Methods] [english 94%] PR favoring racialminorities

[Jonathan Lundell]

On Aug 15, 2008, at 3:00 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:

>>> Also, such a scheme would be, I think, highly susceptible to  
>>> agenda manipulation: who decides which issue is to be effectively  
>>> on the ballot, and who decides that the candidates associated with  
>>> X and not-X are sincere?
>> Citizens are free to form such lists. Each list may support and  
>> oppose any topics, and the lists are supposed to collect similar  
>> minded candidates together. Ballots may be just votes for  
>> individual candidates (not for issues). I don't see any specific  
>> problems in this case.
>
> Does that mean that a single candidate can be a member of more than  
> one list? If so, how are ties handled? Depending on how that's done,  
> it could cause complex interactions depending on which party a voter  
> decides to support.
>
> If a single candidate can't be on more than one list, then agenda  
> manipulation still has some power. If a candidate has to commit to a  
> list that is based primarily on issue X, but where he also supports  
> Y, he has to make a choice (distinct from the choices voters make)  
> of X over Y. That could be technically solved by making 2^n "lists"  
> for n issues, but then you'd have to let candidates be on multiple  
> lists, and pure "party-neutral" PR becomes much simpler.
>
> Tree lists would help, but say that a voter likes Y, but not X any  
> more than the candidate in question does. Then he wouldn't want to  
> have his vote contribute to any of the other X-favoring candidates.

I could see a kind of proxy front end to STV elections. I'm not sure  
I'm convinced it would be a good idea, or even practical to implement,  
but suppose that any person or group (including parties) could  
register an STV ranking, and a voter could select that ranking instead  
of ranking individual candidates. The logistical difficulty would be  
in determining how a voter specified their proxy, along with the  
possibility of ambiguity deliberate or accidental ("Siera Club", "John  
Smith").