[EM] [Election-Methods] [english 94%] PR favoring racial minorities

[Raph Frank]

On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 6:06 AM, Juho <juho4880 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> (Continuous elections could also increase the level of participation in
> decision making in the sense that old votes could be valid for a long time
> even if the voter wouldn't bother to change the vote often. Well, on the
> other hand the votes must have some time/event limits after which they
> become invalid. Otherwise the system would e.g. make any changes in the
> party structure very "unprofitable".)

There is also the security issue.  Continuous voting requires some way for
a person to cancel their vote.  That is hard to achieve in a way that
maintains the secret ballot.

One option would be to allow a voter decide in advance how long their
vote will stay active, when they cast it.  A voter could pick 3 months,
6 months, 1 year, 2 years, 4 years for their vote.

Each ballot would be marked with the length of time it will remain valid
for.  The results would then be announced broken down by length of
time they remain active for.

If you pick 4 years, then you will not be permitted to cast another vote
for at least 4 years (for that office).  OTOH, if you pick 3 months, then
you will have to vote again 3 months later.

This would be reasonably simple for methods that don't have rounds.
However, it would be complex for things like IRV.

If the ballot lists are a matter of public record, then voters who vote
every 3 months and reliably vote could end up being targeted by the
parties as they have the ability to withdraw support much more
rapidly.  (kinda like how politicians currently spend much more time
with their supporters near election time).

> When thinking about the problems of continuous elections and direct
> democracy maybe the first problem in my mind is the possibility of too fast
> reactions. Populism might be a problem here. Let's say that the economy of a
> country is in bad shape and some party proposes to raise taxes to fix the
> problem. That could cause this party to quickly lose lots of support.

Actually, one option would be to allow each voter vote once every 4 years,
but stagger when each person gets to vote.  For example, their might be
an election every 6 months electing one eights of the legislature.

This gives continuous feedback, but still requires time to change the
composition of the legislature.  A swing in the votes would only have
1/8 the effect on the legislature.

> These
> rather direct forms of democracy could be said to require the voters to be
> more "mature" than in some more indirect methods in the sense that the
> voters should understand the full picture and not only individual decisions
> that may sometimes even hurt them. In an indirect democracy painful
> decisions are typically not made just before the elections. This is not an
> ideal situation either. But all in all, the more direct forms of democracy
> seem attractive if the voters are mature enough.
>

I think it probably depends on how it works.  Initially, people might switch
their vote at the drop of a hat, but as time passes, people are less likely to
bother.

Also, under a PR/coalition based government system, it would encourage
any coalition formed to have more than a simple majority.  If the coalition
has 60% of the legislature, it is less likely to be massively swayed by
short term popularity changes.

This kinda happens already.  In Ireland, coalitions tends to aim for
the high 80's (of 166) so that they can lose a few to byelections without
causing the coalition to fall.