[EM] [Election-Methods] [english 94%] PRfavoringracialminorities

[Raph Frank]

On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 6:08 AM, Juho <juho4880 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Don't know the details of these mechanisms but tickets seem to me like
> add-ons that may have both good and bad effects. They do reduce the problems
> of vote splitting due to short votes.

In Ireland, there are no 'how to vote' cards.

Voting the 'party ticket' in this context is just voting for all
candidates that your party puts forward before giving any
rankings to any other candidate.

A large number of voters in Ireland don't do that.  The voter
might support FG but still vote for a FF candidate first choice
because they like that candidate and then vote for all the FG
candidates.

This is called a personal vote and it has a large effect on tactics
in Ireland.  Some candidates can end up with almost two quotas
due to a large personal vote.

The problem for parties is that the surplus doesn't remain within
the party and leads to a vote management strategy.  (If none
of their candidates have a large surplus, then they get to keep
most of the personal votes for any of their candidates).

> I tend to favour counting exact proportionalities at national (=whole
> election) level ((if one wants PR in the first place)).

One slight issue here is how to define proportionality.  It is implicitly
assumed that if a voter votes for a candidate, they also support the
candidate's party.  However, as can be seen with personal votes,
this is not always the case.

> I also tend to favour more fine-grained expression of opinions,
> as in STV or with trees, as a way to allow the voters to better influence
> the direction the system takes (reduces the risk of stagnation and
> alienation of the voters from the "parties and politics that continue as
> before no matter how we vote").

I think PR-STV at the national level where the voter votes for a list but
can override the initial votes is the best compromise between maximum
expression and reasonably low complexity.

However, that is pretty complex to actually count.

Another option is to allow a voter vote for local candidates and then
as their last choice, vote for a national list.

The local count would be standard PR-STV, but with the same quota
nationwide (and a rule that you must reach the quota to get elected).

Unallocated seats would then be assigned using d'Hondt or similar
method based on the amount of votes transferred to the national list.

Also, it could be in effect an open list.  The person elected would be
from the district that transferred the most votes to the party's national
list.