[EM] Delegate cascade and proportional representation

[Raph Frank]

On 8/19/08, Michael Allan <mike at zelea.com> wrote:
> Juho wrote, in thread PR favoring racialminorities:
>  >
>  > ... I was also thinking about trees that offer more detailed
>  > grouping of the candidates.
>
>  I just spoke with someone at Texas Tech.  We were discussing how
>  cascade voting might be used to elect a proportional assembly.
>  Basically, you just take the roots and branches of the trees (straight
>  from the election results) and that's your assembly.  Is this roughly
>  what you guys are proposing, in this sub-thread?

Presumably, there would have to be some way to ensure PR.

If they do form a tree, then you could just divide the seats between
the roots in proportion to their vote share.

The root candidate would be assigned one seat and then the
remaining ones would be shared between the branch candidates.

For example, if the votes were
(lower levels not shown)

Z(10) abstained/voted for self
A(5) voted for Z
B(3) voted for Z
C(1) voted for Z

Y(5) abstained/voted for self
D(1) voted for Y
E(3) voted for Y

If there were 3 seats to assign, then would go
Z gets 2 as holds 10 votes (2/3 of votes)
Y gets 1 as holds 5 votes (1/3 of votes)

Y just keeps the seat assigned
Z keeps one and passed the other down and it
ends up with A.

With lots more seats and candidates, this would
yield more accurate PR.

Ofc, it creates an incentive to abstain, so as to
be a root node.  OTOH, that mightn't actually help.

If d'Hondt was used, then there is an incentive to
vote as part of a chain that ends on a popular candidate
as large 'parties' have a slight advantage.

Btw, is there a formal definition of delegate cascade.  Do
voters just vote for 1 candidate?  (like standard DP)