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

[Juho]

Sorry for some delay is replying.

(And thanks to all for the links. Those pages seem to include plenty  
of good information. I may comment them later when I understand more.)



On Aug 18, 2008, at 2:49 , James Gilmour wrote:

> Juho  > Sent: Sunday, August 17, 2008 6:08 AM
>> To: Election Methods Mailing List
>> On Aug 16, 2008, at 0:51 , James Gilmour wrote:
>>>   Lists of
>>> any kind will always be constraining.  And they are unnecessary (as
>>> well as, in my view, undesirable).
>>
>> Constraining in the sense of not being most flexible, yes.
>> Why do you see lists as undesirable?
>
> Because they shift the balance of power and accountability away  
> from the voters in favour of the party machines that make and
> register the lists.

Yes, in many cases the level of partly control exceeds what is good  
for the society. But this question is not black and white with  
respect to the election methods. Open lists may typically have lots  
of candidates to choose from, including also candidates that are  
popular but only weakly tied to the party. This is because parties  
try to collect all possible votes they can (by using many different  
kind of lures that appeal to different kind of fish). On the other  
hand it seems that at least in some STV-PR implementations the number  
of candidates per party is small, allowing the party insiders to  
efficiently control who is on the "list" and who will be elected.

Rules for registering candidates may be different in different  
countries and may also be method independent in many cases. Parties  
may often have a formal role, but I don't know what the typical rules  
in STV-PR countries are.

> To move from closed lists to open lists would certainly be  
> progress, and here in the UK we are campaigning for that, but only  
> as a
> very much second-best reform.  If we know, as we do, that STV-PR  
> will deliver what is really needed, why promote something less?  It
> is amazing how often the opponents of voting reform in the UK (and  
> elsewhere) play the "simplicity" card to justify FPTP in
> single-member districts!

Open lists and many others would indeed be quite as simple for the  
voters. STV is not too difficult for the voters either (specially if  
the number of candidates is low).


Btw, one thing I like in trees is that they can express clearly that  
the voters want party X to be more Y. If branches promoting Y get  
many more votes than in the previous election it is hard for the  
party to avoid making conclusions out of that. Also the  
representatives of the "Y branches" are morally bound to promoting Y.  
In politics it is too common that politicians talk nice things about  
Y without committing too deeply, and when the time of action comes  
they are free to find new argumentation to support whatever decisions  
they make (still "in principle having positive feelings about Y  
but..."). Having majority of the candidates behind Y would make  
things clear.

Open lists do not support party internal proportionality (between  
segments/branches). STV in principle does but it may be too complex  
to follow what the opinions of the voters really were at the election  
day and it doesn't bind the candidates to Y (in the sense that  
positive words before the election may be all that the voter gets).

>> I just note here that it may be useful to have districts that are
>> about equal in size to keep the "party cutoff levels" (=
>> proportionality level with respect to minority opinions) roughly at
>> the same level everywhere (or alternatively use some additional
>> balancing mechanisms).
>
> This concern with "equalness" can become something of an obsession,  
> especially where there are differences in support for parties
> between rural and urban areas and the proposal is to have larger  
> districts (more members) in the urban areas and smaller districts
> (fewer members) in the rural areas.  It has been an issue here in  
> Scotland.  But there is more to equality of representation than
> having exactly equal numbers of electors per elected member and  
> having equal numbers of elected members in every electoral district.
> The realities and practicalities of effective representation in the  
> geographically different areas should not be ignored.  No matter
> how hard you strive for "equalness" in every parameter, the voters  
> will screw it up for you because you cannot ensure equal turnouts
> in all of the "equal" districts (unless you have compulsory voting,  
> perhaps!).

Large differences in size between the districts may lead to various  
imbalanced situations. It is e.g. possible that the Greens get seats  
in the cities but votes to them are lost votes in the rural areas.  
This is the key reason behind current reform plans in Finland. It is  
also not quite fair that a new "pro city" party would get many  
representatives but a new "pro countryside" party would get none  
(with same level of support).

There are however ways to fix this in the list based methods even if  
the districts sizes differ, but in STV this is probably trickier to  
do (having roughly equal size districts would be easy).

>> I tend to favour counting exact proportionalities at national (=whole
>> election) level ((if one wants PR in the first place)). I also tend
>> to think that most old stable democracies do not need explicit or
>> implicit cutoffs "to maintain the stability of the system" since most
>> of them seem to have more problems with having the same old boring
>> parties in power continuously rather than having problems with
>> fighting against too many diverse viewpoints. 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 don't know what "exact proportionalities" might be when a  
> preferential voting system is used.

I think it should be pretty much the same thing. Roughly, if n% of  
the voters rank "X style" candidates first then "X style" candidates  
should get about n% of the seats.

>   And there are certainly major
> problems in trying to measure such proportionalities, exact or  
> otherwise.

STV is in principle good at this (but multiple small size districts  
may favour large parties).

>   Malta has got itself into some very serious political
> problems by taking the first preference votes as the "correct"  
> expression of party proportionality that should be reflected in the
> seats won.  But that ignores completely the effect of the transfers  
> of votes according to the voters' preferences, the very essence
> of STV-PR.  We all tend to use the first preferences in STV-PR  
> elections as the "best" indicator of relative party support, but that
> assumption must have so many caveats attached to it that no-one  
> would think of using it to calculate the "exact" proportionalities
> at national level (except in Malta!).

That may be a reasonably close approximation of party support but  
does not handle properly horizontal votes that are like  
MyCommunistFriend>MyRightWingPartyCandidate1>... . I'm not sure how  
common such votes are (and if there are many of them they might  
cancel the impact of each others).

What is a better way to handle the bias that e.g. small districts may  
cause in STV? Maybe an explicit party vote?? If one does not fix the  
balance one maybe just accepts some randomness in the balance between  
parties of same size and some systematic bias in favour of the large  
parties (or whatever groupings/ideologies).

Juho





	
	
		
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