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

[Juho]

On Aug 18, 2008, at 12:00 , James Gilmour wrote:

> I have to say I just do not understand the obsession with "lists".

Lists are indeed rather clumsy and maybe simplifying (trees would be  
more expressive though :-).

If looking for some rationale behind lists one could say that some  
groupings according to ideological differences are natural. Having  
such explicit structures may help the voters understand better the  
political landscape. On the other hand these same structures could  
exist in posters too even if the election itself would be carried out  
without any reference to these political groupings. Such poster based  
declarations of affiliation could also influence the behaviour of the  
elected representatives later. Explicit lists/trees make this however  
more concrete (and more binding to the elected candidates).

Lists and trees offer a nice set-up for those voters that do not  
regularly follow politics and want to spend only few minutes to  
decide how to vote. This kind of an easy structure might also  
increase the level of participation in the elections. If we want to  
offer the candidates also the opportunity to freely rank all the  
candidates I'd be interested in this case to offer a simple, e.g.  
tree like structure to the voters as a default structure and order of  
inheritance. More complex inheritance order describing ballots would  
be allowed too for voters that want to express their preferences in  
some other way than in line with the candidate given (maybe  
simplified) preference order that is available in the tree structure.

Juho





		
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