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

[Juho]

On Aug 18, 2008, at 12:10 , Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:

> The extreme would be a voting system where people just say how much  
> they agree with an opinion, for all relevant opinions, and then the  
> system picks the maximally representative assembly. Such a method  
> is not desirable, I think, because it would be very vulnerable to  
> strategy, and someone would have to say which opinions were  
> "relevant" and then redo the list when voters' priorities change  
> and other opinions become relevant. In a simulation, one can do  
> this easily because the voters vote mechanically (and so the what  
> the opinion "really is" doesn't matter), but in the real world, not  
> so much.

In principle STV allows (especially if ties are allowed) voters to  
determine any sets of candidates (without requiring someone to fix  
them beforehand). Voters may e.g. list all female candidates. It is  
also possible that any number of such group definitions would be  
available. Candidates could indicate themselves which opinions they  
support, and voters could include references to those lists in their  
ballot. Also opinions created by others than candidates themselves  
could be available. The lists could freely overlap. Someone could  
vote e.g. Women (1st priority), candidates that indicate that they  
support election reform (2nd priority) and candidates that were  
listed by the election reform society (3rd priority). An STV like  
ballot would be derived from this information.

>>> Another option is to allow a voter vote for local candidates and  
>>> then
>>> as their last choice, vote for a national list.
>> This is maybe yet one step more complex since now candidates can  
>> belong to different orthogonal groupings (several local parties;  
>> one party covers all local regions). Or maybe you meant to allow  
>> voting only individuals locally, not to support all local  
>> candidates of all parties as a group.
>>> 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).
>> Ok. National level proportionality could influence the election of  
>> the last candidates in the districts.
>>> 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.
>> Maybe all districts would be guaranteed their fixed number of  
>> seats (typically based on the number of citizens of each  
>> district). The extra seats would be first allocated to parties and  
>> then to districts (using some appropriate algorithm).
>
> That sounds like MMP. I think MMP can work if done right (with STV  
> instead of FPTP as base, and reweighting to avoid lista civetta).  
> Using party list here is probably better than the party-neutral  
> version where you'd rank representatives for local, regional, and  
> national levels, and then it keeps the reweighting at each stage;  
> simply because there would be an immense number of candidates at  
> the national level, and ranking them all would be Herculean.

MMP style is also one option, although I was still thinking of  
methods where all representatives are of the same type. The method  
would in that case have to force the districts to elect so that also  
election wide balance is maintained.

Juho





		
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