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

[Raph Frank]

On Sat, Aug 23, 2008 at 9:55 PM, Juho <juho4880 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Yes, in general members of some group in the parliament are expected to vote
> the same way most of the time. Different parties have somewhat different
> attitude. In some questions the groups explicitly give free hands to their
> members. (I believe the constitution says something about the independent
> decision making of the representatives, and I don't like at least sanctions
> very much.)

Right, this is very important.  There is no point in having
legislators if they all must vote with the party/party leader.

In New Zealand, if you are kicked out of the party, you must give up
your seat.  This seems like a bad idea.

> I guess any votes are welcome. The elected candidates are likely to be part
> of the team in any case and increase the strength of the party. Also
> candidates that fail to become elected are very beneficial (their votes will
> be inherited by others).

Ahh, ok.  A party ideally, wants candidates who don't get elected (so
they get 'free' votes) or candidates who get more than 1 quota, so the
party gets the excess (more 'free' votes).

> In open lists all candidates are expected to campaign as much as they can
> and to collect as many votes as they can. It is also beneficial to nominate
> as many candidates as possible (even few additional votes are better than
> none).

Well, under PR-STV, candidates do campaign very hard.  In fact, it is
a method that results in very few safe seats.  Even if parties are
being tactical, there is still choice for the voters.