[Election-Methods] Matrix voting and cloneproof MMP questions

[Juho]

Here's one more approach to using voting methods to determine what  
the government should be like. In the method that I proposed one  
problem is the potentially high number of different coalition  
alternatives. This method makes the number of candidates smaller.

All parties are candidates. Voters will put them in the order of  
preference to include them in the government coalition. The results  
could be indicative, subject to further negotiations between the  
parties. The winner would maybe start the negotiations and possibly  
take the prime minister seat.

There could be also a technical cutoff "candidate" that the voters  
would place between those parties that they want to see in the  
government and those parties that they do not want to be included.  
The idea is that those parties above the cutoff would be the default  
candidates to be included in the government.

It is possible that many voters would "approve" only few parties and  
therefore one would get a minority government if one would follow the  
results of the vote literally. For this reason one could try also two  
cutoffs, "absolutely yes" and "absolutely no". Then we could try to  
include all parties that beat the "absolutely yes" cutoff in the  
government and leave all below "absolutely no" out. Parties between  
the cutoffs could be included e.g. to create a majority government.  
the two cutoffs would give the negotiators somewhat richer input with  
respect to what kind of government the voters want (or would approve/ 
accept). (The voters could be also the members of the parliament.)

Juho



On Jul 8, 2008, at 16:13 , Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:

> Juho wrote:
>> Few notes.
>> In some cases having an opposition may be a positive thing. E.g.  
>> having always the same government may not be a good thing in the  
>> long run.
>> One approach is to use some single winner method to determine the  
>> preferred coalition that should form the government (I'm assuming  
>> a multi-party system here) (candidates in the single winner  
>> election are coalitions like "Party1+Party2", "Party1+Party3 
>> +Party4" etc.). That could lead to either a majority or a minority  
>> government, consisting of one, few or all parties.
>
> That could be an interesting way to solve the "indecisive  
> parliament" or "frequent government change" problem where these  
> exist. In order to recall the executive, they have to vote for a  
> new coalition at the same time. If the winner passes a certain  
> threshold, the old government/executive is removed and winning  
> coalition gets to decide the composition of the new government;  
> otherwise, nothing happens.
>
> That would be workable for matrix voting in general, too. Use the  
> matrix vote to find the n best governments. In a proportional  
> matrix voting system, the alternatives would be chosen in a way so  
> that the alternatives' supporters overlap as little as possible.  
> Then those n options are brought to a single-winner vote, and if  
> the winning set passes a certain threshold, the government/ 
> executive is replaced; otherwise, nothing happens.
>
> The greatest problem here, I think, would be if the opposition  
> agreed to pick some random (or otherwise undesirable) government  
> and coordinate their votes, and the treshold is short of a  
> majority. Then the new opposition does the same, and the government  
> cycles back and forth.
>
> Also, the threshold constraint makes single-winner criteria  
> applicable to the second round. Governments that are alike except  
> for one single member would "split the vote" in a bad single-winner  
> system, just as candidates do in general elections.


		
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